Jeff "Comic Book Guy" Albertson 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.

Voiced by Hank Azaria, the obese, hirsute 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 "Worst. Episode. Ever." which is usually delivered with slight pauses between each word, or variants with slightly different wording (such as "Worst. Theme Park. 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." This facet is based on the real-life tendency of Simpsons fans to do just that starting sometime in 1992 on the alt.tv.simpsons USENET newsgroup.

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 advises a friend to commit suicide. He wears prescription pants, and in the 14th Halloween episode revealed he had a "Jabba the butt" tattoo in "the appropriate place". He also owns a T-shirt that says "C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN."

Comic Book Guy is a fan of the comic strip Hi and Lois. His store contains a section full of illegal videos (which include Mr. Rogers drunk, a top secret American nuclear war strategy, a "good version" of The Godfather Part III, and Kent Brockman picking his nose). 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. He was 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.")

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 "much much more" for him.

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

Trivia

• In an old interview, Matt Groening stated that Comic Book Guy's original name was Louis Lane (a play on Lois Lane). 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." The gag concluded on the February 6, 2005 episode, "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass," when he told Ned Flanders that "my name is Jeff Albertson, but everyone calls me Comic Book Guy."
• Comic Book Guy is at least partially based on Hank Azaria's next-door neighbor during his freshman year at Tufts University, a large man whom everyone called "F", who was said to sit in a Barca Lounger and keep a list to rank other members of the dorm in his estimation of how much he did or didn't like them. Some say that this is Azaria's co-star on Huff, Oliver Platt.
• CBG's car has (or used to have) a series of science fiction related bumper stickers, including:
  • I brake for Tribbles (Star Trek)
  • Keep honking, I'm charging my phaser (Star Trek)
  • My child is an honor student at Starfleet Academy (Star Trek)
  • The truth is in here (The X-Files)
  • Kang is my co-pilot (Star Trek; the alien in The Simpsons also takes its name from this source)
  • My other car is the Millennium Falcon (Star Wars)
• Comic Book Guy does not, or rarely, uses contractions; e.g., he would say "is not" instead of "isn't". Such speech is thought to be characteristic of robots, perhaps in reference to the android Data from The Next Generation or the highly-logical Vulcan Spock from the The Original Series.
• Some viewers consider the SpongeBob SquarePants character Bubble Bass to be similar to Comic Book Guy.
• Lenny Baxter, the antagonist of the Powerpuff Girls episode "Collect Her", is said to be based on the Comic Book Guy. Most likely coincidental, roughly around the time the episode aired, so did "The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror X", which included a segment with a similar plot, and with Comic Book Guy as the villain.
• Probably because of his character, a rendition of Comic Book Guy had a cameo in a Spider-Man comic. There was a group of shocked citizens, and Comic Book Guy was the most shocked of all; he saw Spider-Man in person.

Fictional businesspeople | Fictional nerds | Fictional overeaters | Fictional shopkeepers | Sarcastic fictional characters | Simpsons characters

Comic Book Guy | Uomo dei fumetti | Jeff Albertson