Wondering

A couple weeks ago FoxyJ checked out The Prestige from the library. A very cool movie, but the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was "Hey! It's Batman versus Wolverine! And look, there's Alfred!"

Then shortly after that Ken Jennings posted about "superhero crossover" movies where actors who have starred in superhero movies show up together. Besides The Prestige, Ken alluded to Wonder Boys as the movie that made one of his blog readers proclaim, “Holy smokes, Spidey and Iron Man are doin’ it!” So of course I went right to the library website and put Wonder Boys on hold.

As it turns out, this movie has more than superhero sex that should have made me like it more than I did. Besides having some great performances by Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., and Katie Holmes (Batman's girlfriend, by the way), this film has the Mr. Fob advantage of being about writers and writing. Once I realized this, I was excited--I'm a writer, so maybe this movie would somehow speak to the depths of my soul and tell me something wonderful and profound about writing. Perhaps it was this high expectation that left me feeling most disappointed in the movie with the aspects that had anything to do with writing. I don't know what it was* specifically, but it felt to me like a movie about actors pretending to be writers, not a movie about writers.

I remember feeling similarly about Finding Forrester, which like this was a great movie but felt somewhat artificial to me as far as representing anything like the world of writers that I know. Is it just that these are particular representations of a larger topic that I have a particular experience with, and because the particulars don't match up it seems fake to me? Or is it that they just don't do a good job of being movies about writers? My friends who (like me) are pretentious enough to call yourselves writers, have you seen movies about writers that rang true to you? Have the rest of you had similar experiences with movies about some other subject in your personal domain?

And is this why I was also disappointed by Unbreakable, which everyone told me I'd love as a comic-book fan, but ultimately felt like the work of an outsider to the genre?**


*After writing this post but before publishing it, I've figured out what I don't like about the portrayal of writing in either of the films mentioned above. In both writing is made out to be this magical process that somehow transcends the experience of mere mortal non-writers, but I don't know any writer for whom this is the case. You come up with an idea, you force it onto paper (or onto the screen), it's crap, and then you work and work until it's less crap than it was at first. There's nothing magical about it.

**Notice how I nicely brought the post back to the theme of superheroes, which is what I'd started with but otherwise had nothing to do with anything? Isn't that wonderfully literary of me?

Spoiler Warning

Today is Wednesday. For those of you who aren't comic book geeks (which may be everyone who reads this blog), Wednesday is new comics day, the day a new shipment arrives at comic book shops everywhere. Today a comic is coming out that is supposed to be relatively important as far as stories in a shared fictional universe go. I'll be heading to Comics Dungeon this afternoon to pick it up. This morning I took a look at my preferred comics news site, as I do several times a day, and saw a story referring to an article in today's New York Daily News that apparently gives away the last-page reveal of this important comic that's coming out today. I resisted the urge to click on the link.

This goes against my nature, and it's hurting.

I knew about the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense two years before I saw it. I enjoyed watching the movie knowing what was coming, catching all the little clues that most people probably didn't notice until the second time they watched it.

I knew about the death at the end of Harry Potter Book 6 before I ever picked up Book 1. Again, it was kind of cool to read the story knowing what was coming. But I resisted seeing any major spoilers about Book 7 before reading it, so I was totally shocked when Harry died at the end. (Just kidding, Cricket. That was for you.)

I must admit, it's not uncommon for me to look at my Amazon.com wishlist before my birthday or Christmas to see what people have bought for me. I wouldn't want them to tell me what they got--part of the fun of ruining the surprise is finding out for myself.

My justification is that I don't actually ruin the surprise; I just experience it earlier. I wonder, though, if by removing the surprise experience from the reading experience or viewing experience or gift-opening experience, I'm missing out on something. This is why, if I can, I'm going to avoid reading that New York Daily News article until after I read my new comics this afternoon. I'll report back on whether saving the surprise makes my comics reading that much more transcendental.

Public Service Announcement: Set Your Clocks Back

No, it's not time for daylight savings. In fact, you don't even need to set your clock back an entire hour--just a minute or so. Why, you ask? Dr. Fob will explain:

Did you know that in Australia toilets flush the wrong way? It's for some complicated reason whose details don't really matter. The only thing you need to know is this: Toilets flush counter-clockwise in the norther hemisphere because of the way the Earth rotates. (And, you know, because that's the way God intended it.)

Did you know that if you spin your toilet-cleaning brush clockwise while the toilet flushes, you can make the water flush the wrong way? It's so simple, I can't believe that no one but me has ever ever thought of it in the history of the world. But trust me, no one has.

