Tag: #captainamerica

Stan, the Man

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If I give it a bit of thought, I realize Stan Lee was likely the greatest influence on my creative ventures, more than anyone. There are other influences, sure. Robert Jordan and C.S. Lewis and Carolyn Keene and my own mother, as well as all of the authors of my beloved Choose Your Own Adventure books from childhood. But Lee, he created the universe I would spend my lifetime with. He set up an entire age that would capture me for decades. More than anyone, he inspired my awe.

I’ve learned a lot about Stan Lee’s life over the years, but for the purpose of this blog, I’ll focus on his creative endeavors, the one that impacted me the most. For years, the comic book industry had been dominated by super heroes, ones who transcended all of the romance and cowboy and war and monster books that filled every shelf in America through the 40s and 50s. Superman and Batman are the most widely remembered. The stories were simple and short on substance. Super hero keeps his identity secret from his friends and foils plot by fill-in-the-blank villain, be they mad scientist, alien warlord, or misunderstood monster.

But then, in 1961, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby put together the Fantastic Four, and they changed the industry completely. They made their heroes flawed. They were fallible, they made mistakes. They overcame overwhelming odds in order to triumph over villains. And the villains suddenly became relatable, with variable motives and intentions. The lines blurred, and suddenly everything felt more human.

Stan Lee gave us the Thing, a man who hated being transformed into a lumpy orange monster, and one who took his rage out on the world even while being as lovable as can be. He gave us Spider-Man, a young man who dedicated himself to good after one of his own mistakes resulted in the death of his Uncle Ben. A line-up of X-Men, who were hated by the world for being different. Daredevil, who was a blind attorney by day, a hero who could jump off rooftops by night. The Hulk, a scientific Dr. Jekyll with a secret Mr. Hyde he was ashamed over. Iron Man, a selfish playboy billionaire with shrapnel near his heart. Thor, an arrogant God of Thunder who must learn humility at all cost. Stan Lee was an idea machine, giving the world more and more heroes to wonder over. Ant-Man and the Wasp. Dr. Strange. The Silver Surfer. Magneto. Green Goblin. Dr. Doom. Dr. Octopus. The Human Torch. The Inhumans. The Black Panther. Captain Marvel. The Skrulls. Loki. He brought back Captain America, and then he grouped up random heroes into the Avengers. And it was later he added more characters that he loved, ones who hadn’t had titles of their own: Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Quicksilver, Black Widow.

It’s been over 60 years, and these character names still headline comic books, multi-million dollar movies, toys and clothing lines, and cartoons. They’ve become household names, some gaining more notoriety than ever in just the last few years.

Now granted, reading these old 60s comic books from the year 2018 can be a bit uncomfortable. The heroes are overwhelmingly white and male. When girls did show up, they were often given passive powers and, when not fussing over their hair or outfit, were generally relegated to the kidnapped and tied-up damsel. And characters of other races, including Asian and Black, were generally characters. But over the years, that would evolve, as the comics addressed more relevant issues.

I didn’t start reading comic books until the mid-1990s. By then, many of these series were numbering in the hundreds, an impressive feat when you consider most books produced about 12 comic books per year. Picking up Amazing Spider-Man #300 meant the book had been running for 30 years. Stan Lee wasn’t really writing anymore by then, a man near 70 years old. The company had changed. Some characters had surged in popularity and added entire franchises. Characters died and came back. Storylines became complex, frequently saturated with complex and intricate plot devices. Was Spider-Man the clone or was his clone the clone? Cable was the product of Cyclops marrying the clone of his love, Jean Grey, and bearing a child, and sending that child to the far future to be raised, and then that child coming back to the present followed by a clone of his own. There were alternate dimensions and timelines, time travelers, shape-shifters, and teleports to save any character from seeming death. There were secret shadow organizations, and characters still alive from World War II who should have been dead decades ago. Marvel invented a sliding time scale, basically stating that although the characters debuted in the 60s, you could just presume that they had been around for ten years or so before you picked up the book. And as long as you didn’t mind the decades of history, the suspension of disbelief, the occasional continuity gaff, and the fact that you couldn’t possibly afford every book on the shelf, well, you had a whole world you could get lost in.

