SHADES OF GREY

One of the comic book characters I most identify with is Peter Parker. Now, I know that I'm not alone in this amazing revelation, since Spider-Man has been one of the most beloved characters in all of fiction due mostly to this fact. Almost everyone can identify with Peter... that's why we cared about him.
It went a little deeper for me. I've had a Parker-esque level of bad luck in my life and the fictional life of Peter and my reality have coincided at a few turns. That should become pretty obvious in posts to come.
I never had a father figure in my life. My parents got divorced when I was 8 yrs old and I never had a coach or teacher or anyone to fill the void of my father. Now, don't get me wrong. My father didn't abandon me and my family. He stayed around until he died when I was 20. It's just that he was a TERRIBLE father. A worse husband. My father was the kind of guy you loved to hang out with, always quick with a story or joke and he was generous of spirit and with his wallet. He always paid for things and bought lunches for his workers. In my opinion, he did this as a way of validating himself. And, again, don't get me wrong... he wasn't an evil man. He was just fucked up. He had a bad childhood and was forced to work at a young age, thereby missing the fun of his teenage yrs and blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't think that forgives him being a jerk most of my life. He thought if he bought me stuff that I would be okay with it. He was always trying to buy something for me or my brother or my sister so we would think he loved us. I never accepted any of his gifts when I was in my early teens. Later on, I took the big stuff because I needed a car and my mother couldn't afford to get me one.
My dad was a text book example of a narcissistic, immature man who did things because he thought he should, not because he wanted to. He was always trying to prove something to someone... who knows, maybe himself.
I've never been able to remember much about my own childhood. Everything before age 7 is pretty much gone. I don't know if it is from hitting my head numerous times as a teen or if it's because things just aren't worth remembering. I do remember being told that my parents were getting divorced and feeling an overwhelming sense of relief. My parents didn't belong together and, unfortunately, I was the only one of the kids who knew that my father was cheating on my mom. Now, at 8, I didn't really understand what that meant but I knew it made my mother cry alot and that was enough to make me think that for the first time that my dad was a jerk. It's also the overriding reason why I've NEVER cheated on anyone in my life. NEVER.
My father cheated. He cheated alot. He cheated on my mother when she was pregnant with my sister. And, apparently, he was okay with cheating. He even helped my brother cheat with my girlfriend on me when I was 17. He would let him come over to his house so they wouldn't get caught. Isn't that a great dad? Letting one son fuck over the other? My dad was just one betrayal in a long line of betrayals in my life by people who were supposed to love me and look after me. It taught me early that you can't really depend on anyone except yourself in life. Sooner or later, when it comes right down to it and it's a choice between you and them, people will always do what's best for them before they do what's best for you.
So this is my teen years. A dad who tried to buy my love and helped my brother screw me over with the first girlfriend I slept with. It makes me wonder what things might have been like if I had someone like Uncle Ben or Ward Cleaver or, hell, even Danny Tanner from Full House as a father figure. Or any father figure for that matter.

I worked with my father in his shop for a year or so before he died. My father had married the woman he last cheated on my mother with and now, 8 yrs later, he was cheating on her with a white trash secretary from the auto parts store next store. It was something right out of Jerry Springer (even though Springer hadn't been created yet). He got her pregnant and he was under alot of stress. You could tell he was feeling the heat and that it was wearing on him. He also knew that I had lost ALL respect for him due to this last bit of infidelity. We were sitting in the office at the end of one day and I was ignoring him as usual. It was just the two of us. It was at this moment that my father said the only thing that could ever be construed as fatherly advice. He said to me "Creep" (that was my father's little nickname for me) "I know you don't think much of me but when you get older you'll see that the world isn't always black and white. There are alot of shades of grey in life and you just have to try to live in a shade that let's you sleep at night." Not exactly "with great power comes great responsibility" but it stuck with me.

My father DID teach me something. He taught me how to be a great father. He gave me the perfect blueprint on what NOT to do as a father and it's served me well in life.

