If you've been keeping up with any of my hubs or even if you just scrowl across a list of them you will see that I am probably one of the art fom's most open admirers during this Hub Challenge.  They have been a wonderful part of my life for many years, they act like a simple time machine - bringing me back to my youth every time I read one, and I have a lot to say about the subject obviously.  Hard to believe there was a time when my love for comic books went underground.  You see, comic books were not accepted by the cool kids who most likely suffered less from an inability to read, and if that was not possible in many cases,they definitely had a severe deficiency in imagination and creativity.

Yes it is hard to believe in a man that can fly, pick up cars, blast guns with heat vision from his eyes, and save the day with the greatest of ease; but after a while it is more difficult for us comic book fans not to believe.  I have heard friends lament at times of chaos and terror that it is too bad Superman is not real, but I think in the sense that he engages and comforts us he is very real indeed.

Now that paragraph is pretty nerdy.  I admit it, I wrote it myself and it has some sappy stuff in there, but these were the thoughts I was having that went unexpressed when I was in 6th-9th grade when my comic book reading went completely underground.  I wish I could have expressed these thoughts back then, but instead I trapped them inside where they have been fermenting and boiling now to be released as an intoxicating stew of literary terms and passionate pleas that comic books should be read by any student of writing. There were times when I would clam up whenever the subject came around, or outright lie about an aversion to comic books that didin't correspond to reality.  Now I am just the opposite, an advocate for the form, and I will be one for a long time.

When I started being made fun of for trading "stupid comic books" at school, I saw that what was really cool was kind of dorky too.  Sure Lazer Tag might have made your world, but by the time I was in junior high I had realized that practicing blowing away my friends was a little sick.  I don't even know what all was so cool back then, although I remember there was a strict grouping of music acts that were cool and a strict group that were not.  To fall into the wrong group was to draw ridicule, but nothing compared to reading comics.  I had girls that told elaborate stories in English class about nerds who read comic books, there was this one jock kid who just thought they were so dumb he would hit me, and everywhere I looked there were ex-comic book fans claiming they had grown beyond the four color menace.  So in response to the hostile environment I became as secretive as the best of them.

Remember, I was reading between thirty to forty comic books a month during this time period, bumming rides and saving every penny to make sure I did not miss a single issue.  But I didn't talk about it with anyone.  The worst pain was that my family looked down on my reading of comic books even though they continued to fund the habit.  My brother didn't understand them at all, nor did my father who thought the endless battles between good and evil were too simplistic for an intelligent child.  How he had any idea of what was inside these comics I have no clue, because he never read one, he just rejected them all at once, but allowed me to waste my time because I was the smartest in my class four years running.

What about that?  What about the fact that I won academic awards year after year?  Or in the words of Glen Danzig, "I single out the kids who were mean to me, I get straight A's but they still make fun, I don't give a, I'll laugh last, I do my homework so I'll be smart..." (sorry, Danzig is also a huge comic book fan and an early role model, heaven forbid), those kids weren't my friends because they judged my so cruelly and rejected me so completely.  I barely remember the seventh grade because it was so annoying.

But I do remember the comic books.  The Mutant Massacre in the X-Men titles, the ongoing publication of the Deluxe Handbook to the Mavel Universe, anything with Batman in it, reading Watchmen for the first time, and all the time wondering if there is a world of fans out there who loved what I loved.  I didn't think such a thing was possible.  Boy was I wrong.

Comic book fans are steady and numerous, dedicated and brilliant, imaginative and habitual readers all, and I gather that for many of them the stigma of reading comics was non-existent.  They grew up with friends who liked comic books, sharing and discussing the stories and story lines, all innocently enabling one another to enjoy the greatest American Art form.  They were the lucky ones.

If you were like me, cast out, rejected, and at times aggressively attacked because you liked comic books I'd love to hear from you. It's laughable now and I laugh a lot when I think about this time in my life, but memories of childhood pain never completely goes away.  So to finish my little hub here with the rest of the classic Misfits quote, (Glen Danzig's original band), "Mommy....Can I go out and..... kill tonight!"   Metaphorically he means, I'm sure.