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As most of you could probably guess by my casual, almost lackadaisical approach to blasphemy that I was raised a right, proper Atheist by the parental units.
But, somehow, despite my folks best efforts to shepherd me towards the guiding light of reason, I ended up with a strong inclination towards the mystical, the preternatural, a sense of divine morality and the epically absurd. Whether this was due to some activation of latent archetypes buried in my subconscious or because all the other children around me harbored a fierce dread of some vast, nigh-omnipotent, invisible old white man who apparently shit thunder and watched everything everybody ever did, I cannot say. I do know the other children's Old Nobodaddy, with his beard as long as he was cruel, served as a sort of anti-Santa Clause ruling over the world while punishing its inhabitants with his love.
Whenever the other children would tell me about their god, it would give me the willies so bad that after an hour or so exposed to this snuff-film theology, I would go running back home to my parents, on the verge of tears and wanting to hide from the clouds above. Imagine finding out as a small child that practically everyone around you worshipped the boogey man, that there was indeed a monster under your bed… but it came from a land in the clouds called heaven instead. That was what God was to me. My parents, exhausted from work and raising a hyperactive child, would patiently reassure me that there wasn’t a ‘God’ lurking in my closet and that no one was going to punish me for not saying I’m sorry to a being I had never met but had infinitely pissed off with something called original sin.
“Christians,” my Father explained to me with the detached reasoning of a very stoned Atticus Finch, “were a cowardly and superstitious lot.”
And I believed him…
… and yet, despite this, I intuitively or hell, maybe biologically, needed a religion to believe in. That there was someone in the sky I should aspire to be, that there was a measure of justice to balance out the random cruelty of the world, that there were myths to live by and those who would inspire us forward into a tomorrow that laid beyond the gates of death.
Which is when I discovered the superheroes, actually.
Not by chance either. Few people know that I’m a second generation geek. Even as a little kid, waist high to the parents, I can remember Mom’s crush on a late 70’s era Wolverine and Dad’s cherished silver age Green Lanterns beckoning to me from the closet. In their own weird way, my parents provided me with the materials to instill in me a sense of mythic wonder after all.
I drowned myself in the four colored universe, their competing continuities, their secret origins and secret identities comforted me in a way no other story could.
Their world, like mine, was constantly under assault from random, mindless cruelty… but unlike our world, this one possessed men and women who at night slipped into disguises, into aliases and costumes to do the work of angels. To watch over and protect us. To let us know that we weren’t alone in the dark. To “Rage, rage against the dying of the light…” as one of my favorite poems goes.
It was there I learned the most important thing I could ever do is put on a mask and try to make the world a better place. Even though I lived in one without superpowers, with mutant genes, doomed planets, paradise islands, magic rings, radioactive animals or magick helmets, it was the only world I had and it was worth trying to be a part of.
I learned that the life behind the mask was hard – Bruce Wayne grieved the death of his family, Peter Parker got no love from those he fought valiantly for, Ben Grimm was a noble soul trapped inside a monster’s body – which let’s face it, what teenager hasn’t felt that way at one point or another.
It was hard. My only powers, per say, was a hyperactive imagination and an odd ability to make people laugh. Not much use in stopping a android rampage, a runaway comet or even a simple afterschool ass beating by the local bully.
But sometimes, my powers did something else… they cheered up a buddy when they were down with a laugh, they created sweeping vistas for people to enter during RPG weekends, they became flowery invocations delivered anonymously to pretty girls in my class, they became ideas to inspire others who had the will to use them and even at one point, during a mid-life crisis on infinite earths, allowed me to write a novel.
So, here I am, ready to close the chapter on a big chunk of my life and become retconned into another… and I don’t know if the mask I’ve worn fits me any longer. I don’t know if I can keep running around with a psychological towel tucked into the back of a shirt that should probably have a collar around it instead.
But, that was the other lesson the superheroes taught me… that you never give up, you never surrender, you fight to the last square inch of your life and hope you can do so long enough until someone better comes along to continue that never ending battle.