The sad part is that I don't miss him. How could I? I never really knew him. 20 yrs of my life and I have no idea what made him tick. What I miss is having a father figure in my life. Someone to show me what's important in life, to have that lifesavers moment with. That's one of the things that comics couldn't help me with. There weren't alot of great dads in comics. Odin? banished his son to Midgard to learn humility. Reed Richards? Spent too much time adventuring and leaving his son with a scary witch. Bruce Wayne? Took his ward out to fight crime and wasn't exactly a fountain of emotional stability. Uncle Ben was only around for half an issue. I guess the best one was Pa Kent and I just never really cared about Superman enough to get to know him.

So what's a father figure worth? One helluva lot when you don't have one.

A Belated Eulogy

Captain America is dead.

Captain America is dead. A character who few would argue was the heart, soul and moral compass of the Marvel Universe was dispatched by a sniper's bullet. This is easily one of the most ridiculous and utterly pointless deaths in Marvel's history. I don't want to hear about the culmination of storylines or any other such nonsense. Captain America should not die handcuffed at the hands of a sniper. If any character deserved to go out in a heroic and meaningful manner, it was Cap. This is another example of a company (one that used to put out comics with heart) using a gimmick death to make headlines and sell more books because they can't come up with any other reason for people to buy their comics. This smells as bad as the Death of Superman and was just as big a slap in the face.

Why kill Captain America?

"Killing Captain America was really a more compelling story for our readers," said Dan Buckley, publisher at Marvel Entertainment. "It was more interesting than to see Cap in jail, reflecting. Besides exploring the question of who killed Captain America, we will be focusing on who was Steve Rogers the character, since not much is really known about him.

"We know about Captain America, the hero, the icon, but we don't know much about Steve. We will be exploring what Steve Rogers meant to those close to him and on a macro level, what Captain America's death means to the Marvel Universe. We'll be exploring what Captain America the icon means and whether the legacy should be carried on," Buckley said.

Buckley also said there are no plans to resurrect Captain America — for the time being.

"Steve Rogers is dead," he said. "As [Marvel Entertainment editor in chief] Joe [Quesada] says, 'A death should mean something. A resurrection should mean something.'"

The clueless words of two very clueless men. Not much is known about Steve Rogers?!?!? Has Buckley ever read a Captain America comic? Did he ever read the Gerry Conway run? The DeMatteis run? The Stern/Byrne issues? Anything by Gruenwald? Is he an idiot? All valid questions, if you ask me. To anyone who was a fan of Cap, Steve Rogers is a very known commodity.
Killing off a character is more interesting than telling stories about him in jail?!?! That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. This is the biggest problem with comics today. The editors don't edit and the people in charge don't know dick about comics. Editors today don't tell writers when their stories suck because they want to keep the "names" on the book. Since when is Ed Brubaker a name? Why is he allowed and even encouraged to kill off a character that should be used as Superman is used at DC: as the hero everyone looks to for the right thing to do?
Now I know Brubaker is just writing stories he thinks are good and interesting so it's the editors job to stop him when he doesn't write something good or when he writes something that is contrary to the best interests of both a character and the company. But they don't... ever. All the "talent" today rarely get told NOT to do something. The editors are nothing more than traffic cops, taking scripts and pages from the creators and giving them to the colorists, letterers and production people and then to the printer. They don't do anything which is why it's funny when an editor changing company's makes headlines... so now he kisses ass at Marvel instead of DC? big fucking deal.

In an interview with Reuters, Marvel publisher Dan Buckley basically said it was Captain America's secret identity, not Captain America, who was the goner.

"This is the end of Steve Rogers, the meat-and-potatoes guy from 1941," Buckley told the wire service. "But Captain America is a costume, and there are other people who could take it over."

Captain America is a costume. Captain America is a costume. He said that. Let that sink in. He told Reuters that, not Wizard or Newsarama. He told people who don't usually write stories on comics that the death of a character that has been around since March 1941 was no big deal since the costume is what's important, not the man who wore it all those years. This is the friggin publisher of Marvel Comics!

This is the man who controls the greatest characters ever created in fiction. None of which were created by anyone who currently writes or draws them or edits or "publishes" them. The shortsightedness and total lack of comprehension as to what these characters are capable of and what they should be about is mind numbing. Absolutely mind numbing.

