Comic Book Retrospective

As I sit here at my desk, just days before moving to California, I start to realize the effect that comic books have had on my life thus far. Sorry, but this is not my normal weekly review – Stack Attack! will reconvene on the 28th – this is a retrospective of sorts; the culmination of a quarter life’s obsession.

As far back as I could remember, I have always wanted to be Batman, or, at the very least, Robin. He had such a certain determination about his character. There was right and wrong boiled down to the simplest terms and no matter how horrible the crime, no one deserved to die. I admired that. Growing up in an era where every major action hero killed on a whim, Batman, no matter how deadly the foe, never brought himself down to their level. He wasn’t an anti-hero. He was a hero.

There was another character who shared equal footing with the Caped Crusader and I imagine you can guess who: Captain America. Same attributes as Batman, except his motivations were driven by an external cause- the ideals and freedoms of America.

Ironically enough, my two favorite characters have been killed off. I haven’t gotten a chance to read Final Crisis but I fear the worst. I do think it’s fitting that the best of the comic book world should be laid to rest. The world is no longer black and white. Heroes are no longer great men and great men haven’t been heroes for a very long time. I welcome the flaws of the modern hero. The Kick-Ass generation. The kids, now men, raised on the unachievable heroes of their favorite funny books. And it turns out, living up to a hero – the absolutes, the rights and wrongs – is a lot harder than they made it look.

Before I get distracted on character minutia, I’d like to address the evolution of the comic book medium and how it has modeled me and influenced my career choice. I’ve been reading comic books since before I could read. The images alone were pure imagination come to rendered life. The characters and worlds created astounded me. There was so much history, all fictional, brimming out of every issue. There were morals (lessons on how to live) and social commentaries (not all as heavy handed as you’d expect) married seamlessly with high action and drama.

I envied the creative teams. They had so much power and so much freedom. They were given the opportunity to create life. The stories resonated for years to come. They engrossed their audiences. More than just an escape, they were a peak into another dimension. The characters were more than just figments of some writer’s imagination. They lived and breathed and fought and died. They became bigger than their creators intended. They became legend.

I grew from a child obsessing over the medium to a man determined to create worlds of my own. When you create a world, rich with it’s own history, it is almost impossible for people to ignore it. It wasn’t merely the action that attracted me to story telling. It wasn’t solely the moments of drama or levity. It wasn’t even the relationships formed. It was a combination of all those elements. It was the world.

With out the influence of comic books I wouldn’t have become the film maker I am today. I wouldn’t be moving to California. I wouldn’t be furthering my career in cinema. So, the next time you pick up a 32 page, double staplebound, stack of sequentially graffitied-on paper remember that it is much more than ink and words. It is your access to a living world of possibility.