Some of the best memories (and some of the only good memories) I have of my father are laying on the floor of this office with him listening to old radio serials of The Shadow and The Green Hornet. They were amazing. I'm six years old, maybe, somewhere in there. The room we were in was always dim because my dad would never change the overhead lightbulb, if it even had one, but would instead use a single desk lamp with a green shade for light. The radio was always slightly off tune, which made the shows sound scratchy and distant, which is how I pictured The Past to be when I was a kid. I laid on the floor night after night with my head inches from the radio as jewels were stolen and banks were robbed. There were goons and getaways and excitement and each night I would think, just for a second, that this would be the night that Evil emerged victorious. But every night a Hero would step from the shadows in the nick of time and save the day. It never failed. They never failed. I was in awe over that fact that these people would right wrongs and dispense justice not because it was their job, but because it was Right. It didn't quite matter to me that they did it by throwing bad guys off rooftops.
By night it was the radio, where I used my imagination to form the pictures of masks, trench coats and fists, and by day it was cartoons and reruns of the 1960s Batman TV show, which told my impressionable imagination that fighting crime was brightly colored and had no consequences for the good guys. It was around this same time that I found comic books. The first ones I remember reading were Elfquest comics, which, while I don't actually know where they came from, I'm sure I have my brothers to thank for them. For me, comics were perfect. They were bright and fast paced, with a harshly defined sense of right and wrong. Their morality was easy to spot and understand; monsters are evil, masks are good. Once the comic book flood gates were open it took moving to Yakima to close them. And they didn't close because I wanted them to, they closed by Yakima does not lend itself well to imagination.
I continued to have television and movies to solidify my world view, but I couldn't find comics in Yakima. It was like the town hadn't heard of them. I killed time and continued my personal Nerd Parade by learning to play chess and backgammon and marbles (which, I might add, I was uncannily good at) until I found Ron's Coin and Book. Ron's was the only place in the city that sold comic books. It was run by a cranky and terrifying man with an uneven mustache and an obvious hatred of children. The shop's main function was buying and trading rare coins and baseball cards. Comics were an afterthought to the man, who I always assumed was Ron himself, but never bothered to find out for sure. Comics where the only reason I went there though, and when I went, I wanted all of them. But I didn't know enough about them to know what I was looking for. Ron was no help... any comic book questions directed towards him were met with sharp glares and a suggestion that "the real money is in Fleer!" which wasn't actually a sentence that I understood, but I knew the packs of cards had bubble gum, so that was something at least. (Ironic Interlude: shortly after that statement was said to me Fleer was bought out by Marvel Comics. In your face, Ron.) I would walk past the boxes of comics and eventually just reach in and grab one at random, lay my change on the counter and leave the store with a sense of accomplishment. The shop was scary, and leaving there alive was a feat, and comic books were the spoils. I collected for a time, but accessibility and terror limited my options and it would be nearly ten years before I would start Collecting.
I spent today with my comic books. There was some reorganizing, some were put into bags, some were read, and, as always, I shook my head when looking at some of them, wondering why I ever bought that particular issue. Thats the biggest problem I have with comic books. Most of them are crap. Its not that a particular issue is bad, its just that all the story lines have been done. Its rare that I read something that hasn't be done time and again by various authors under various publishers. Don't get me wrong, they are usually pretty well written, its just that after eighty years its probably hard to come up with something new. Characters are duplicated, sometimes blatantly so, made worse by the fact that writers often move back and forth between publishing companies, muddying the creative waters with each pay raise. Whenever a particular problem arises in any given comic Something Man or Captain Whatever will show up and punch it/go into space/mind control something/time travel their way to victory in a convenient 32 page bundle. This will then happen in every single comic that comes out every single wednesday. All of these things pile up into an entertainment medium that is stunningly average. Sure, there is the occasional gem that makes me want to clap my hands and the occasional pile of garbage that makes we want to slap a stranger, but all in all most comics are the same.
But I keep buying them. And I'll always buy them. I'll buy them because they connect me to my childhood and to the kid inside that I try so very hard to make sure is fed and encouraged. They are entertaining and, as cliched as it sounds, I've learned a great deal from them. I know that I wouldn't be who I am without them. Comic books have shaped my perceptions and my moral code. There often isn't much gray area when it comes to my thinking... things are either right or wrong, and since I'm the Hero in my own head I should know the difference. If something isn't working out just right launch it into space. Problem solved. Crisis averted. At least for the next 32 pages.
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