Non Fiction Writing Prompt-Favorite Superhero Part 2

 Like I said in Part 1, if you had to put a gun to my head and say who is my favorite superhero then it is Daredevil. 

I appreciate the "down to the earth"* of the DD series. Beyond the goofy (A blind guy has powers and can "see" with sound and he was trained by a blind ninja master and his main enemy is both an ancient order of ninjas AND a guy who is very good at throwing things) it feels like it could be real. Someone swashbuckling on rooftops, dodging bullets and stringing up criminals. DD just wants to protect a neighborhood and, for the most part, sticks to that. The comic is very kinetic and acrobatic something envious for an aging professional fat kid like me. 

DD also caries a billy club cane that sometimes writers will give that "snikt" sound effect to as he lets it loose. The same metallic bite a collapsible baton makes as it unfurls from the handle. This is a powerful bit of onomatopoeia. An amazing sound like skateboard wheels on pavement or the swish of a perfect basketball shot that is often dominated by Wolverine but you can actually hold the baton and make that sound. And then jump off your aunt's roof into the pool below without pretending giant steak knives are coming out your knuckles. 

Did I mention I began reading Daredevil* regularly just as some damn luminaries were working on it? The earlier books, save for the Frank Miller and Romita Jr., stuff were pretty damn silly. DD's has a a ding dong rogues gallery that includes Purple Man and Stilt Man and Gladiator and Bullseye, who I know is the big bad but goodness its a guy who is good at throwing things! The Netflix series did much to revitalize these characters, save Stilt Man, who I guess is still at large. 

Brian Michael Bendis and then Ed Brubaker gave it this super power noir style with even a bit of swashbuckling and then lots of pulp especially with pencils by Alex Maleev and David Aja and Michael Lark. 

This whole multi year run felt gritty and painful without being pornographic nor derogatory. The panels were all about what you didn't see and then how the plot unfolded until it broke DD's mind. Which is never good because when DD's mind break he goes absolutely berserk. DD runs are so well defined by the 3-4 pages of him just dive bombing onto people's cars and reaching in to grab some thug or crooked cop by the scruff of their collar. 

DD is a guy who gets beat a ton but somehow gets right back up so why can't you root for someone like this?

Also around this time I read the new Blue Beetle albeit only briefly but glad that is being made into a movie. By a Puerto Rican guy, to boot.

And the Brubaker/Aja Iron Fist reboot which is also an amazing 12-15 runs of comics albeit I think Danny Rand should be retconned to be actually Asian and not some white kid whose whole family (and his predecessor before him) just stumbled into a mystical kung-fu city. 

I also read bits of pieces of the Kirkman Invicible book but this was in little waves, primarily made of Free Comic Book issues, but still felt great and fresh yet satisfyingly familiar. The Amazon series is fantastic albeit I will admit I'm less hyped as each episode goes along. 

And the latest, as we get closer to 2021, is the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel which is a great Buffy like mix of teen drama and super heroics and mad comic fandom plus clashing cultures. I am excited this character is getting her eventual time in the sun.

As an adult, someone with even less time for books and deep dives,*** I appreciate Captain America (also had a brief an wonderful Brubaker run including the "death" of the character) for the representation of what our country can/should be. 

Honestly, ill dig on any superhero. Power Rangers are superheroes and so are characters like John Wick. Closest thing to a common mythos we have**** and since the geeks have won (This is pop culture now. Call someone with an opinion on Iron Man a nerd and you just exposed yourself as a hack) a great vector for daydreaming. 

*Relatively. I think there is a canon issue where DD runs a pickup trucking into Thanos or Ultron or some other big galactic level baddie. Also, the usual bs of comics like resurrection and being able to afford to live in Manhattan. 

**At this time I also regularly ready Green Lantern books because I wanted to like the hero but Hal Jordan is a boring space cop and I don't care much for galactic stuff so why was I reading this? Note at this time they were also printing Green Lantern: Rebirth which is a great starting point and also an amazing book. Too bad Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Scriver became problematic particular Van Scriver who IS Comicsgate and budding digital Nazi.  This also kept going during the Sinestro Corps War so yeah some big dumb issues. Shame because it is a cool idea and other lanterns (John Stewart and Kyle Rayner) really deserve bigger pieces of the pie.  

***When I couldn't afford too many comics and the tiny Town of Ulysses, New York library had run out of graphic novels for me to scour, I would "read" comics by diving into the Wikipedia wormhole of synopsis and then piece together panels from other blogs and google searches. This is the comics reading equivalent of making your own little latter by pouring ten sugars and 15 creams into your espresso shot.  Every May, the Ithaca, NY comic shop would do a big back issue sale where most things were a dollar and here is where I loaded up on piece meal fixes. 