And that was exactly what I needed at the time. Things were getting tough at home. My step-dad was lashing out with anger more frequently, and it was getting more difficult to hide the fact that I was gay and pretending to be straight. I desperately needed an escape. And so, one weekday, I bought an X-Force comic book off the grocery store shelf. And it was amazing. Within a few years, I was working at a local comic book store by special arrangement: they paid me in comic books. And by the time I left on my Mormon mission at the age of 19, I’d collected thousands of them, meticulously preserved in bags and lined up alphabetically and numerically in dozens of cardboard boxes that lined the walls of my room.

And on that mission, for two years, reading comic books was my secret sin. I could buy them when no one was looking, hide them under my mattress at the apartment, read them when my companion was sleeping. Again, I could escape. All through college, I raided back issue bins in comic book shops, carefully scanning for every issue that I didn’t have. And always the hardest to come by was the original Stan Lee stuff, the primordial works from which an entire universe developed.

Even now, comic books are a part of my life. Everything for me is digital nowadays. I don’t keep my books in boxes, instead I keep them on hard drives. Every week, dozens of new Marvel books come out, still charting the stories of these classic characters and their extended families. The heroes from the 60s should be elderly, or dead and gone, but we readers just pretend they are perhaps in their late 20s or early 30s. I still love the X-Men, although their school has blown up 35 times by now, and every one of their members has died and come back from the dead at least twice. I’m still captivated by these classic characters. I sip my coffee and click through my pages with love and excitement. My brain auto-plays the sound effects of Thwip and Snit, and the classic phrases still leap off the page at me. Flame on! Hulk Smash! With great power comes great responsibility! It’s clobbering time! By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth! By Odin’s beard! Oh my stars and garters!

Everyone who followed, all the other big names that have also become something, they only succeeded because of the platform Stan Lee created. Luke Cage. Iron Fist. Wolverine. Punisher. Moon Knight. Cable. Elektra. Ghost Rider. Deadpool. The universe got a lot darker for a long time, then it got lighter again. And in the new comics, the world looks a lot different. There are gay characters running around everywhere now. Women play a much more prominent role. Many of my favorite titles star characters that Stan Lee must have been proud of. Moon Girl (a 9-year old black girl, the smartest person on the planet) and Devil Dinosaur (her big red T-Rex). Ms. Marvel (a Pakistani-American teenage girl, a Muslim). Squirrel Girl (a plucky computer nerd with a squirrel tail). I sit down with my children now and read these stories, sharing with them the joy of these characters, ones who make us laugh and smile.

I got the news today that Stan Lee died at the age of 95. I haven’t given him much thought in recent years, except to smile whenever he’s made a cameo in a Marvel movie or show that I love. Before I got that news, just this morning, I read the latest Spider-Man, and just last week I looked at the last episode of Daredevil on Netflix. And it dawns on me how much he transformed my life.

Thank you, Mr. Lee, for giving me another world to escape to. It was a complicated world, a rich one that expanded far beyond your original concepts, but then again, you started it all. You built a civilization under the ocean, and another beneath the surface of the Earth. You made up entire countries, some that floated in the clouds, some that nestled between existing borders. You gave men and women powers from a myriad of sources: alien experiments, exploding chemicals, radioactive spiders, godly interventions, magical training, Gamma bomb explosions, radioactivity, or just an accident of birth. You made me believe anything was possible, and that, no matter how complex and flawed the world might be, that good always triumphed and there was always another adventure beckoning.

Thank you, Mr. Lee, and Rest in Peace. Excelsior! 95 was a good long time, and your universe lives on.

Stan

 

Captain Comics

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“Excuse me, Corbin?”

He looked up from behind the glass counter, where he was sorting through new packs of Magic: the Gathering cards. “Hey, Chad, what’s up?” I had always found Corbin handsome, but I could never say that. I was only 16, and still firmly in denial about being gay.

“Hey, I was wondering–” My heart was pounding. I shouldn’t be this nervous over something so simple.

