Comic Book Guy

"Worst [insert noun] ever!"

- Comic Book Guy's catchphrase

Jeffrey "Jeff" Albertson, better known as Comic Book Guy, is the overweight, geeky proprietor of the comic book store, The Android's Dungeon.

Biography
Comic Book Guy is a very obese, socially incompetent, unshaven, cruel man who 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). He exhibits geeky behaviour to an extraordinary and deliberately unrealistic degree, and often also makes references to obscure subjects or internet culture. His catchphrase is the declaration,"Worst... (episode)... ever". He states that he is a 45 year-old virgin who lives with his mother. His obesity is referenced in The Simpsons: Hit & Run, where he can be used as a driver. One of his replies is that he might as well pick the player up, since he can't fit into his office chair anymore.

Appropriate to his name, Comic Book Guy is obsessed with comic books, pop culture and science fiction. 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 advised a friend to commit suicide. 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, so it would be "C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN"). He is a member of the Springfield branch of Mensa, along with Principal Skinner, Dr. Hibbert, Lisa Simpson, Professor Frink, and Lindsey Naegle.

Early life
Comic Book Guy lived in his parents basement in the 1980s. He had a dog named Chewbacca (currently deceased). He also went to fat camp.

The Android's Dungeon
Comic Book Guy is the owner of The Android's Dungeon, a local comic book store. Many of the comics and toys he sells are of very poor-quality, and often sell for very high prices. 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 sighed, "I must get back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them". 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 [Although, according to Bart, Homer only let the Ape into the house because the Ape tricked Homer, and not out of malicious intent]. He later was arrested and had his store shut down temporarily because of this.). 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".

Similar stores
In 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. During the Trappuccino crisis, Comic Book Guy says that his obsessive comic book collecting is a "life well spent".

Brief Fame
In Homer the Whopper, Comic Book Guy created the comic book series Everyman. He apparently created 278 issues, including the controversial issue with the death of Marmaduke. However, he was reluctant to self-publish them initially because he feared that he'd be mocked by the internet community for his comics. While trying to exasperate Comic Book Guy by feigning complete ignorance on the history of Spiderman, Bart and Milhouse stumbled upon a draft of an issue of Everyman that he was working on. Comic Book Guy then learned that Bart and Milhouse actually liked the comic, and after a bit of convincing, he decided to self-publish. The comic's popularity started to soar as a result, with a movie project starting for the Summer Market. Some movie executives requested to make Everyman into a movie.

Comic Book Guy is reluctant to allow them to work with the movie, especially as the same movie industry apparently ruined the Stratego movie for him. He eventually relents, but only under the condition that he picks the person who will portray Everyman. When they refused that condition, he opened the door to the store, implying that he wanted them to leave, until they agreed to that condition, commenting that being a Hollywood Producer is the closest thing to a physical sport that he could ever do. He later explains that he wants a "complete loser" to portray Everyman. He then picks Homer Simpson for the part, after the latter accidentally walked into the store, not realizing it was closed for auditioning. He then spent his time talking to people at his new, hollywood-style house about what it is like to be a producer, and adopting a Cambodian Orphan named Prius.

However, when the movie was going over-budget and Homer ended up gaining an eating disorder due to his fitness coach abandoning him for Turtle (to the extent that he couldn't even get out of his trailer without it being sawed off), he tried to end production of the film, but ended up being thrown out by security into a dumpster with disgraced executives. He later ended up sacrificing any chance at another Everyman movie being made by voicing his honest opinion that the Everyman movie was the worst movie ever. It is unknown if he still worked on his comics after this.

Relationships
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. He was shown paired with a blond woman (asking if she enjoyed comic books) during a mass-marriage that occurred when a cult took over Springfield, and presumably the two were wed in the mass ceremony. 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". 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 and was shown with the superman logo tattooed on his upper right buttock (which is interesting, as in the Comic Book Guy's Book of Pop Culture, he states that he hates Superman).

He then met Kumiko Nakamura, a Japanese woman that searched the saddest towns in America and got to Springfield. He fell in love with her and they got married. Kumiko is his current wife. She shares lots of hobbies with Comic Book Guy, such as cosplay, comic books and so forth.

The Simpsons Game
Comic Book Guy appears throughout the entire game to point out various videogame cliches that the player can unlock by performing certain actions. He also appears as one of the contestants in the Duff Ultimate Eating Challenge in the level Around the World in 80 Bites, and in the form of a gang of sumo wrestlers in Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game. The sumo versions are also among the enemies sent by God in "Game Over".

Behind the Laughter
Comic Book Guy was partly inspired by a clerk at the Los Angeles Amok book shop who often "[sat] on the high stool, kind of lording over the store with that supercilious attitude and eating behind the counter a big Styrofoam containerful of fried clams with a lot of tartare sauce." Matt Groening noted that: "I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and said, 'I know who you based that comic book guy on. It's that comic-book guy right down the block.' And I have to tell them, "No, it's every comic-bookstore guy in America." Hank Azaria based Comic Book Guy's voice on a student who went by the name "F", and lived in the room next door at his college. Azaria also "loves that the character is an adult who argues with kids as if they're his peers."

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 and tormented by" Lois Lane, but was out of the room when the writers named him. The comic book guy has also been seen in quite a few episodes but he has had very few episodes where he is a major character. He is rarely seen outside The Android's Dungeon store and most of his interactions are with Bart Simpson. The comic book guy wasn't seen very often early in the series of the show and has not been seen very much in the 19th season.

Trivia

 * Comic Book Guy has an IQ of 170.

Merchandising
Even though Comic Book Guy is just a recurring character, he still has some merchandise such as Comic Book Guy's Book of Pop Culture. He also appears on the cover of the twelfth season DVD.