For about eight years now, I have stopped in at comic shop every
shipment day. Even if I do not buy anything, I have to take a look. When I moved
to Mesa recently, I felt that I had ran into a little bit of luck. One of
the local comic shops was located right across the street from where I
worked, which meant that I could walk over there on my lunch break, grab
what fix I needed that particular week, and make it back in plenty of time.
On one of my excursions to the shop during a lunch break, a
co-worker asked what I had in the bag. I showed her the comics, and she turned up
her nose. "I can't believe you are still reading comics. There must be
something wrong with you." She then returned to reading some book she felt
was good, because Oprah told her so. I figured that was the end, but she
discussed my comics habit with another customer. Later, they come up to me
asked, "What is wrong with you?"
I tried not to be offended by the question, and tried to explain to
them that I had been reading comics of some kind of another since I was six. I
also tried explaining to them the wonders of cartoonists like Terry Moore,
Teri S. Wood, Richard and Wendy Pini, and Linda Medley, who create comics
that have nothing to do with superheros and writers like James Robinson and
Neil Gaiman who have made many creative leaps in the superhero field
themselves. My raves fell on deaf ears. To them, I was a freak who liked
comics.
The conversation made me think of many that I had before. Those
coversations were more subtle but relayed their message clearly. Someone
would comment, "You know I used to read comics when I was a kid. . .I guess
I grew out of them."
The first comic book that I was given was an Uncle Scrooge comic,
and it was love at first sight. I read the comic over and over again. It was
like the best gift ever. It was like my own private cartoon. I later
discovered a rack of comics that sold them three in a pack. I was
introduced to Richie Rich, Little Lulu, HotStuff, Donald Duck and Friends,
and my favorite ghost stories of some kind or another.
These characters somehow became alive to me. I didn't have many
friends because the farm was a ways out. I would spend my days in the tree house
with my comics or closing my eyes pretending I was inside a comic.
When I was nine, I made a discovery in a book store. It was a
superhero comic. I had seen them before, but I tended to shy away from them. Of all
the comics in the rack, this one seemed to be the one that called to me.
It was an issue of the Avengers. There was no fights or anything in the
comic, all character. Vision had returned to his wife, the Scarlet Witch,
and Hawkeye had announced that he was married to Mockingbird. The soap
opera style of the story had me hungry for more.
The issue ended on a strange note, a lot of the Avengers disappeared
to something called the "Secret Wars". I picked up the Secret Wars comic, and
the next thing I knew I was looking at all these new comics to see the
source material of a lot of the characters in the mini-series.
I was led to Chris Claremont's X-Men and New Mutants from these
comics, and reading these two comics gave me something that I had never had before
in my life: hope. I was severely physically and emotionally abused by my
father who told me repeatedly that he hated me. The X-Men and New Mutants
with the prejudice they felt from the outside world seemed to be the first
people who knew what I was going through. As they had to keep their powers
and identities a secret, I had to hide the scars and marks.
On occassions where I would end up crying, I always imagined
Wolverine being there. Wolverine was the toughest guy in the world, and he never
seemed to think any less of anyone who cried on his shoulder. I had more
than one dream of Wolverine taking me away from my unhappy family and
placing me in Xavier's school around people who really cared. When I
finally stood up to my father at age thirteen and demanded that he never
hit me again, I imagined Wolverine beside me.
A few years went by and the Teen Titans, the New Mutants, Kitty
Pryde, and I grew up. I went away to college at age seventeen to study education
despite the urgings of my family who wanted me to go into the military
instead. I moved away from my family, and I had high hopes for the future.
My high hopes were smashed fairly quickly. I was frustrated by the
inability to get the classes I needed and the fact that I was treated like
such an outsider. Luckily, I found the local comic shop.
A new comics world lay before me, a world called DC/Vertigo. On the
cover read "For Mature Readers Only." That statement intrigued me and I picked
up everything: Doom Patrol, Sandman, Shade: The Changing Man, Animal Man,
Kid Eternity, Hellblazer, and Swamp Thing. I loved some, hated others, and
found a couple to be mediocre.
When I brought a couple comics to class, I was surprised by getting
a positive reaction. Another person in the class was a comics reader, and
because of that I made my first friend in the new town. Soon our group of
comics friends grew.
These comics did more that just get me friends. They opened a whole
new world for me. They showed me homosexual couples. Before that,
homosexuality was something that I had always been afraid of, especially in
myself. These homosexual characters were not ashamed of who they were and
were portrayed as so normal.
The first time I would ever tell anyone that I was gay was walking
from a comic book shop. I was discussing what we each got, and told him there was
something important to get off my chest. He took it very well, and then
asked if I was attracted to Jack Knight from Starman. I said, yes, and his
responce was, "You've got great taste in men."
The next major obsticle of my life would again my helped by a comic
book: the death of my father. When my father died, I felt more emotions than I
could count. I tried talking to my friends, but they didn't seem to know
what I felt. I picked up Wandering Star, and immediatly I found a kindred
spirit in Cassandra. She had a thousand questions and no answers, and she
had to look within to heal herself.
Looking back on all the ways that comic books have helped me, I know
why I still read them into adulthood. They are old friends, and a constant in my
life. Wherever we moved, I could always at least order comics. It would
seem like a betrayal to stop reading them.