Old Scores

Reading indeed fueled my escapism ... but my biggest reading guilty pleasure was ... magazines and comic books .. and by magazines I mean Mad Magazine .. Cracked .. and National Lampoon (this one a bit later) .. and by comic books I mean ... Disney ... Batman .. Superman .. and Marvel.

While I loved to read .. my retention has always been lower than average ... so the books I read satisfied the moment ... but the visual frames of the comic books lasted a long, long time .. I don't remember the first comic book I read .. but I am willing to bet it came from Bernard Lundy .. where all such revelations were sourced .. 

I remember having a box of them ... the box was the same size as the comic books plus 1/2 inch on each side plus about 12 inches high .. that made them portable .. which means I could take them with me if I wanted to trade them with someone .. which I did often ... 

Now Marvel comics were like The Beatles ... there was music before The Beatles .. and then there was music after The Beatles ... they changed everything ... actually .. the world's attention to them changed everything ... they had the same impact on society as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison ... 

Marvel comics were the same ... there were comics before Marvel .. and then there was Marvel .. and Marvel became the future of comics ... it was a unique combination of superior artwork .. superior storytelling .. and superior heroes and anti-heroes ... all infused with classic greek theatrical themes of hubris, pathos, nemesis and triumph and tragedy. I learned more from reading those comics than in any english studies class .. .and that is why the movies and tv shows sourced from this material is superior to anything out there right now ... 

Mad Magazine and Cracked ... these were my New York Times and Washington Post ... they wrote the way my mind worked ... and to me they came from the same place as the world in my head ... this is where things were normal for me ... now I had a source that confirmed my world view ...

Segue ...

My mother's sister and family would stop over at our house on the way to Nova Scotia in the summer to visit and the either take the ferry to Digby or drive around ... this time they drove around and took my mother and me with them. We stopped somewhere for gas and I bought three magazines ... Mad, Cracked and probably a Marvel comic book. I read them the rest of the way and so did my cousins. My mother went on and on about this to me ... after we arrived ... me buying the magazines and everyone else reading them ... as if I was being naive and a fool and being taken advantage of ... 

This memory has been brought up more than once over the years ... my mother has what I call a score keeper personality ... it is simply part of who she is ... this trait has spoiled family occasions over the years ... out of nowhere ... the past gets replayed when you least expect it ... and you are just looking for a way out ... my way out back in the day was  ... Mad .. Cracked ... and Marvel ... for a while ... but then you look for different means .. 

Phil (18 December 2020 - San Patricio de Melaque - 8:04 PM)

Krome Koan - 'They say I have ADHD ... they just don't understand ... oh look ... the new Cracked'