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i remember: superman.

for as long as i can remember i have read comics. i don’t think i have ever gone through a phase where i was ashamed of being a comic geek, and i don’t think i have ever fallen out of love with comics.
i remember the thrill of finding a corner shop that sold american comics – where i could buy copies of superboy, superman, action comics, adventures comics and more. (if memory serves this shop also sold sea monkeys but i never bought any, imagine my disappointment when many years later i discovered that they did not wear crowns and hang out as the perfect undersea nuclear family and were in fact like strands of snot in water….)
i remember discovering another shop that has a spinner rack of american comics, not only were there my old favourites but there was a whole new range of comics by a publisher called atlas. all i could think was “wow”, and i loved some of those books: “planet of the vampires”, “ironjaw”, “morlock 2001”, “demon hunter” and many more. several weeks’ worth of pocket money was spent in that shop.
(true there was another reason for wanting to frequent the shop – it also had a spinner rack of porn, and to teenaged eyes quite hardcore porn. including a cover that has stuck with me since then. picture, if you will, two naked couples the women are kneeling down, the men are standing behind them one bloke has his tackle on the top of one woman’s head, the other bloke has his crown jewels resting on the shoulder of the other woman. most bizarre and totally unerotic.)

i remember my first trip to dark they were and golden eyed. there i bought some new comics and the first issue of jack kirby’s “forever people” and steranko’s “nick fury agent of shield”. it was probably that day my interest in comics became a passionate affair.

i have been lucky enough to spend most of my working life involved with comics. through work i came to know people who shared my unabashed love for comics, people who knew more about comics than i could ever hope to know (hi jim. hi kenny. hi paul).

now when superman the movie came out i was less than moved by it. true i was excited about the whole now you will believe a man can fly. but the film just didn’t work for me. i did love the battle between superman and the criminals of the phantom zone in the second movie, but it was not the superman i loved. it was not the superman i wanted to see on screen.
i grew up reading cary bates’ superman with the wonderfully solid work of curt swan. superman was my favourite hero.

in 1986 dc comics rebooted superman, like the movie this was not the superman i liked or wanted. no matter i am a comic geek so i keep getting the comics, somewhere along the line what i wanted from the comics and what the comics were doing merged and once again i was enjoying superman.

fast-forward a few years.
it is late night in the office. the only two people still “working” are paul and i. somehow we have gotten into a discussion about comics (nothing new about that, we were always talking comics, well except for the time when we didn’t talk… and that
was paul’s fault).
now i can’t remember the exact debate we were having, it was something to do with superman’s powers and superman’s reasons for being a hero. we started it as a friendly to and fro as we got on with our work, something that could be done without taking our attention off our computer screens. a coffee break and the discussion continues at the coffee machine (it produced the most foul coffee but it was free). back to work but now it couldn’t be dropped. work was forgotten about. the question of superman had to be resolved. standing now, orating at each other. long drawn out arguments and theories of superman’s motivations and actions. voices impassioned, we could have been debating reducing third world debt to the world bank, but instead we are arguing the personal characteristics of a fictional character, and comparing him to other fictional characters. (for some this would be postmodernism at its best, meta narratives taking over, for sane people it was two fanboys who lost the plot..)
it gets more and more heated. voices raised, chests puffed, fingers jabbing. this is full on arguing mode, heading for meltdown.
while we never quite got to head butting and frothing at the mouth we came close.
not sure who won the argument, or whether we agreed to disagree.
i suspect it came to a halt because we both wanted chips.

that is the power that comics have on fanboys the question of who is stronger superman or thor is important to us. these are the questions and debates that have us coming back to comics time and time again.

no matter what happens superman is still the hero i love the most.
up, up and away!