So maybe I’ll find a new mask or even discover that the one I’ve worn has been my true face all along.
Until then…
But, somehow, despite my folks best efforts to shepherd me towards the guiding light of reason, I ended up with a strong inclination towards the mystical, the preternatural, a sense of divine morality and the epically absurd. Whether this was due to some activation of latent archetypes buried in my subconscious or because all the other children around me harbored a fierce dread of some vast, nigh-omnipotent, invisible old white man who apparently shit thunder and watched everything everybody ever did, I cannot say. I do know the other children's Old Nobodaddy, with his beard as long as he was cruel, served as a sort of anti-Santa Clause ruling over the world while punishing its inhabitants with his love.
Whenever the other children would tell me about their god, it would give me the willies so bad that after an hour or so exposed to this snuff-film theology, I would go running back home to my parents, on the verge of tears and wanting to hide from the clouds above. Imagine finding out as a small child that practically everyone around you worshipped the boogey man, that there was indeed a monster under your bed… but it came from a land in the clouds called heaven instead. That was what God was to me. My parents, exhausted from work and raising a hyperactive child, would patiently reassure me that there wasn’t a ‘God’ lurking in my closet and that no one was going to punish me for not saying I’m sorry to a being I had never met but had infinitely pissed off with something called original sin.
“Christians,” my Father explained to me with the detached reasoning of a very stoned Atticus Finch, “were a cowardly and superstitious lot.”
And I believed him…
… and yet, despite this, I intuitively or hell, maybe biologically, needed a religion to believe in. That there was someone in the sky I should aspire to be, that there was a measure of justice to balance out the random cruelty of the world, that there were myths to live by and those who would inspire us forward into a tomorrow that laid beyond the gates of death.
Which is when I discovered the superheroes, actually.
Not by chance either. Few people know that I’m a second generation geek. Even as a little kid, waist high to the parents, I can remember Mom’s crush on a late 70’s era Wolverine and Dad’s cherished silver age Green Lanterns beckoning to me from the closet. In their own weird way, my parents provided me with the materials to instill in me a sense of mythic wonder after all.
I drowned myself in the four colored universe, their competing continuities, their secret origins and secret identities comforted me in a way no other story could.
Their world, like mine, was constantly under assault from random, mindless cruelty… but unlike our world, this one possessed men and women who at night slipped into disguises, into aliases and costumes to do the work of angels. To watch over and protect us. To let us know that we weren’t alone in the dark. To “Rage, rage against the dying of the light…” as one of my favorite poems goes.
It was there I learned the most important thing I could ever do is put on a mask and try to make the world a better place. Even though I lived in one without superpowers, with mutant genes, doomed planets, paradise islands, magic rings, radioactive animals or magick helmets, it was the only world I had and it was worth trying to be a part of.
I learned that the life behind the mask was hard – Bruce Wayne grieved the death of his family, Peter Parker got no love from those he fought valiantly for, Ben Grimm was a noble soul trapped inside a monster’s body – which let’s face it, what teenager hasn’t felt that way at one point or another.
It was hard. My only powers, per say, was a hyperactive imagination and an odd ability to make people laugh. Not much use in stopping a android rampage, a runaway comet or even a simple afterschool ass beating by the local bully.
But sometimes, my powers did something else… they cheered up a buddy when they were down with a laugh, they created sweeping vistas for people to enter during RPG weekends, they became flowery invocations delivered anonymously to pretty girls in my class, they became ideas to inspire others who had the will to use them and even at one point, during a mid-life crisis on infinite earths, allowed me to write a novel.
So, here I am, ready to close the chapter on a big chunk of my life and become retconned into another… and I don’t know if the mask I’ve worn fits me any longer. I don’t know if I can keep running around with a psychological towel tucked into the back of a shirt that should probably have a collar around it instead.
But, that was the other lesson the superheroes taught me… that you never give up, you never surrender, you fight to the last square inch of your life and hope you can do so long enough until someone better comes along to continue that never ending battle.
So maybe I’ll find a new mask or even discover that the one I’ve worn has been my true face all along.
Until then…