****I want to say superheroes are American mythical figures but its hard because folks like Hercules and Prometheus don't have billion dollar IPs behind them. 

Non Writing Prompt-Favorite Super Hero-Part 1

 In the last week, this here blog has seen a SURGE in readers. Going from one to a mind melting three! I don't know who these other people are* but they inspired me to write. And, write. Not just bust out the little navel gazing asides but dig up a prompt (This time a creative non fiction one because who knew those existed and I can't write fiction to save my life) to slay that word count. And, if this brief reverie could not shimmer even stronger, the prompt is

"What is your favorite super hero and why?"

So, the short version, if you put a gun to my head would be Daredevil/Matt Murdock. There. But, this is supposed to be longer and some what of a memoir. While its dismissive to inexorably link superheroes and comics, they are connected and comics is a big part of why I began blogging. Bored while at a snoozy job in the mid 2000s I found the Daves Long Box Blog and I wanted to be Dave and blog and have folks hang on every post. That lead me to find other funny and active bloggers like Chris Sims and Sean Baby (The only person Ive ever written a fan letter to) and well that made another dream. All that said if  you are reading this you have a high tolerance for pain** so read on for the long version which i've broken up into several parts.

Also, this post has got images so make sure to hover over them for extra content!

My earliest "strong"*** super hero memory is the animated 90's Spiderman which, first, kicked ass and, second, was hard to find until Disney Plus launched. The show was serialized, which felt so weird for a kids show, so if you missed one episode you missed a ton. But, don't worry there was also tons of exposition. This show had this amazing synthy-rocky theme song that was just some guy screaming "SPIDERMAN! SPIDERMAN! RADIOACTIVE SPIDERMAN!" into a Moog machine and blocky computer animated backgrounds over detailed character drawings. No one ever mentioned that Harry Osborn had this weird shaved head look that ended in a widow's peak but also featured blood read horizontal highlights. I swear its an animation error that they just said whatever too. It was the 90s and people had three sweaters on at once sometimes!

 This also began my love for all the Spiderman things albeit I have never regularly read a Spiderman book. 

Next strong memory may piss some folks off but its Sailor Moon. This whole post, for how old these properties are****, will date me right in the late 90s and early 00s and that is when Toonami premiered and..."Holy shit do you see these cartoons from Japan. They are so hardcore!"

A really good friend of mine loved Sailor Moon so I watched it because I wanted something else to chat with him about and it also kicked off the Toonami block so yeah lets watch it while waiting for Dragon Ball or Gundam. And, while it was the latter seasons of Sailor Moon***** that got a bit more "fan servicey" yes I was not immune to the girls fighting monsters in mini skirts. What I love about Sailor Moon, especially if I've gotten older, is how both ridicously goofy it is and yet also heart breaking epic it can be. One adventure they are fighting a monster made out of a living vacuum cleaner and the next Sailor Moon is slamming her fist on the ground willing existence itself to help her defeat Pharaoh 90. To then close, my aforementioned friend later came out as gay and told me how much Sailor Moon helped him with that. This was something lost on me at a younger age (Were you watching the same show, my man? Because i remember telling you that while I new it was more popular to say Sailor Mars was hotter I loved Serena all the way. Im basic! SORRY!") but seeing just how many others say the same (Something I didn't realize until the advent of Twitter and talking to people outside my tiny high school and college) makes me appreciate the show that much more. 

By this time it was around 2005-2006 and I lived in a town with a comic shop I could walk to so I started to regulars dabble in books. I am bit sheepish to admit it but the first books I bought regularly were the Ultimate series Marvel books. Something made even quirkier because by that time some of them were already a few years old.

The Ultimate Marvel series was a seperate Marvel continutiy that much more closely followed the then nascent Marvel movies. So, Peter Parker got his powers from a genetically engineered Spider, Nick Fury looked exactly like Sam Jackson and Wolverine didn't wear yellow. The idea made sense with the movies making so much bank but the Ultimate universe felt very down and took itself way too serious. It also gave us this awful exchange

Ultimate universe did give us Miles Morales which then lead to the best movie ever so there is that. And while there never was a solo Ultimate Daredevil, at the time some real solid writers were working on that book...

Stay Tuned For Part 2!

