Origin Story or Holy Backstory Batman

The year of 1993 was in many ways probably one of the most formative years of my life.  I was seven years old, I was in the second grade, had found the first love of my life in my class mate Kelly, realized my young hatred for division, and my parents had just divorced.  I remember my younger sisters emotions, Caitlin was angry and scandalized by it all and even rallied us into a failed attempt at running away. This attempt involved packing snacks, and toys, and then standing on the empty hill next to our town house till dark, when our mother came to collect us.  Hannah, the youngest, and always and forever, the most in touch with her emotions, cried.  Maybe only for a week, not longer than a month, but in the house of my memories it seems an eternity. 

And yet for the life of me I can not remember my own emotions, my own reactions.  Maybe there lies a small miracle there, the ability to wrap something so sharp, so dangerous, into a blanket for safe keeping.  
However, discovering my second, and greatest love I remember very well.  It was the summer, and mom and I were driving to Pizza Hut to pick up the standard, newly single mother/ small business owner, nightly meal of two thin crust pizza's, one pepperoni, one cheese.  It started to down pour in the way it only can in summer as we pulled into the parking lot.  We are a hardy clan, and had no qualms getting soaked running into the restaurant.  We stood there dripping wet, realizing that we would have to wait ten more minutes before our order would be ready, and the courageous dash from the car had been unwarranted.  That's when it happened.  Set maniacally at grade school eye level were two VHS's, four comic books, and a collector's cup.  All the covers depicted perfectly sculpted, if not a little freakish, men, and women standing in attack position, screaming, either at each other, or it seemed the very covers that held them! Emblazoned on all of them was one word X-MEN!

I blacked out then, for a bit.  It was too much for my mind to handle, the power that I could feel just by looking at the at that display had me at a loss.  Somehow, my guess is a healthy dose of single mom guilt, I walked out with one VHS, a comic book (Gambit and Rogue on the cover), and the cup.  Later that evening while mom was putting my sisters to bed, she put the VHS in for me.  This is how you start a cult.

Mother. Of. God.  I was hooked.  I was no longer chained to the body of a pudgy, asthma attack prone seven year old.  I could be as savage as Wolverine, as charming as Gambit, or a smart as Beast.  I could help them save the world just by turning the page.  As I left child hood, and entered the stage of unrelenting, uncompromising anger and sadness the Marvel universe followed.  While I may have turned my back on the X-men, I found the darker heroes such as Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Deadpool.  Not only that, but the villains started striking a chord with in my body that their plucky and true counter-parts could not.  I understood Magneto's mistrust of humans, Venom's jealousy of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and Doctor Dooms need for control.  I was seething with the rage of hundreds of Super Villains.  I was Legion.

I was saved by a shield.  


I never payed much attention to Steve Rogers.  Even before the rise of my dark phoenix I always saw the exploits of Captain America as antiquated.  A hero fighting for beliefs that were no longer held by the flag that he so fiercely protected.  I don't remember what made me do it, what part of my mind made me buy those books.  Maybe I wanted to laugh at the delusions of a sad man still fighting a war long since past, someone who embodied everything I found so mockable in this drek of exsistence.

I was wrong.  He was strong, but The Hulk was stronger. He was fast, but Quicksilver was faster.  He was smart, but Professor X was smarter.  Yet, he was better than the rest combined.  The description lacks punch, but that's what it was.  He stood for something past the shield, the tights, the jaw line.  He was endurance, he was solid, he was hope.  He had seen it all, lost more friends than is needed, died more times than one has the right to, and came back for more.  Standing just as high, caring just as much.  He stood before me, and back handed my trench coat and my what-you-looking-at scowl right off.  He looked at me, and at once I realized what he thought of me.  


This is for a class.  Theories and Approach to Graphics and Gaming.  Over the next fifteen weeks I will write analytically and critically about graphic novels, and then as the semester progresses, about the gaming experience.  So why have I not done so here?

 I am a fanatic.  To say otherwise would be laughable.  However, this does not mean that I can not speak critically and analytically about this form of art.  To do so I feel I needed to exorcise my primal thoughts onto this page.  Now that I have done so, I can move forward with a (relatively) scholarly out look.


Before you judge my fanaticism to harshly, one more thought.  I'm not the only one.  You go into any comic book store across the nation, you'll find stories just like the one I've just told you.  Hell, go into any establishment anywhere, and you will find stories just like this.  People love comics.  This group of spandex clad, dysfunctional super humans is ,whether wanted or not, a part of our culture. They aren't the prettiest, the most refined, and their vocabulary may leave something to be desired, but they are a part of it just the same.

  Until next time. Excelsior.