Comic books and train of thought

For a minute when I was a kid, I was pretty invested in Marvel Comics, and was definitely a Marvel > DC Comics person, though for a few years (1990-1992, I think) I was collecting both Marvel and DC trading cards. Call the comic police. I was playing both sides for the sake of collectorship. I don’t remember how I got interested in comic books, because they weren’t something either of my parents were into, and while my brother might have been for a minute, it was never something that really, really stuck in the house. I have a vague memory of being at the home of some family friends and their significantly older son had a massive comic collection in the basement and whenever we were over that, which wasn’t frequently but enough, if he was home I usually left with a comic book. I remember one featuring The Inhumans, and I particularly remember Black Bolt, but beyond that memory it is all pretty hazy. Of course, I remember the Batman tv series—Batman with Adam West, and the legendary Batman: The Animated Series—and I remember the animated X-Men, the original Spiderman cartoon, and I remember an X-Men animated movie I rented from a place called Country Video, though I don’t remember much of the movie except that it had Juggernaut in it.

When it came time to having some of my own money, like a lot of kids, I wanted to buy comic books and I started buying them, and a lot of Ghostrider. I remember buying the Infinity Gauntlet series, and a handful of other titles. Dethlok, I think, was one I grabbed. They were pretty cool. Then one Saturday morning I remember seeing the Wild C.A.T.S. animated series and was hooked to it. Image Comics? Okay, I’ll check it out. I picked up—and I might get these wrong, so please bear with me—Wild C.A.T.S. because I was familiar with it a little bit, and I started collecting Grifter (who was a member of Wild C.A.T.S.), as well as Wet Works, and, of course, the title that kicked off everything with Image, I was collecting Spawn for a minute. The style and colouring of the books was a lot different to what I was used to with the Big Two—Marvel and DC—and that was cool. The fact that Image was a little underground helped, too. Mind you, I am fully aware that what I considered to be underground as a kid probably wasn’t all that underground, but I was growing up in the middle of nowhere and in a time *gasp* that existed before the Internet (if we can even really believe such a time existed… BUT IT DID). So, finding those comic books that seemed a little bit off in the weeds, that were a little bit less mainstream felt really important to me. When I saw the HBO Spawn movies I was shocked again. Like, what is going on here? I mean, Marvel had/has The Punisher—who is also near and dear to my heart—but he was nothing like Spawn. I hadn’t really gotten into death and black metal yet, so maybe Spawn was something that pushed me in that direction; it just felt cool,

I was probably reading and collecting comics until, I don’t know, maybe 1995 or 1996? Maybe as late as ‘97? I’m really not sure. There was a point where I was feeling overwhelmed by comic books, but also a point where some of the stuff was just getting too much. For example, Spawn, while cool, was all of a sudden in the middle ages? I didn’t really know what to do with that and my interest started to fade. In some ways, I think I had a hard time connecting with the characters. All of the heroes, whether they be mutants or aliens or superpowered people in some ways, just didn’t feel like me. I never looked at any character and was like, yeah, that’s my face or my feelings or my background or whatever. And, to be clear, I don’t have any face or feelings or background that’s dramatic; I guess I just started to feel less connected. Maybe I was at a point in my life where I was figuring out my identity and who I was and all of that and the comic books just didn’t connect at that point. While I might have felt like a mutant or an alien, all the mutants and aliens in the comics seemed to have something that made them special and set them apart, where I just felt like I had crash landed on the planet and had to try and figure it all out. I guess I just never felt any of that with DC, with Marvel, with Image, etc.

I wish I’d come across The Sandman when I was a kid, too, because when I read Good Omens by the peerless Neil Gaiman for the first time, it opened my eyes to what an astounding writer he is and that comic books weren’t just fun picturebooks for kids; similarly, I never read The Crow as a kid, but I loved and love the film adaptation. There could be a real intensity and a real depth to the writing. Similarly—and this would be years later, of course—I'd never come across Watchmen, which absolutely blew my mind when I finally read it; just to clear the air, too, I love the Zack Snyder movie, I love the book, and I love the TV series, all in their own spaces; I recognize Alan Moore hates any and every adaptation of all of his work and when you‘re an Omega-level genius like he is, hey, I guess he’s earned it. When I read Watchmen for the first time and met Dr. Manhattan, I think I almost fell over. I’d never seen a comic book character, a superhero, talk about isolation in the same way; the most powerful being on the planet was hopelessly alone. I think, in some ways, maybe that’s how Paul Atreides felt. I can’t connect with Dr. Manhattan or Paul in any sense other than being a person, but those feelings of aloneness and isolation certainly resonate. As an aside, when I saw Guardians of the Galaxy and heard Rocket Racoon talk about being forced to undergo experiments and modifications and he ended up how he ended up because of what was done to him, I really connected with that, too.

Obviously, the last 10-15 years have been big for comic books and their adaptations to the Big Screen. I love the first two Captain America flicks, Black Panther is outstanding, and the first Guardians of the Galaxy flick is peerless; I really enjoyed Logan, with Old Man Logan feeling close enough to be human that he wasn’t the toughest S.O.B. in the world; Hellboy 2 is amazing in a lot of ways, and Guillermo Del Toro’s aesthetic is pitch perfect; Wonder Woman was really cool to see, even though I didn’t love the plot. Generally speaking, the Marvel takeover of the movie universe has felt really overwhelming to me. I’ve seen a bunch of the MCU flicks and, I don’t know, some of them I get, some of them I don’t. I’m not here to shit on anything. Some people love the movies, and that’s great. Objectively speaking, they’re mostly good movies, just didn’t resonate super well with me. For example, I loved the Ang Lee-directed Hulk. I heard Stan Lee once comment that he used all his characters to try and excise pieces from himself, tried to work through pain and character flaws by writing about them, and when I look at the Hulk, there’s someone I can connect with, to a degree. I wouldn’t say I have a hair trigger temper, but when Mount Mudd blows its top, it usually isn’t a great experience all around; I change from a normal person into someone who isn’t normal (whatever normal is, right?) and then afterwards I’m left with the pain of having gone through that change and left to pick up the pieces.

What got me onto the topic of comic books in the first place is a childhood friend of mine one day said, Henry, you need to get Marvel Unlimited, it’s awesome. So I checked it out and, whooooa boy. It is awesome. Overwhelming, but awesome. I’ve been going back through and reading all these great comic series I never got to read when I was a kid, or didn’t know about as a kid, or if I had read them, now I’m able to read them through the eyes of someone who has a bit more perspective and a bit more of a sense of oh I get it. It’s been a lot of fun to go down memory lane and it’s been a lot of fun to sit and marinate in all those stories that are new to me, or maybe that I am getting to for a second or third or fourth time.

Anyway, bit of a ramble on comics.