Did you know that in Superman: The Movie, Superman flies around the Earth so fast that he makes it spin the wrong way, causing time itself to go backwards? He did this to undo Lois Lane's untimely death in one of the most scientifically sound and narratively satisfying action movie climaxes of all time.

So if you felt something strange this afternoon, this is why: I was cleaning my toilet and I made it flush clockwise. Considering that I am in the northern hemisphere, if you've been paying attention then you understand what this means--I made the Earth spin backwards. And of course by now you've followed the trail of infallible logic to conclude that, for the minute or so that my toilet flushed the wrong way, I made time go backwards.

And that is why you need to set your clocks and watches back a minute.

See, kids, science is fun when you understand it as well as I do!

Darn Personality Quizzes Revealing My Secret Identity...

Your results:
You are Superman

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Superman 85% Spider-Man 75% Hulk 65% Supergirl 65% Robin 55% Green Lantern 55% Batman 55% The Flash 50% Wonder Woman 45% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 10%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Batgirl the Activist

From a 1974 (?) U.S. Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division public service message:

Weekly Confession: Indoctrination

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. I am indoctrinating my children in the ways of my religion.

It all started, I suppose, when S-Boogie was a baby and I got in the habit of putting on Justice League DVDs while trying to get her to go back to sleep in the middle of the night. That planted the seed. Then when she was two, I dressed her for Halloween as Supergirl. This past year I've brainwashed her with the full canon of our scriptures, starting with the complete series of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited DVDs, then on to Teen Titans and Batman and most recently Superfriends. I have put the icing on the cake of indoctrination, as it were, by buying her her very own idol as a Christmas present:I justify this blatant projection of my own values onto my daughter by reminding myself that just last week, while watching Superfriends, she said of her own free will, "Superman's my favorite." (I later asked, to clarify, whether she liked Superman or Supergirl better; she replied that she liked them both the same. I debated with myself as to whether Supergirl would provide a strong female role model or simply yet another example of a teenaged girl dressing like a skank in order to impress men. Ultimately the comic book shop decided for me by having only Superman figures.)

Obviously her statement of preference is more proof that the brainwashing has already happened than justification for further acts of brainwashing. (Though, truth be told, I like Batman better myself.)

I'll be honest; I have no intention of stopping this rampant brainwashing of the innocents. I will likely continue to watch superhero cartoons with them, buy them superhero toys now and then, and encourage them to read superhero comics when they're older. I will, however, encourage them to explore other faiths as well. And most importantly, as they grow up I will support them in whatever choices they make, even if they decide they like Marvel Comics superheroes better than DC Comics superheroes or (Krypton forbid!) that they don't like superheroes at all.

So I guess I'm not all that sorry for this sin, Blogger. But at least I admit it is one.

The Child from Bizarro World!

As many of you know, my daughter, S-Boogie, was Supergirl for Halloween this year:


I'm beginning to wonder if a more appropriate costume wouldn't have been Bizarro Supergirl:


Besides her naturally pale skin and her backwards logic, there is her handwriting to consider. Take a good look at this picture of Bizarro Superman, then look at the handwriting sample below. Notice, particularly, the "S" in her name.



Keep in mind, folks, this image has not been flipped. That's how she writes her "S"es. There is no possible explanation for this peculiar phenomenon except that she's a spy from Bizarro World. Or she secretly wants to be Z-Boogie. I'm banking on the former, though, as at least that way I'll always be a winner in her eyes.

Green Lantern's Wisdom

"My power ring can't stop those yellow comets, so I'll have to move the Earth out of their way!"

--from the Challenge of the Superfriends episode "Invasion of the Fearians"

Costumes, Candy, and Poop

S-Boogie wore her costume all day. Me too. I was the only one in my metadata class this morning wearing a costume, but that just shows how much cooler I am than everyone else (last year a classmate dressed up as the FRBR model, which I thought was one of the coolest costumes ever). After class I headed over to S-Boogie's preschool to help with pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating. It was a lot of fun to see all the kids' costumes and to see how excited they were to get candy. The school gave parents the option to have our kid's treat bag swapped for a healthy treat bag after the trick-or-treating, and FoxyJ and I decided to take that option since S-Boogie already had a bunch of candy from trunk-or-treating on Saturday and we knew she'd get more tonight. She was suprisingly cool with this, very excited when she got home to eat her bag of "special treats"--fruit leather, apple sauce, carrots, and juice.

After school and snacks, S-Boogie and I went to the comic shop to pick up my comics for this week. I figured that if anyone would appreciate our homemade Supergirl and Bruce Wayne costumes, it would be comic shop people, but no one said anything. I figure it's because they were amazed to the point of speechlessness.