“Are you here to empty your comic box? I put an alternate cover for the new Uncanny X-Men for you, plus your regular copy. It’s good art, could be a collector’s item if you want it.”

“Oh, no, I’ll probably just take the regular. I don’t think I could afford the alternate cover.” I smiled, awkward, and stepped to the side as a kid came up to the counter, carrying a stack of Gen13 comics, all of them featuring covers with girls who had enormous bowling-ball-size breasts in tight T-shirts. Those were bad, but not nearly as risqué as the Vampirella comics, where the girls were basically wearing strings. I hated this trend in comics in the mid 1990s, where so many artists seemed to make girls’ breasts bigger than their heads.

I waited for a moment, practicing my speech in my brain again, as the customer tried convincing Corbin to sell the comic books at half the price. Captain Comics was a tiny store, a small storefront in Idaho Falls, Idaho, nestled next to a Little Caesers and some cell phone shop on the other side. There were bins full of back issues, a wall of new comics, and sections for trading cards, card games, and comic book memorabilia. With a small back room, and a long glass counter, it had become a place of refuge for me over the past year, a place I frequented once per week at least, so I could pick up some new comics with money I had saved up.

I’d become obsessed with Marvel Comics over the past few years. I’d first fallen in love with comics in the sixth grade, when Archie Comics was printing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but I later fell in love with the X-Men, and soon found myself wanting to buy everything put out. But I also wanted to start collecting everything that had been printed before, seeking to understand the deep and rich histories of Captain America and Thor and Ghost Rider and Spider-Man and everyone else, not an easy feat in the pre-digital age, when tens of thousands of comics had been printed over the decades before me. I had a special fondness for discontinued titles like the Defenders. If I wasn’t careful, I could easily blow entire paychecks at the store, and instead had to watch for sales, bargain bins, and occasional online auctions of comics over E-bay.

I kept my comics so carefully, bagged, boarded, and in alphabetical order, lined and stacked in cardboard boxes at home in my bedroom. As my collection expanded, the space in my room shrank, more comics lining the desk, the closet, the floor against the wall. They had become my greatest obsession, my greatest love.

And in ways, my greatest escape.

Corbin was free again as the customer huffed out in frustration. He turned back to me. “So what was it you wanted to ask me?”

I lowered my eyes, embarrassed and a bit ashamed of myself. “I, um, haven’t ever told you much about me. I’m Mormon. I work after school and everything, but I’ve been saving up money for my mission that I’ll go on in a few years, and also I’m saving up for my senior trip. And I love comics. They are, like, one of the best things in my life right now. But I can’t keep affording to buy them because–”

Corbin tilted his head, sympathetically. “Do you need me to put a hold on your box for a while?”

I looked up, surprised. “No–no, that’s not what I’m saying. I–look, my parents got divorced a few years ago and my mom married this guy, my step-dad, and he’s kind of a huge jerk, like he yells and hits and stuff, and I don’t really have a dad around. I’m not sure why I’m telling you that. What I’m getting at is, I was wondering if maybe I could work in your shop on Saturdays or something, or maybe on Tuesday nights when you get your new comics shipments in. I could work just like a few hours a week, and you don’t have to make me an employee. Maybe you could just let me work off the amount I would owe for the new comics I’m ordering? I would work hard, and that would let me keep getting comics so I could keep saving up for my mission and everything.”

My heart was pounding out of my chest as I waited for Corbin to respond. He looked at me intently, curious and wanting to ask a million things, I’m sure, but he just stayed there silent for a small eternity. Finally he spoke.

“Chad, you’re a good kid. I’ve always liked you. And you seem trustworthy.” He paused again and I waited for him to break the bad news. But then he surprised me. “You know what, let’s try it out. Five dollars an hour, a few hours per week. And you can be paid in comic books. That’s two-and-a-half standard books an hour, five books for a two-hour shift. Two hours a week on Tuesday nights work for you?”

“Yes! Yes, absolutely!” I gripped his hand in a hearty handshake, shaking hard. “You won’t regret this, sir. I’ll work really hard.” I felt like I had just made the deal of the century.