Goodbye, Steve Rogers. With the current state of Marvel, you're much better off.

RAISED BY COMICS

Let me start by saying that I LOVE comic books. I truly believe it to be the greatest art form or genre or whatever the hell else you want to call it. I've read them, studied them, went to school for them, worked on them and spent a good portion of my life creating my own characters and stories. I'm good at them... no, correct that, I'm GREAT at them. You'll just have to trust me on this one.

I read my first comic at age 10. It was a DC Presents featuring the Atom. It was like turning on a light switch in my head. When I got home from school that afternoon, I asked my mom if she'd ever heard of comics. To my never ending delight, she was a old time comic fan. She had read the early Marvel comics including the Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor and Captain America. She told me if I wanted her to she would take me to the newsstand to buy some with my allowance.

The first comic I bought with my own money and read over and over was Amazing Spider-Man 148. I'll never forget it. The cover had Spidey chained and being thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge by the Jackal and Tarantula. It was amazing, no pun intended. I was hooked.

Over the next few years, I bought every comic put out by Marvel and DC and some by the now defunct First Comics. Eventually I narrowed my focus and weened out the comics I didn't really like. To be truthful, I was a Marvel guy. While I liked alot of DC comics (Justice League, Warlord, GL/GA, Batman Family, Teen Titans among others) I just understood and related to Marvel Comics alot more.

In fact, I credit Marvel comics and its writers for raising me to be the man I am today. I am neither ashamed nor embarrassed by that fact. Spider-Man gave me my sense of responsibility and, along with Bugs Bunny, my sense of humor. Cap gave me my love of country and patriotism. Thor, and Supes too, showed my a sense of nobility. I also learned lessons from Luke Cage, Iron Man, Hawkeye, the X-men, Iron Fist and a host of others. Back when I started reading comic books, there actually were lessons to be learned. There were morals to the stories. They taught you things. And not just life lessons, they taught me how a good story was written, how a narrative was developed, how a subplot was introduced and brought to it's fruition. Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Cary Bates, Jim Shooter, David Michelinie, Len Wein, Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, J.M. DeMatteis and others. These were my instructors. I learned alot from them.

These days comics seem more interested in smart ass dialogue and showing who's the biggest "badass". The current writers think they are bigger than the characters. They all want to put their "stamp" on the character which is such total bullshit. These characters have been around for 40/50/60 years but they aren't as important as the guys writing them?!?! Puh-leeze. I read alot of the interview with these so called geniuses and it seems like, although they supposedly grew up loving comics, they can't wait to shit all over the stories and continuity that came before them. In fact, continuity seems like a four letter word these days. The current creators treat the reader like they are too stupid to understand what's happened before that issue.

But, then again, when I started to read comics, things actually happened. There was action. Heroes and villains fought each other. Seems like comics can go months with nothing but a conversation happening... these days the characters TALK more about doing something than actually doing it. And what is the preoccupation with bars. Characters routinely find themselves in bars just talking about stuff. I guess that's where all these new writers spend most of their time, so the old adage "write what you know" comes to the forefront.

I read online that in the 60's/70's comics were written for kids. In the 80's/90's, they were written for teens. Now I'm told they are written for adults. What a brilliant concept! Write comics for adults and don't try to develop younger readers so when you're audience grows old and dies, your entire industry crumbles! What a plan.

Oh yeah, I should probably tell you all: I don't read comics anymore. They are a part of my past. I couldn't continue to read the characters I loved bastardized and twisted into something they were never meant to be.

I didn't out grow comics... apparently, THEY outgrew me.

An Introduction

To begin let's give you the dictionary.com definition of my blogs title:

comic book
n. A book of comics strips or cartoons, often relating a sustained narrative.

prod·i·gy

1. A person with exceptional talents or powers: a math prodigy.
2. An act or event so extraordinary or rare as to inspire wonder.
3. A portentous sign or event; an omen.

These definitions could not be more true. If you stick around and read through this blog you will find out just HOW true.
My story is not complicated and it's not simple... it's just life. My life, my opinions, my dreams, my disappointments and, most of all, my perseverance and inevitable triumph.
Stick around and you'll be entertained.

More to come. Soon.