This morning I had wondered if it was a good idea to dress Little Dude in the red turtleneck onesie he needed for his Robin costume this afternoon, but I figured it would be fine. When I got home from the comic shop and opened his bedroom door to find him sitting pantsless in his crib, licking poop off his fingers, I realized that I should have listened to that still small voice of Halloweeny wisdom. FoxyJ gathered up the dirty clothes and bedding and threw it in the washer while I cleaned off the child, then on her way out the door suggested I use LD's red coat for his costume, since it was cold outside and the turtleneck onesie was no longer an option. A poopy disaster turned into a blessing, as the red coat ended up looking even better than the onesie (under the coat he's wearing a red short-sleeve onesie with some car design printed on the front; if I'd had a green onesie under the coat it would have been perfect):


So S-Boogie, LD, and I went trick-or-treating at the shopping center that doubles as our backyard while FoxyJ headed off to teach her class. My only complaint with that experience, besides the crowd, is that everyone was giving out lollipops and Smarties. Where's the chocolate, folks?

The best part of the day, I have to say, came at the end: after sloppy joes and tater tots for dinner, then a quick bath (eliminating the final remnants of poopiness), we turned off the lights, put The Batman vs. Dracula in the DVD player, and ate as much candy as our stomachs could handle. I'm all for encouraging kids to eat healthily, but c'mon, it's Halloween! That's the point! And in my defense as a responsible parent, LD went to bed halfway through the movie and after only one package of Smarties and one lollipop. One-and-a-half-year-olds don't get to decide how much candy their stomachs can handle.

S-Boogie went to bed just a little late, a few minutes after FoxyJ got home from work, and then I lay down in bed and read my comics. The perfect end to a perfect holiday.

Mr. Fob, Costume Designer

As you can imagine, it makes me quite the proud father to hear my four-year-old daughter tell me she wants to be Supergirl for Halloween. We actually made the cape and shield for Halloween two years ago, when the costume was more my idea than hers, but this time we managed to get a more traditional Supergirl look with a blue shirt from the Gap and a red holiday skirt from Children's Place. We probably could have tracked down red boots instead of getting another pair of sparkly red Target shoes, as rain boots are much easier to find in Seattle than in Orem, but she already has a pair of rain boots so we decided the sparkly shoes were not only cheaper but more practical.


Little Dude's Robin costume, which I admit was more my idea than his, is not quite so true to the source material, but Robin's costume has varied so much over the years that I felt justified in going with a more liberal interpretation that takes elements from all of them. We tried to find green tights, but ended up settling for black, which made everyone think he was one of the Incredibles. Oh well. I think he makes a pretty good Robin.

My costume is a variation of the costume I've used almost every year for the last five or six years--in the past I've been Clark Kent, so this year I decided to be Bruce Wayne. It gave me an excuse to buy a really cool Bat-symbol t-shirt, and like the Clark Kent costume it has the advantage of being a little subtler than a full-on superhero costume. A touch I added this year--a clever touch, if I do say so myself--is the cape hanging out the back of Bruce Wayne's shirt. No one ever gets it, to be honest; they tend to think I'm just too embarrassed to take off my normal clothes and show off my costume, or they don't notice it at all. That's okay, though. I like it.

Common Justice

The Hollywood Reporter reports that casting has begun for the new Justice League of America movie. Director George Miller is looking for young actors who can grow into the (super)heroic roles over the course of several movies, so the list of auditioners includes actors from shows like The O.C., Sky High, and Running With Scissors. Oh, and also Common, the rapper. You'd think that the prospect of combining one of my favorite rappers with one of my favorite superhero teams would excite me, but mostly I'm just wondering what role he's auditioning for.

(NOTE: Not an actual photo.)

Drug of the Nation

One of the many ridiculous things that FoxyJ and I have been known to be proud of is the fact that we don't have cable and therefore we and our children are not corrupted by the evils of television. "S-Boogie doesn't even know who that is," we say smugly when other parents talk about annoying children's television characters.

Well, no more.

Last Monday night I finished watching Smallville Season Six (Tom Welling=nice to look at but not a great actor=the perfect Clark Kent), which I had checked out from the library, and then realized that Season Seven was premiering on Thursday night. So Tuesday morning I somewhat impulsively went online and made arrangements to have the Comcast guy stop by on Thursday afternoon.

