Comic Book Guy

Template:Simpsons character Jeff Albertson, better known as Comic Book Guy, is a fictional character in the animated series The Simpsons. He is the proprietor of the comic book shop, The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop.

Character

Voiced by Hank Azaria, the obese, nerdy, hairy Comic Book Guy is perhaps best known for his sarcastic quips. He holds a master's degree in folklore and mythology (he translated The Lord of the Rings into Klingon as part of his thesis). His catchphrase is the declaration "The worst... (Noun)... ever." Comic Book Guy is said to be mocking certain Simpsons fans who will race to the Internet to criticize the producers and writers of an episode they have just finished viewing and declare such episode to be the "Worst Episode Ever." (Simpsons fans started to do just that sometime in 1992 on the alt.tv.simpsons USENET newsgroup, and later on the Web, leading to an on-air reference to "alt.nerd.obsessive".) In the episode "Mayored to the Mob", he states that he is a 45 year-old virgin who lives with his mother.

Likes

Appropriate to his name, Comic Book Guy is obsessed with comic books. A science fiction buff, Comic Book Guy has a bumper sticker that reads "My Other Car Is The Millennium Falcon," given to him by a Harrison Ford lookalike. The license plate on his AMC Gremlin is NCC-1701, the registry number of Star Trek's USS Enterprise. The contents of his display case include, among other oddities, a photo of Sean Connery signed by Roger Moore and a very rare Mary Worth in which she has advised a friend to commit suicide. HItalic texte wears prescription pants, and in the 14th Halloween episode revealed he had a "Jabba the butt" tattoo in "the appropriate place". In the episode "My Big Fat Geek Wedding" you get a quick glimpse of a Superman logo tattoo on his butt but no evidence of the Jabba tattoo. He also owns a T-shirt that says "C:/DOS C:/DOS/RUN RUN/DOS/RUN" (Notice the incorrect usage of the forward slash. DOS directories are listed with a backslash.)

The Android's Dungeon

The Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop

His store contains a section full of illegal videos (which include Mr. Rogers drunk, Alien Autopsy, Illegal Alien Autopsy, a top secret American nuclear war strategy session, a "good version" of The Godfather Part III, Kent Brockman picking his nose, and Ned Flanders in a police informant video, wherein he claims that Homer released a radioactive ape in his house). He once had to give up the Ultimate Belt (which he won as a door prize at a Star Trek Convention) because, as he pointed out, "the average Trekker has no use for a medium-sized belt." He was a virgin well into his forties when he became romantically involved with Principal Skinner's mother Agnes. (Chief Wiggum was notably repulsed when he and his officers stumbled upon the couple "in the act".) He later dated Edna Krabappel. His store is his sanctuary, where he holds some level of self-esteem, imperiously lording over pre-teen kids, like Bart Simpson and Milhouse Van Houten, using a heavily sarcastic tone. When he was the target of mockery while trying to return the Ultimate Belt, he famously sighed, "I must get back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them."

Romance

Comic Book Guy was once married—in an online role-playing game. He and his Internet wife contemplated having children, but that would have severely drained his power crystals. While part of an intellectual junta that briefly ran Springfield, he proposed plans to limit breeding to once every seven years (a reference to the Vulcan blood fever of mating, called Pon Farr), commenting that this would mean much less breeding for most, but for him, "much, much more."

Mensa

He is a member of the Springfield branch of Mensa, along with Principal Skinner, Dr. Hibbert, Lisa Simpson, Professor Frink, and Lindsey Naegle.

The 4th Wall

In the episode "Saddlesore Galactica", he wears a T-shirt saying "Worst Episode Ever" while criticising the ideals behind the Simpson family keeping a horse since it had already been done. Later on he even popped into the frame when it was mentioned that Marge might be developing a gambling problem saying "Hey, I'm watching you." After the credits of the same episode, his voice is heard declaring it "the worst episode ever".

Competition

In the Simpsons city of North Haverbrook there is a comic book shop named "Mylar Baggins" and the proprietor looks very similar to Comic Book Guy with the exception that his skin and hair are slightly darker. He also has a deep-rooted rivalry with a store similar to his - "Frodo's of Shelbyville". These shops could have had the same owner, as both rival store names refer to The Lord of the Rings character Frodo Baggins. Hank Azaria reprises his role of Comic Book Guy in the movie. He is a secondary character in the film, with more lines than most. In The Simpsons Movie Comic Book Guy says that his obsessive comic book collecting is a "life well spent."

Name

A long-running gag on the show was never to reveal the character's name, with other characters referring to him as "Comic Book Guy". Finally, in the February 6 2005 episode, "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass," Comic Book Guy nonchalantly told Ned Flanders, "My name is Jeff Albertson, but everyone calls me 'Comic Book Guy'." Showrunner Al Jean remarked, "That was specifically done to make people really mad. We just tried to pick a generic name. It was also the Super Bowl show, so we did it so the most people possible would see it." Groening stated that he had originally intended him to be called Louis Lane and be obsessed with Lois Lane, but was out of the room when the writers named him.