On Being a Lapsed Comic Book Geek
As a teen, I found the stories I wanted to be told in the newsprint pages of comic books. The college years shelved them. Then, my kids needed a reading jump start…
I don’t remember the first comic book I read. I do, though, remember the first comic book I read that lead to the next comic book I read. It was summer, 1982, time for a family trip to Myrtle Beach. A ten hour drive in those days. I likely had a book or two ready, but I don’t recall what they might have been. I do remember a gas stop, which doubled as a bathroom and drinks stop, to a 7–11. As I waited for whatever, I visited the spinner rack that was de rigeur and present in all such stores at the time. I didn’t much care for Superman or Batman, so I skipped those. I might have seen either ads for the G. I. Joe toys or cartoons, or maybe the idea of a giant robot chasing after army men (and a woman) grabbed my attention. Whatever the motivating factor, I talked my dad into giving me fifty cents to purchase G. I. Joe issue number three. I read that thing dozens of times on the way to the beach, and countless times while I was there. I still recall sitting by the window one rainy morning while we were there, reading in the light of the blotted out sun.
The next year, at the very beginning of the same sojourn, with my own money, I bought two (!) issues of G.I. Joe, since the most recent and just previous issue were both still in the 7–11 spinner rack. Numbers thirteen and fourteen. Thirteen introduced me to the recurring third world nation of Sierra Gordo. Fourteen to the comic’s version of Destro. I’m sure that I must have started collecting the figures by this point. These issues told a continuing story about which I was missing key information, but it didn’t matter. I read these two issues hundreds of times, and declared that I would subscribe.
I missed a couple months before I convinced my parents to give me a check for seven dollars twenty cents to subscribe. My first issue with a subscription was number seventeen, which saw Cobra’s failed attack come to an end after a series backbiting and betrayal, and Cobra Commander setting the table for even more betrayal, so long as it served his needs.
And that was fine, for a time. But, in each issue, as 1983 started, I noticed ads for something called Secret Wars. Most of Marvel’s heroes whisked away to fight most of Marvel’s villains. The campaign worked. I bought Secret Wars #1. My first flirtation with hero comics.
I was struck by how human and normal these heroes were. I was heretofore familiar only with Spider-Man from Marvel through cartoons and the Electric Company. My other exposure to heroes was simply Superman and Batman — Superman whose first movie was boring to my not yet 10 year old brain and Batman who I only knew from the Adam West/Burt Ward instantiation in what we refer to lovingly as Batman ’66.
The heroes (and villains) I discovered changed me. Where G. I. Joe provided a universe that was sort of closer to our own (sort of), Marvel’s universe was actually our universe, but with these amazing powered people. They struggled with love and romance as much or more than they did fighting evil through the universe. Secret Wars, in particular, dealt with this by putting the Wasp and Dr. Doom together, introducing an alien love interest for Johnny Storm, having Molecule Man’s entire raison d’etre being to win the heart of his lady love (her name is lost to my brain).
Eye-opening. So, I started to pick up other comics. X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Justice League of America. Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America. Superman and Action Comics. Batman and Detective Comics.
Daredevil.
I could write for hours about Daredevil. I will sum it up as I usually have on Twitter over the years. My first issue of Daredevil was the first issue of what would become known as the Reborn story arc.
That first issue broke my heart on the first two pages. I had no idea who Matt Murdock was, who the Kingpin was, who Karen Page was. But, a troubled woman sold away the identity of a hero to that hero’s arch-nemesis to get drugs. Drugs! Comics are for kids, and Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli are writing about a woman who was so despreately addicted she betrayed someone who… it seemed like a terrible thing to do. I was gutted by her choice and didn’t know who any of these people were. And by the time that Matt’s law office was shuttered, I was literally, as a 14 year old, in tears.
How could this medium that was supposed to be for children be so realistic, so vital, so very much a tale you might hear from neighbors? How could a person be so broken that they’d destroy a person who’d saved their lives on multiple occasions?
This story wrecked me in a way that had never occurred before. I enjoyed the wild soap opera style behavior expressed in G. I. Joe, but this was different. In just a couple issues, Matt Murdock went from being a successful-ish attorney and superhero to being a homeless guy living on the street, saved by a nun, affirming his religion, affirming him as a human, as a super-human, and rebuilding this tragically heart-broken man.
I’m not religious in any way (another writing), but this story didn’t just save Matt’s life and soul, but in some ways, opened my eyes and my soul to storytelling that I wanted to tell.
There were no comic book shops in my town, growing up, but there was one in the city where my (maternal) grandmother lived. My (paternal) grandfather saw fit to pay for our grades, and I was a successful junior high and high school student. Getting fifty bucks for a grade card wasn’t out of the ordinary. I would hold that wad, waiting for a visit to grandma, and trade my cash for a paper bag full of seventy two eighty comics. I regret that I didn’t know how to communicate then; I might have talked with the shop keeper and learned about comics, toys, and other nerdy items.
He was a taciturn, unfriendly, and circumspect fellow, the guy who ran that shop. And the first time I walked in there, he seemed to only want me to leave. In time, though, he would greet me happily when I walked in the door, because he knew I was going drop a good amount of cash. Even though I wasn’t there but monthly, he started setting aside copies of what he knew to be books I’d want.
Fast forward to the end of high school. I carried a handful of comics with me to college, but as an impoverished college student, I didn’t add to my collection at all during college. I stopped reading altogether. I was aware of a comic book shop, but avoided it all costs, because I knew I couldn’t afford it, and, well… it was the early ’90s and I was pretty sure that was no way to win girls.
The years go by. College. Marriage. Children.
A little while after my third child was born, I was looking for something for my second kid to read. The first needed no prompting, she read and still reads voraciously. But Number Two wasn’t interested in reading, particularly. I got it in my head that if there were pictures involved, maybe he’d pick it up.We were walking around our small town, which is home to a branch of a regional comic book store chain. I decided one day to take the kids in.
I left them in the kids-oriented section while I browsed the super heroes. While my first was looking at My Little Pony picture books and the boys were looking at child-safe Batman and Superman, I was entranced by a comic book written by Kelly Sue DeConnick, “Captain Marvel: The Enemy Within.” I don’t remember the full details of the story, but I remember being touched by it. The struggle Carol went through, and, if memory serves, the emotional note of Captain America telling Carol that she’d earned herself the title of Captain Marvel.
I would collect from here, while allowing heroes in my heart earlier, based mostly on the fact that I’d discovered a comic of “The X-Files,” which promised to pick up twenty-years on from where the series had ended. Relatively quickly, I was piling up the comics by the dozens and dozens. There was a huge difference, though, between how much a stack of comics cost in the mid-late ’80s and early ’10s. So, while I wanted to buy everything I saw, I had to be a bit more judicious in my purchasing decisions.
As I sit here, typing on my iPad, there are a handful of more recent G. I. Joe issues in PDF format waiting for my eyeballs, having converted to digital for the ease of storage. A couple years ago, I stopped reading again, in large part because of a problem with the primary supplier of digital comics. As I understand it, they have worse problems now with their app and ownership than was the case when I left. I want to return again. Maybe I will.