It's only twelve bucks a month (plus horrendous taxes and fees) for the most basic thirty channels. I decided it was worth twelve bucks a month to be able to watch Smallville, Legion of Superheroes, and The Batman (can you spot a trend?), plus the occasional new episode of The Simpsons (which I would care more about watching regularly if the new ones were nearly as good as the old ones). The irony in all this is that it ends up the former three shows are all on one of the two channels we get clearly without cable. Oh well. Now we have other options.

Like this afternoon, S-Boogie watched two hours of PBS instead of two hours of Dora the Explorer on DVD. Which isn't that bad, I guess. PBS has good kids' shows. On Saturday I let her watch Legion of Superheroes and The Batman with me. Both are a little more violent than I'd ideally like my four-year-old watching, but they're no worse than the Justice League and Teen Titans DVDs I often let her watch with me. It's a compromise I make to be able to watch the shows I like while she's awake, and to spend some time doing something with her that we both enjoy (because, I'll be honest, I was sick of Dora the Explorer months ago). What I realized on Saturday, though, is that the worst part about letting kids watch TV is not the programs themselves; it's the commercials. If I keep letting her watch those, she's going to start asking me to buy her things and getting opinions on what brand of cereal she has to have RIGHT NOW!!! I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

But then I guess it's the price I pay to have my direct link to the united states of unconsciousness. And really, what kind of parent would I be if I deprived my daughter of her weekly dose of animated superheroes?

Flashing Into the Present

For eight years during the nineties--the years when I was most immersed in the world of superheroes--the monthly adventures of the Flash were written by Mark Waid. Waid had taken over the title in 1992, six years after the previous Flash had died and then been replaced by his teenage protege, Wally West. Since donning the Flash identity, Wally West had been portrayed mostly as a womanizing, junk food-eating, cocky twenty-year-old kid. Six years later fans still clamored for the return of his predecessor, who was generally considered the One True Flash. In Waid's eight years on the character, Wally grew up, settled into a responsible adult relationship, and accepted his role as the Flash. Not coincidentally, fans also began to accept him in the role.

One of Waid's running motifs during his run on The Flash was the opening line of each issue, which was always some variation of "My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash, the fastest man alive." Each issue was then narrated by Wally, with caption boxes revealing his thoughts as he battled supervillains and rescued innocents at superspeed. The concept was that Wally's thoughts moved at such speeds that he could have a two-page interior monologue in the two milliseconds it took him to run across town. I don't know how that concept works scientifically, but as a character and story concept, it worked quite well. So well, in fact, that this narrative device became associated with the character and Waid's successors continued to use it until Wally disappeared in 2006 and was replaced by his teenage protege, Bart Allen.

Now, a year later, Bart has been killed and Wally is back. Wally's return to the role of the Flash corresponds with Mark Waid's return, after seven years away, to the writing credits of The Flash. As Waid's Flash was consistently one of my favorite comics when I was growing up, I was happy to hear of his return. The news was, in fact, one of the motivations behind my recent return to weekly trips to the comic book shop. Alongside the excitement of seeing one of my favorite writers writing one of his favorite characters again, though, was a bit of fear, an acknowledgment that as fun as nostalgia is, you can't go back in time. If Waid is going to attempt to recreate his glory days and bring us back to the Flash of the nineties, I'm afraid it would feel too much like running backwards.

So I picked up All-Flash #1 last month with this mix of excitement and fear. The issue started out with the familiar "My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash, the fastest man alive," and I was brought back immediately to the nineties. Wally sped through the issue, tracking down the villain responsible for his successor's death, narrating the journey along the way, and I was a fifteen-year-old again, lost in a fantasy world of superpowers, tights, and creative rewriting of the laws of physics. Then towards the end of the story, Wally is talking to his aunt, his thoughts running parallel to their conversation, and she says, "Stop it. Stop with the interior monologue, Wally. I know you're thinking of a million other things while you're talking to me. If you're going to be the husband and father your wife and children need, you're going to have to learn to be present with the people you're talking to."* And with that, the interior monologue stops.

I love that Waid did this. Assuming he follows through in future issues, this is a bold move: removing one of the most recognizable characteristics of his previous stint as writer of The Flash, arguably one of the things that made the series great. It needs to happen, though, if he's going to move forward and not simply relive the nineties. I also think it's a great moment in terms of character development. As his aunt points out, Wally is now a husband and father. Such relationships require, above all, presence and mindfulness.

Now, if only Mark Waid would write the interior monologues out of my life, I'd be set.



*Dialogue liberally paraphrased because I don't have the comic with me at the moment.

Where Do You Buy Your Running Boots?

