Cosmic Comics

In 1954, the year I was born, Dr. Frederic Werthman published Seduction of the Innocent. The book described the serious harm comic books caused America's Youth. Ironically within a few years, comics entered their Silver Age. For non comic book fans, the Golden Age began in the mid-30s with the inception of Superman, Batman, et.al.

Silver Age writers like Stan Lee and artists like Steve Ditko at Marvel, Mark Waid and Terry Dodson at DC, created the comics with which I grew up. My age group still suffered from the small-minded antagonists who believed Werthman's drivel. Luckily, my parents did not fall into that school. They saw comics as a fun, creative outlet.

Of course comics did affect my mind, but not in the ridiculous manner the good "Doctor" thought. They opened worlds of imagination, magic, mystery and otherworldly visions. Years later when I began exploring inner space, the lurid art and wild stories took on new meanings.

This will come as no surprise to those who know me, but the less popular comics appealed to me. I liked Thor, Hulk, Superman, Batman, etc., but my main attraction went to the more bizarre. Cosmic Boy, a founder of the Legion of Super Heroes, time traveled to Earth from the 31st century with Lightening Lad and Saturn Girl to recruit Super Boy. Dr. Strange, a neurosurgeon who masters magic to defend the Earth from evil. It wasn't until my collegiate philosophical endeavors that I realized that Eastern mysticism and Jungian psychology filled the pages of his comics.

Reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, I discovered Ken Kesey's love of comic books and his connecting Captain Marvel and Nietzsche's book Thus Spoke Zarathurstra. How's that for the seduction of the innocent, Dr. Werthman?

The late 60s turned me onto the underground comix of R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton and others. These lurid, sexually-charged, obscenity and drug-ladened stories set my world on its ear. At the same time I read Kerouac's On the Road and Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels, The Strange and Terrible Saga of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. With a nod to
Shakespeare, my worm had turned.

The beauty of art can exist with the ugliness of depravity. The Chinese concept of yin and yang, or the German literary movement, Strum un drang, show that opposites comprise the core of their antithesis.

Comics have entered a new age and are now called graphic novels. Perhaps it's the old curmudgeon in me, but the term sounds grandiose. I remember in 5th grade when Sister Charles Louise found me reading The Amazing Spiderman hidden inside my geography book. I can imagine her reaction if I had stood up and said, "But Sister, it's a graphic novel!" As ever - BB

"Now I've always been puzzled by the yin and the yang
it'll come out in the wash, but it always leaves a stain
Sturm and drang, the luster and the sheen,
my baby leaving town on the 2:19" - Tom Waits, 2:19