My Lifelong Love Affair with Nerdiness (long)

Chris, over in his blog, recently gave me a bit of props in this post of his which discusses some of the xomics he considers great. And asked his readers to come here and pester me for reading suggestions (hey, go for it, folks). It's been a long week, and between the ear infection and school, kinda tiresome, so I thank Chris for giving me the kernal of an idea on posting here.

So here is my long-ish diatribe on comic books (sans any pumping of specific books) and other nerdiness. No matter how cool or grown-up I ever became, or didn't, I've always embraced my nerdiness as well.

As with most things, I don't really remember much prior to when I was hit by a car at age five. I do remember I had comic books back then--something Superfriends-y as I remember the Wonder Twins as more than just tv. But that's all. My first real memory of comics was at my grandmother's house. I was laid up in a body cast due to the aforementioned kid-car collision and she read a comic to me called Legion of Super-Heroes (this is/was a DC Comics title about a group of teenaged super heroes in the 30th century fighting intergalactic crime alongside a time travelling Superboy and Supergirl ('til the 1980's anyway)). I remember my grandmother having some debate over how to pronounce "Legionnaires," but I've come to realize this was her helping me learn to read and understand new words, not her being unable to pronounce "Legionnaire." My favorite super hero was a dude named "Karate Kid" (everyone was a "boy," "girl," "lad," "lass" or "kid" back then, and hokey as these codenames were, they are *it* for me--"Sun Boy" seems fairly straightforward in what he can do; how many non-comic readers can tell me what Speedy and Nightwing's powers are without looking them up?

Karate Kid was a Legionnaire who had no super-powers. He was just a bad-ass kung fu master with a knack for finding the weak points in anything. Maybe it was a reaction to my being laid up, but here was a guy who, powerless, would hold his own alongside his buddies and save the universe issue after issue. This level of humanity made him accessible to me (quick aside--Drew, did you see the latest issue of the latest reboot where we see Collossal Boy's family home? They're still Jewish!).

Other favorites of that time were Supergirl (through my exposure to her in the Legion book; apparently her own book was very hokey, but I've never read one) and the Flash (always attracted to the superspeed characters, hence Rael's middle name).

One of the nicest things my mom did for me was to let me keep buying comics books, and while I didn't have complete runs as a kid, I followed Flash and the Legion of Super-Heroes pretty regularly. Then, in the early '80s, a seven month span of comics almost revulsed me enough to send me packing for good (instead they just sent me packing away from DC for a decade). In a seven month stretch, comics had their first "cross-over" event in a limited series called Crisis on Infinite Earths. During this cross-over, the Flash was killed and Supergirl was not only killed, but erased from existence. During this time, Karate Kid was killed off as well. I was a pretty stunned eight year-old; it felt like DC was telling me they didn't like me by killing off all my favorite characters. Not long after, I discovered Kitty.

An issue of Uncanny X-Men caught my eye (issue #176 for those who want to keep track of these things). It had a facial close-up of two normal looking people--a red-headed chippee and a brunette dude in rose-tinted glasses. The issue had no costumes and told an adventure of soem dude named Scott Summers who was on his honeymoon with his wife Maddie (my current loathing of Cyclops will come another time). Their plane goes down and he has to save them from a giant octopus. I was hooked and scratched up the change for a few back issues, including a book where some funky sewer dweller with bad complexion kidnaps a teenaged girl named Kitty Pryde and tries to make her his bride (apparently Joss Whedon shares mine and Drew's Kitty fixation as he notes it himself when asked and she is part his inspiration for all of his girl-power characters like Buffy, River and Kayleigh). "Professor Xavier is a Jerk!" and the "Brood Saga" cemented Kitty in as my replacement comic fixation. At 13, she was older than me, but again my means for relating, as I got her angst. Kitty, and her best friend Illyanna, were my fictional guides through childhood. Their stories were my escape. In my early teens, Illyanna got killed off, and good writers quit writing X-Men stories with Kitty in them and I slowly drifted back into DC land (and aside from keeping up with X-Men, that's where I stayed, mostly).

As I grew older, DC introduced a "mature readers" line of comics. Primarily not super-hero, and fairly heavy on the supernatural with an abundance of British writers who liked to write grown-up (note: not pornographic comics; I've never owned one of those. These are all pg13 to R rated fare) stories, they had a growing appeal. As an adult, books like Hellblazer (which the film Constantine is based on), Sandman, House of Secrets and Books of Magic were my thing. Somehow, I couldn't make myself not by super-hero comics, but I bought fewer and liked even fewer.

While there's a kid in me who will always hold certain superheroes and their stories dear, for the most part, I find super hero books nowadays to be more drek than anything. I cherish the memory of my childhood and early adolescent comics. Comics are so much more than super-heroes and you should give one a try.

I'd be happy to help make a suggestion for you.