You've heard of the Flash, right? His superpower is that he runs really fast. Wouldn't it make more sense, then, for him to wear, oh, I don't know, running shoes? I mean, have you ever seen an Olympic athlete running in boots?

At least the current Flash's boots (and the rest of his costume, for that matter) look more aerodynamic than the original Flash's:


But then, everyone knows that putting wings on your boots makes you run faster.

The Antepenultimate Chapter of Superfolks

A note on authorship: The bulk of this post is not written by me; it was written by Robert Mayer in 1977.

A note on aboutness: It is about me.

A note on copyright: I suspect that reprinting an entire chapter of a novel on my blog does not fall under fair use. I hope Mr. Mayer will forgive me.

A note on objectionable content: The following passage contains at least one crude metaphor and at least two offensive names of planets.

A note on spoilers: If you plan on reading Superfolks and don't want to ruin the mystery of the plot, you may want to stop reading now. By which I mean...

now.

A note on fictional context: Superfolks, as I've mentioned before, is about David Brinkley, who was once the world's greatest superhero, but has now been retired for the past eight years and living a suburban life with his currently-pregnant wife and their two children. Though his powers have been waning for years, Brinkley goes back into action to combat riots and crime sprees that prove to be part of a larger conspiracy. This conspiracy, as it turns out, stretches back over a decade and its target is Brinkley himself: Brinkley discovers that the reason his powers have faded is that his enemies have managed to lace the infrastructure of modern civilization--the water in our faucets, the air in our air conditioners, the metal that holds up our buildings--with Cronkite, the one substance that can kill him. Even without his powers, though, he manages to make it out to space, where, free of the deadly Cronkite, he feels his superhuman strength return.

A note on personal context: I read this chapter about a month ago, after I'd learned that the Cronkite that had been slowly killing me for years was inseparable from the planet I'd been living on, and I'd managed to escape that planet's gravitational pull. Now I pondered excitedly the universe of opportunity that lay before me. Like Brinkley, though, I now hovered in space above Earth, an umbilical cord holding me in place, awaiting a sign while aware that none would come, knowing I couldn't hover in place much longer.

The smile was gone. Brinkley was alone in space. More alone than he had ever been.

He looked down at Earth, glowing like a blue-green marble far below him. The familiar emerald and turquoise swirls were as inviting as a freshly made bed. He wanted nothing more than to return there; his home. To sleep a good, long sleep; without dreams.

Tears began to well behind his eyes. It was not fitting for a superman to cry. But there it was. The planet Earth below a blue-green dollop of poison, infested with Cronkite; for which there was no antidote. If he returned there, it was unlikely he could ever again escape its atmosphere. He would be weak, barely able to fly. And would grow weaker day by day, month by month; until in a year, or five, or ten--there was no way to say exactly--he would die.

He pulled off his mask, to wipe away tears that had filtered beneath it. And put it on again. Pamela was there on Earth; and Allison; and Jennifer. Perhaps even a new baby now. Would he ever see it? And how could he explain?

Earth was his home, the only home he had known. Chosen for him by his parents, Archie and Edith, in the last days of Cronk. Chosen not even by them, but by higher powers; by the Lord Gods Nietzsche and Namath, who guided their hand. He had come to feel almost more Earthling than Cronker; albeit a bit special.

And now?

The choices were spread before him, invitingly, like the spread legs of beauties; out there, in the distant galaxies. The six other planets that harbored human life. He could take up residence on any of them, and resume his role as a superhero, unhindered by Cronkite, cheered and honored by the populace. He could start a new life, a new family. He could live through eternity, never aging, doing his good works.

He could go to the planet Nudj, land of the long-stemmed rain. Or Bazoom, where strange myths grew on trees. Or Wop, or Kike, or Nigger, or Elvis.

Or he didn't have to commit himself to any one. He could travel among them, stopping now here, now there--an itinerant hero, beloved throughout the universe. A girl in every port. It wouldn't be a bad life. Battling monsters, subduing criminals--the life he had been created for. Maybe he would take up the guitar.

There was no other choice. That's what he must do.

And yet, down on Earth, there was Pamela. Allison. Jennifer.

They were his. They needed him.

It's not so, he told himself. Suppose he had died during this long night of combat? Life would go on for them. Pamela would marry again. The children would grow, would become independent. It might even be better for them.

. . . While far out in the universe, their father would become a legend, his name synonymous with all that is good and brave and true . . .