*I don't know any of the readers. I don't pay for the fancy Blogger tools that let you view by IP. And these were hot back in 2006-2007 when I first began blogging. I am about 15 years behind on the times

**And typos.

***And by strong I mean having an attachment or commitment to reading this book frequently. Or watching this show. I was a kid when the original Death of Superman hit and while it was quite the zeitgeist moment, I didn't really like Superman books or the character so largely avoided it. Albeit, went a whole day with my sister and her boyfriend, Antonio, driving to shops to find a copy, going as far south as the second biggest city on the island, Ponce, which was maybe an hour from home. I had nothing better to do and he for sure wanted that book. Likewise those old Fleischer Superman shorts are awesome but, again, not my jam. Finally, to admit some further 90s kid crimes, I never watched the XMen animated series (I don't dig Xmen much albeit I respect their influence on comics and culture. They are like the Beatles of comics) or the Batman Animated Series. Oddly enough I did watch the Superman Animated Series but that was because the creators way objectified Supergirl (She has a crop top and mini skirt! I think her legs are longer than her torso!) and I was but a tween child.

****Barring the blood sugar or cholesterol killing me, it is very likely that in my lifetime I could see 100 year celebration of Batman, Superman, Wonderwoman, Spiderman, etc. 

*****And before anyone tries to reverse gatekeep me. Yes, I mostly watched the bad DIC dub of Sailor Moon and yes it is really hard for me to call them by their Japanese names even though I know that is the proper terminology. And, no, I have never seen Stars because that got dubbed by the time I became an old man. Or Crystal which really did not seem aesthetically pleasing to me. That said, I do like some of those newer slower FPS anime like the Pacific Rim: The Black series that just came out. 

O in the ABC

Let me repeat some things, even though I know that is not ideal. But, you know I imagine everything as a video game. As a battle between people transforming henshin style into heroes and legends. Ill see someone walking down the street and its a cloud of sparking colors behind them. Or a staccato flip book image series of them taking each step until its a long repeating image like a glitching computer monitor. This lends me to these high beats per minute songs and electronic stuff often relegated to sub levels of cool. As if anyone can define me what is cool or what the hell adult alternative is any more. And Jay Z's "On to the Next One" is one of those songs, made to any of these kinetic and imaginative moments.

On to the next one...meaning sandwiches.

On to the next one...meaning problems. Because as soon as I put our one fire at work I get another one. 

On to the next one...meaning little errands ticked off the back of the envelope.  Milk, tortillas, grapes, yup got them all.

This is also the song playing as I walked into the pawn shop next to the cycling gym. A lot of these ABC Songs are the Soul Cycle style jams. Funny that I haven't ridden a bike since sophomore year of college and have the body of someone already past the point of no return. And I keep my head low and eyes down because this song and the gym will make me think of all the people at work that I know use this gym.

I hoped I wouldn't run into them. Or be caught in eye line. But there is this song and I can imagine them tossing their arms off the handles to tie back hair into an errant high ponytail. Three colored sneakers with the little air cushions inside of them and snake skin printed purple yoga pants. Please don't dismiss this as pure attraction. Its not "horny on main" all the time. Its that awkwardness of meeting people who are essentially strangers outside the usual confines. Imagine seeing a moose in a Mediterranean chaparral by the sea. Like that. The weird difference between them trying to get better and stay healthy and me trying to sell a gold ring and hoping there is enough to then get a bagel on the way home. Like that.  They need to start playing "Why Can't We Be Friends" because I want to make it out of here un embarrassed. 

A Bumper For Being Bored

 Sometimes a coworker will accessorize a spring dress with a leather or jean jacket and it fires about a dozen tongue twisting mental images. I want to say "You look nice" but I would say that each day in the spring until it gets creepy. So I then imagine it as one of the lost reveries that punctuate my meetings. The forced phony kindness of listening to a client's story. The gnawing dullness of circular discussions that go back two predecessors into the past.

And Jacket Lady will then materialize with boots and some elbow length forearm guards and a sword. And her hair tied up in these tight braids running the back of her head. Her then she slide down the zig zag railings on the heels of her shoes and leaps onto the back of a futuristic motorcycle. One of those angular items like the cycle from Akira where everything is nestled into the central chassis. And I then imagine that Akira style slide dragging the sword behind her with her off hands so there is smoke, spark, and heats. And she circle the lot looking badass and waylaying rows of entrenched spiked cyborgs that have dug in between cars. 

There is that guy (what's his face from state compliance?) and his pearly white Subaru Outback next to the minivan driven by the single guy in finance. Subaru guy crouches behind his wheel well when the cyborg brandishes a laser but then comes this blur. Red from the dress, black from the leather jacket, blue from the bike and finally that white hot sunbeam of the sword. Then parts scattered on the lot.

This is the stuff I think about when bored. Jacket Lady cartwheeling off the bike and then slashing and dodging away the bits and blows of this crab squid kaiju. A monster that just burst from underneath the playground across the street and began catapulting the ailanthus trees growing from in between each house lot. And after the slicing there are sticky pools of slime on the pavement and Jacket Lady standing in the middle, panting but never flustered, with the leather epaulets on her jacket unflapped and always looking poised. Always looking nice.