The next Tuesday I worked my first short shift. Within a few months, I was working Saturdays, and in time, even running the store for afternoons or evenings on my own. I would continue working at Captain Comics throughout my high school experience, right up until I left on my mission, for a total of three years. And the entire time, I was being paid in comic books. My collection at home expanded into around ten thousand before I was all done, and I’d move the boxes with me through most of my adult life.

Reflecting back on this story now, at the time of writing, at age 39, I think of how much comics saved me, especially during my difficult adolescence. My love of comics also led to me working for Marvel Comics for a few years, and even writing my own line of comics.

So from both 15 year old Chad, and 39 year old Chad, thank you, Corbin of Captain Comics, wherever you are, for giving a young man a chance when he most needed it.

regarding Hillary’s America…

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In high school, I read a particular issue of Captain America, one during the long run by writer Mark Gruenwald. See, Cap grew up in the 1920s and 1930s, the depression era America, and then entered World War II idealistic and with a clear sense of right and wrong. After all those decades frozen in the iceberg, modern writers love taking those old school values of the American dream and measuring them up against the modern problems of today, seeing if the values hold up. Cap fights against Nazis, that’s an easier battle, but when he is put up against a corrupt American politician, or police violence, or race issues, well the moral struggles he have to go through become fascinating.

Anyway, in this particular issue, a group of Neo-Nazis based in America were putting on a rally in a public space. A deplorable cause, sure, but even Neo-Nazis have the right to peaceably assemble granted by the Constitution. Well, a group of individuals sought to attack the Nazis, and Captain America had to fight them in order to protect the Nazis, whose cause he abhorred. A true hero, that Cap, but if this were real, imagine how he would have been torn apart on Fox News, on CNN, and in the public debates by both Democrats and Republicans.

See, I like my ethics sticky like that. The idea that in order to stand for free speech, that means free speech for everyone, even those I disagree with. In fact, those I disagree with deserve protection under the law, even though their cause goes against my moral code. Thanks, Captain America, for the lesson.

And ethics are always sticky like that. Laws can be twisted and interpreted in a million little ways to benefit those who seek to benefit from them. Causes like gay marriage and equal pay for women and women’s right to determine their own health and transgender bathroom issues and Muslims being allowed to wear head coverings in school and how to handle children of illegal immigrants born in the country, all these causes and on and on and on, they have to be fought for and changed in the very courts which seem to weigh down the process and make change seem impossible. And there is corruption, yes. Change in America is slow, and painful, and sometimes incredibly unjust. It takes a lot of time.

All that said, I do believe in free speech, I do. I believe in anyone’s right to speak up and stand for their cause, even to spin the truth in their favor, to use politics and funding and promise-making to garner their own benefits.

Years ago, I remember seeing a Michael Moore film about George W. Bush. I walked out of the theater feeling passionate and moved and outraged, but soon rational thought returned, and I realized that even though I’m not a big fan of George W. Bush, that the movie was biased, it was slanted to a ridiculous degree to foster opinions against Bush. I wondered how many Liberal viewers would take the time to restore rational thought afterwards, and not get caught up in the slanted music, imagery, and spin on stories that bolstered the opinions of Michael Moore.

Well, last night, I experienced the other side, the slanted Republican side.

In the film Hillary’s America, subtitled the Secret History of the Democratic Party, filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza, a naturalized citizen originally from India, purports that the Democratic Party is solely responsible for nearly every terrible thing that has ever happened in America, and then proclaims that Hillary Clinton is corrupt through-and-through with no redeeming qualities. D’Souza himself had previously produced a similar film in 2012, Obama’s America, which I have never seen, that was extremely successful among conservative Americans. After that, D’Souza was indicted for making illegal political contributions.

In Hillary’s America, Dinesh puts himself in the starring role. A rather homely and uncharismatic host, he opens the film with his prison conviction, stating that Obama had to put him in jail because Dinesh was a threat to him. In truth, Dinesh lived in a halfway house for 8 months, but in the film, he is locked up with hardened criminals and he learns all about how criminals get away with their crimes, tactics that he realizes the Democratic Party (not the Republicans, mind you, just the Democrats) use to win votes.