There was no other choice. Here from the perspective of the cosmos he could face without flinching the accumulated sadness of his recent life on Earth. The times each day when there would be a weight in his chest that would move up back of his eyes, until he wanted to lie down in private and cry himself to sleep, for no reason at all. That was the hell of it. For no reason at all. He would look around and see a refrigerator bulging with food, a wife he loved who loved him in return, two little girls growing up bright and true, a job he could keep for the rest of his life if he wanted, that would take care of all the bills--he would see all this and still he would want to cry; would awaken in the middle of the night sometimes and stare at the ceiling in the dark, at the ghostly circle of light cast by a street lamp, and he would recall the world-saving exploits of his youth as if they had been performed by a stranger. He knew he could not come close to performing them now, and would question whether he ever really had. Either way his wish would be the same. He would wish he could fall asleep again and never awaken.

Each time, of course, he would not fall asleep till the gray of dawn burned out the lamplit circle. Then he would be awakened by Pamela and the children stirring. Light would be knifing in beneath the shade, or a new winter snow would be falling, and his despair of the dark night would burrow deep beyond reach into his soul, whitewashed over by the mechanics of the day--till without warning in midafternoon at work it would peep out again like a gopher, and he would walk to the water fountain or down the hall until it passed.

Each time he would review the litany of his blessings. And each time the same answer screamed inside him: It was not enough.

But he didn't know what would be enough. What would satisfy him. What would fill the emptiness.

He had no complaints. Except . . . everything.

Sometimes he thought they should move from Middleville. He should quit his job, and they should go to Savannah, or Missoula, or Santa Fe. Someplace with a pretty name and a pretty view, where the beauty of nature would swallow up human grief, and paint it o'er with unity, oneness, peace.

Other times he knew it would do no good. He was a Cronker amid Earthlings, and always would be. No one would ever know him. He would never know another person. He was an alien, alone in the universe. It was his fate. Cursing it made his fate neither better nor worse.

Now that he knew the cause of his physical weakness--the spread of Cronkite through the arteries of civilization--he knew that moving to another town, another country, would make little real difference. Cronkite was everywhere. The days when he could ever again have a sense of mission . . . down there . . . were gone.

And yet he was not streaking away from Earth, away into the stratosphere, into a new superlife. He was hovering in place; looking down at the emerald-turquoise swirls; wistfully.

He felt like a balloon, flying high, but still held down by a string; an umbilical cord; a cord he would have to cut.

The cord of love.

Above waited a physical--even a spiritual--rebirth. A challenging new career. A full new life.

Below was his family. Three human beings. Perhaps, at this moment, four.

He remembered a small incident from a picnic the previous summer. They had gone to Mystic Seaport to see the old sailing ships, and afterward he had tumbled in the grass with the girls while Pamela grilled hamburgers. An orange-breasted robin hopped near them, and then lit for a distant treetop. Jennifer, her small arms draped loosely around his neck, had said, "Daddy, wouldn't it be nice to fly like a bird?" He had replied that he imagined it would be very nice indeed. But that if people could fly, then birds would no longer be special.

He hadn't thought the answer would satisfy her; but it had.

Now, alone in space, hovering, he found himself waiting for a similar answer himself. Some sign. Some revelation. Knowing there would be none.

Finally, unable to hover in place any longer, he shed his paralysis with a wrenching motion. He kicked his legs, like a swimmer; and filled his lungs with the pure heady ozone of free will.

He thought Good Thoughts; a ritual; as if crossing himself.

And soared off into space.

Toward the North Star he streaked; and circled it, and continued on beyond. Through the Milky Way; out toward the scattered stars of the distant galaxies, twinkling pure silver in the blue of eternity.

He passed the golden door, through which he had blundered earlier. And continued soaring outward; till he neared the invisible wall.

He paused there, looking down, the entire universe spread before him, gems in a blue-gold setting, exquisite, perfect; creation of the Original Jeweler, the Master Craftsman who had preceded all the others; whom subsequent gods had not been able to match.

He filled himself with the beauty of it all, like a parched wanderer prone beside a stream. The symmetry, the precision. His blood felt purified, his limbs invigorated. The exhaustion of the night's battles had vanished. He felt as powerful as he had ever been.

He switched on his supersight. He scanned the distant universe, until his eyes picked out the tiny blue-green marble, adrift like all the others, yellow, or brown, or red; planets of every color.

Even now he smiled at the sight of it.

Slowly, he flew to the left. To the place in space where Cronk had once been. It was a vacuum now. A black hole. He hovered there, solemn. As if he were visiting a grave. For one last time.

Then he flew on, without tears.

Down and down he flew; his eyes not roaming now; looking neither left nor right; determined not to see the myriad suns, the stars, rushing by. His eyes fixed, unwavering, on his destination. On the blue-green marble growing ever larger below him.

