Comic Books

"You know what this has to do with? The man in the cape--I bet you he is mixed up in this! I don't trust men in capes."
"You can't cast aspersions on someone just because they're wearin' a cape. Superman wore a cape. An' I'll be damned if I'm gonna stand here an' let you say something bad about him."
"All right Superman's the exception."
- Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza in The Chinese Woman

So I think I was a pretty typical little boy. I played sports, loved video games and cartoons. Also, my friends got me into comic books. Comic books are pretty amazing. I mean you collect them, they have value, and they're fun to read and look at. The funny thing about it too, you could talk about comics and superheros for hours. I mean come on, everybody has imagined having super powers. And then there's also all the speculating on exactly how super powers work and such.

So the other day I was talking about Matty Cakes because C. had commented on my previous blog post. C. is one of my most faithful readers and I love her for it (and I will give her blog a shameless promotion right now. Seriously, go check it out it's fabulous and will totally brighten your day). Now C. does some very interesting things in her writing. If she ever quotes herself at the beginning of her posts, it's always as C. However, she quite often refers to herself as Smalldog, being both the name of her post and her chosen pen name. This interesting contradiction struck me as being a bit odd. So I wondered why the disparity exactly. Are C. and Smalldog different personae? C. is a darling, intelligent girl. Smalldog often has a fierce bite and describes her circumstances as "Ever been bigger on the inside than you were on the outside? Happened to me…" suggesting some ferocity on the inside of that small frame (yes, C. is small in stature). Is C. Bruce Banner and Smalldog The Hulk?

This is just a simple example of how comic books really can be applied to everything. Even in the beginning, comic books often had their own lessons to teach society. Clearly the classic characters were not typically as jaded and conflicted of characters, but rather they stood for things like "Truth, justice, and the American way!" The X-Men, which is definitely my favorite comic book series, was all about teaching the idea of accepting others that are different than you. The movies took this to another level by having some major anti-homophobic overtones undoubtedly due to the influence of openly gay director Brian Singer. Many of the comic book movies have taken up the charge of teaching moral lessons. I even had a Sunday School class in which the teacher referenced Spiderman 3 because he saw the major theme as being the idea of forgiveness. Really it is amazing what can be found in these comic books.

Because of all of this, it really is possible to apply comic books to pretty much everything in life. There is almost always some sort of connection that can be drawn from comic books and it makes me happy. I thoroughly enjoy looking at the parallels and realizing that one of my best friend's has The Hulk for a wife. Also, Matty Cakes is kind of like Professor Xavier because he's severely confined by his current physical limitations but capable of great things with his mind. Psycho T is kind of like Beast, the physical feats he's able to accomplish are just unreal. And Nancy Drew is like the the one wimpy superhero that everybody is always having to bail out and always whines all the time. There's also that guy in my fantasy sports leagues that is always my Lex Luthor. Thankfully I know I can take a stand against him for the sake of "Truth, justice and the American way!"