Dinesh takes himself to a Democratic museum, where on the surface is everything the Democrats want you to know about them, but he finds the secret basement that holds all of their dark corruptions. He learns that Democrats are the ones who wanted slavery and segregation, the ones who sought to sterilize undesirable populations (which they still do through Planned Parenthood, he says), the ones that shoved Native Americans on to reservations after slaughtering them. (Strangely, the film doesn’t bring up women’s rights or LGBT rights at all). It was always the Democrats, he claims, the racist Democrats,  while the Republicans are the heroes who have fought for equal rights and sought to right wrongs all along. He goes so far as to say that only Democrats owned slaves, and that not a single Republican did.

He then moves in to attack Obama for a while again, talking about how Obamacare is meant to deny Americans choices because Obama enjoyts power, and how Democrats want to control gun sales so they can keep them out of the hands of minorities who only want to protect themselves against racist politicians.

Then Dinesh starts in on Hillary herself, claiming that as a young girl, her primary influences were men affiliated with the mob, who were swindlers and loved power and corruption. He proposes that Hillary has had a long term plan to take complete control. He states that Hillary married Bill Clinton knowing that he is a rapist, and that she has acted as his dealer all along, providing him victims to rape and then later bullying those victims into silence so that Hillary can feel more powerful. It goes on and on from there.

The movie closes with a shadowy image of an evil Hillary sitting in the Oval Office, and this direct quote. “Imagine how much worse things could get if these two depraved crooks are allowed to return to the White House.” It then switches to an innocent little white girl in a white dress singing the Star-Spangled Banner in front of a multi-racial orchestra and gospel choir with patriotic images flashing across the screen and encourages people to vote Replubican.

I sat in the theater with shifting emotions, from jaw-dropping shock at the audacity of the all-encompassing claims, them hand-over-face embarrassment at how unashamedly biased the film was, then laughing out loud at the terrible acting and dramatic music that sought to drive the points home.

But I still stand by my sticky ethics statement. I believe in the right to make a film like this, whether you are Michael Moore or Dinesh D’Souza. But while I respect their rights to make these claims, I have no respect for either man. There are certainly corrupt politicians on both sides of the political landscape, both now and across history, and to make claims that one person or one political party is responsible for every evil in the country, it is just asinine.

It is easy to spin half-truths and make dramatic claims. But it takes much more integrity and vision to honestly explore complex topics and to stand up proudly and willingly listen to all sides of an issue.

I’ll say this, Mr. D’Souza, Mr. Moore, and all the other one-sided commentators out there. You make a hell of a finished product. But at the end of the day, your films/books/shows/broadcasts are basically accomplishing the very corruptions you are accusing your targets of.

Basically, you are the Westboro Baptist Church of political commentary.

Comic Book Nerds

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“So, you work for Marvel Comics?”

I nod. “Yeah. Well, I used to.”

The girl is heavyset, wearing a Cookie Monster hoodie. She has acne, and she looks at me suspiciously as she takes bites of a pretzel. A few crumbs scatter off of it, landing on the books set up on my vendor table. “I bet I could beat you in a trivia contest.”

I give a small smile, but I’m annoyed. I would expect her to be excited by the Marvel connection, most are at least mildly impressed. “Well, please don’t eat over the books here. But go ahead, I’ll try out some trivia.”

She shoves the rest of the pretzel into her mouth. “I bet you can’t tell me what Northstar’s real name is.”

A few other customers walk up to the table, casually looking. I greet them. “Sure I can. Jean-Paul Beaubier.”

Her eyes narrow. I’ve made her angry. “Well, what super hero team was he on?”

I laugh. “Alpha Flight.”

She steps back, arms folded over her chest. “Okay, fine, well, which character besides Steve Rogers has been Captain America?”

I cock my head to the right. She was being downright obstinate. “There have been many. The Patriot. The Spirit of 76. Bucky. USAgent. Roscoe–”

“Okay, okay. Geez.” She turns and starts walking away.

“Thanks for stopping by!”