Living Between Wednesdays

Yesterday I was checking in on the comics news site I read regularly and came across a guest column about superhero friendships. Not only is the column well-written and laugh-out-loud funny in spots, but it captures perfectly the reason I love superhero comics: I couldn't care less about how Superman uses his powers to defeat Lex Luthor; I read to see Clark Kent go out for drinks with Bruce Wayne after the fight and talk about Wonder Woman. As the author says:

I like television more than movies because I like to get invested in characters. I like comics infinitely more than television for the same reason. With television you might get a few years of character development. With comics you get decades. Batman and Superman have been friends for decades. They have been through it all together, and that, my friends, is the basis of a good drama.

I checked out the link to the author's blog, where I discovered not only hours and hours of her entertaining musings on all things comics-related, but links to a whole blogosphere of comic book geeks. So now I have a new way to waste time (whose effectiveness in that regard I tested for two hours last night) and on top of that a newfound sense of nostalgia.

See, the title of this post and the blog linked above, "Living Between Wednesdays," refers to the fact that new comics arrive in comic book shops on Wednesdays. For a good ten years of my life I really did live between Wednesdays, looking forward each week to the trip to the comic shop to pick up the latest installments in the lives of these brightly-clad people I'd come to know and love. A couple years ago, "Wednesdays" became the day every other month or so when the weekly comics I now ordered through an online store reached a collective cost high enough to earn free shipping, but still it was fun to get that box in the mail and read through the thirty or forty new comics. Then last year budget restraints required me to drop all but a handful of monthly titles, so now it takes several months to reach that free shipping mark and I feel like I'm missing out on the ongoing lives of the characters whose comics I no longer follow.

I miss living between Wednesdays. Oh, to be teenaged comic book geek again...

Impulse

In the mid-90s one of my favorite comics was Impulse by Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos. The series starred a teenaged superhero with superspeed who was known for being impulsive--perhaps not the best character trait for someone who can act in an instant on a whim to buy Chinese food... in China. This is, of course, what drove the humor of the book.

I am generally not a very impulsive person, at least not in my day-to-day life. If it's not in my plan for the day, it's generally too much trouble. Maybe I'll fit that spontaneous trip to the park in next week.

When it comes to major life decisions, though--schooling, career, marriage, children--I can be pretty impulsive. I can honestly say that I don't regret any major life decisions I've made, but I often think back on how quickly I've gone from one plan to another, like when I switched from the English PhD track to the MLIS track. Granted, I had a bit of external motivation for that change in the form of two rejections, but still I made the mental hop from one camp to the other rather quickly, considering that we're talking about what I'll be doing for the rest of my life here. Similarly, both times Foxy and I decided to get pregnant, the decision came in the form of an epiphany of sorts after a period of not wanting to have a(nother) child. Both times we... ahem... acted on the epiphany pretty immediately (though if I recall correctly, with Little Dude it took us a month or two before we succeeded).

Again, I don't regret these impulsive decisions. I don't regret pursuing an MLIS instead of a PhD, and I certainly don't regret either of our children. Nor, for that matter, do I regret the decisions to marry or to separate, though both were made at least a little impulsively. Therapist says that he always knows what the right decision is--the thing is he usually doesn't know until after the fact. The right decision, you see, is always the one you've made. That doesn't mean that the next time you're faced with similar options the right decision will be the same one; it means only that the decisions you've already made are the only ones that could have led to the present reality of your life, and it's fruitless to say that reality is "wrong."

With that in mind--the fact that there's no point in questioning past decisions except in so far as what you learn from the questioning might inform future decisions--yesterday Therapist and I talked a bit about my propensity to make major decisions on impulse. What it comes down to, we concluded, is that I tend to get excited about new ideas and want to test them out NOW. While some people live in the past, I live in the future, always anxious to make whatever new future I've envisioned happen ASAP. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but it's a good idea for me to be aware of it and temper my actions accordingly, particularly when other people are involved.

As it turns out, Impulse eventually learned to temper his impulsiveness, at which point he changed his name to Kid Flash. Then last year he grew up and started calling himself Flash. And then last week he died.

Take from that whatever moral you want.

Oh, and by the way

The antepenultimate chapter of Superfolks holds the key to the universe.

Super Reviews

Perhaps because superheroes are sort of my comfort food, I've been ingesting a lot of superhero-themed media lately. Here are some of the recent highlights:

Superfolks, a novel by Robert Mayer, was published in 1977 and I can't believe I'd never heard of it until last month. A good ten years before deconstruction became the vogue in superhero comics, this book deconstructed the superhero concept in a way that showed not only the author's ability to recast a children's genre through adult eyes, but at the same time to retain that childish sense of awe at seeing a man in colorful tights save the universe. Though its importance is often overlooked, without Superfolks there would be no Watchmen, no Dark Knight Returns, no Incredibles. The book is at once hilarious, poignant, vulgar, and inspiring. An excerpt from the first chapter to give you a taste:

There were no more heroes.
Kennedy was dead, shot by an assassin in Dallas.
Batman and Robin were dead, killed when the Batmobile slammed into a bus carrying black children to school in the suburbs.
Superman was missing, and presumed dead, after a Kryptonite meteor fell on Metropolis.
The Marvel family was dead; struck down by lightning.
The Lone Ranger was dead; found with an arrow in his back after Tonto returned from a Red Power conference at Wounded Knee.
Mary Mantra was dead; cut to pieces by an Amtrak locomotive when Dr. Spock tied her to the tracks and she couldn't remove her gag.
Captain Mantra was in a sanitarium near Edgeville; said to be a helpless wretch ever since seeing his twin sister cut to shreds.
Only Wonder Woman was still in the public eye. And she had forsworn forever the use of her superpowers. Using her real name, Diana Prince, she was a leading spokesperson for women's liberation, an associate editor of Ms. magazine, a frequent guest on late-night talk shows. Her message was that the strength of Wonder Woman resides in all women and they must learn to use it. Battling to liberate womankind, she said, was more important than catching petty crooks. She sounded at times like a sinner repentant.
Even Snoopy had bought it; shot down by the Red Baron; missing in action over France.

Enter David Brinkley, once the most powerful hero of all, sole survivor of the planet Cronk, sent to Earth on a rocketship by his parents Archie and Edith, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and all that, now settled into a suburban life in Middleville with his wife and children. When riots break out in New York City, Brinkley pulls his tights out of storage and sets out to find the source of the problem, despite his failing and unreliable superpowers. (The one thing that does remain reliable about his superpowers, incidentally, is the cosmic punishment he receives--clumsily bumping into a wall or flying into a tree--whenever he uses his X-ray vision for less than altruistic purposes.)

It's a Bird! is a graphic novel by Steven Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen. It tells the story of Steve, a thirty-something comic book writer asked to write the one character he simply can't relate to--Superman. In the process of trying to understand what makes the Man of Steel tick, or even what makes him an interesting character, Steve revisits his grandmother's painful death at the hands of Huntington's disease. The result is a thought-provoking examination of the world's most recognizable superhero and a touching tale of hope.

Gotham Central is an award-winning series of comics by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, and Michael Lark. I checked out the first two collected volumes from the library, wherein the officers of Gotham City's police force attempt to catch a supervillain without Batman's help, solve the mystery of a teenage girl's disappearance and death, and discover who is framing one of their own for murder. Picture NYPD Blue or Law & Order (though more the Order part) set in a world where in addition to the real-life police drama--the second volume centers around one of the main characters coming out to her fellow officers as a lesbian--there's the added tension of police officers getting shown up by costumed vigilantes or killed by a homicidal clown.

A few years back--on November 17th, 2001, actually, which I remember because it was the weekend before our wedding--the creators of Batman: The Animated Series unveiled their latest addition to the world of superhero animation: Justice League. I remember feeling like the ultimate geeked-out fanboy as I watched Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and the Martian Manhunter come together on screen. I'd always been a big fan of the Justice League, as it brought together many of my favorite characters in one group, so to see them moving and talking, and done in the beautiful art deco-ish style of Batman, was a dream come true. Sadly, I didn't have cable at the time (or ever, really), so I only caught an episode here and there over the next few years. Lately, though, I've checked out both seasons of Justice League on DVD from the library, and now I've also watched both seasons of the follow-up series, Justice League Unlimited. While the original series does a wonderful job of developing the seven main characters, JLU opens up the membership of the team to include virtually any superhero (of those owned by DC Comics) the creators feel like including in that particular episode--and you can tell the creators had fun with this freedom, pulling in random and obscure characters to make for fun and original stories. Watching the two seasons of JLU in order on DVD is particularly rewarding because, though each episode is self-contained, together they tell a bigger continuing drama building to each season's finale.

Apocalypse Averted by U.S. Government

So it turns out that the Silver Surfer quarter promotion is not a hoax, but it is illegal. So rest assured, gentle readers, that while there may be 40,000 quarters with a third-rate superhero opposite George's profile in circulation across the country (and on eBay), Uncle Sam frowns upon each and every one of them.