I love comic book conventions. They have this visceral energy about them, this ‘let your freak flag fly’ mentality. Fans will pay 20 to 50 dollars just to get in, then they will wander among the hundreds of tables, looking for their favorite books and artists, ready to spend hundreds of dollars on the things that they love. Conventions are often divided up into various sections, representing movies, television shows, video games, books, anime, action figures, and comic books. Hundreds of vendors and artists will print up materials featuring favorite characters, none of it authorized by the official companies, and fans will go nuts, paying cash to pick up their favorites. T-shirts, posters, sketches, small toys, and prints of every character that comes to mind from Deadpool to My Little Pony to Ninja Turtles to He-Man to Batman to Adventure Time.

I’m set up at my little booth in the middle of a row, my table covered with merchandise. Half of the contents on my table are Marvel books I worked on, back during my college years, Official Handbooks and Files of various kinds, as well as trade paperbacks that I was in on the planning process for. On the other half is my original comic book, the Mushroom Murders, a book I’m hugely proud of, that I planned and organized myself, working with an amazing art team. The Marvel works bring people to the table, but it’s my book that I’m there to promote first and foremost.

“Excuse me, did you write all these books?” I look up and my eyes widen at the woman in front of me. She’s dressed like a slutty version of Jessie from Toy Story. She must be fifty years old, with thick make-up and a whole lot of cleavage showing.

I smile. “I did, yes.”

She picks up my graphic novel. “What’s it about?”

I give my practiced sales pitch. “It’s rather like Law & Order meets Army of Darkness. It’s a detective story with supernatural elements and a lot of twists and turns.”

She gives a broad smile. “I’ll take one if I can get an autograph of the handsome author and a photograph with you.”

I sign the book, she takes the picture, kisses my cheek, and hands me the cash before walking away with a wave.

I love the people at conventions. So many of them dress-up, some in costumes they have worked on for ages. Bearded men in Wonder Woman costumes, super fit Superman, Deadpool in a business suit, baby Mystique, toddler Aquaman. Groups of friends will coordinate costumes, so that six members of the Justice League will be roaming together. Some costumes are so elaborate, they must cost several hundred to make. A man walks by dressed as a real looking Galactus, holding the planet Earth in his hands; a mechanized Sentinel walks by; an R2-D2 constructed of Legos stops to beep at my table, his owner behind him. I am constantly snapping photographs.

A 20 year old Asian young man stops back by the table, his smile wide and infectious. He had stopped by yesterday to chat for an hour before buying my book and rushing off. “Chad, hey!”

I stand and shake his hand. “Hi, Allan, welcome back.”

“You remembered me! That’s so cool!” He pulls open his backpack and pulls my book out. “I have to get an autograph! I finished the book and it was so amazing! I want to get an extra copy for my mom!”

These brief encounters at conventions make the whole thing worth it. Conventions are exhausting. It feels like three straight days of McDonalds’ rush hour in a row, working these. Constant smiles, handshakes, sales pitches, greetings, all while sitting in one hard back chair, grabbing food or bathroom breaks whenever possible. Most fans wander around a bit suspicious, browsing the merchandise but feeling like everyone is trying to get their money and attention (which in fact they are). Many are waiting to see their favorite writers, artists, or celebrities on various panels or for autographs. Some celebrities go from Con to Con, living off their fame. Lou Ferrigno charges 40 dollars per autograph, characters who were on the original Power Rangers or Star Trek, thirty years and forty pounds later, still find fans to greet.

But these brief encounters, like the one with Allan, make it all worth it, seeing someone enjoy the book I worked so hard on.

I look down the aisle at the other vendors. The man to my left draws beautiful sketches for 15 or 20 dollars each, commissioning specific pieces for those who pay him. The woman to my right has a table full of steampunk jewelry she has hand-crafted. The man across from me has his original art splayed over colorful T-shirts.

Allan rushes off, promising to bring his mom back later just as a woman with pink hair steps up to the table, dripping the ice cream she is eating on to one of my books. As I clean it up, I look up at the clock, realizing there are six hours left today. I sigh, a bit sleepy, just as a family (father, mother, and three kids) walk by, dressed as the characters from the Thundercats, the baby dressed as Snarf, and then I’m grinning again.

I love comic book nerds, and I fit right in.