Results of Ruminations

When I talked about dual identities a while ago, I focused on the Batman and a little on the Hulk. I had originally planned on incorporating an analysis of how Peter Parker and Spider-Man intersect as identities, but the essay was going too long by that point. I cut the stuff--which, for me, means highlighting the text and pressing Delete . So whatever I was thinking about apropos of Peter/Spidey, it's gone now. However, I'm at the precipice of beginning another school year  and I've been feeling incipient stirrings of what I can only assume is the (apparently) real phenomenon of a mid-life crisis. My parents were pretty steady, stay-the-course kind of parents, so I don't have a lot of up-close context for these feelings, but I've been struggling a lot with what I understand of myself, my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my realities. One of the things that I've always used as part of my identity, with varying degrees of severity, is my obsession with Spid...

Why do we tell stories? Yeah, yeah, I know: To make sense of the world, to preserve our culture and heritage, to explain what we could be. There are lots of reasons, and a lot of them also make sense (which is nice), but I've been thinking a lot about stories lately. Maybe it's because it's late but I'm worried the insomnia that's been plaguing me the last three nights is lurking behind me; maybe it's because my own sense of self-worth and legacy resides in twenty-six fragile letters, pushed back and forth on my keyboard millions of times and my stories remain almost entirely unread; maybe it's because the late July night outside of my now-open window is cooler than July usually is, and that feels like a detail that ought to be remembered somehow, if even in a nebulous, digital way. Maybe there are more reasons for telling stories than there are stories to be told, or maybe because there are really only a handful of each, but the veneer is different enou...

Considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe's version of the Avengers, I'd have to say that my favorite of the collection of heroes is the Hulk. I particularly enjoy Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, both in his portrayal of Banner and the Hulkalo look. There's a lot of anger here. ( Source ) It's also interesting to note that the MCU cannon includes the events of The Incredible Hulk , complete with Thunderbolt Ross, a disgraced general, eventually getting the Secretary of State position in the Captain America movies. Despite that, the Abomination and   Leader  (who I had to look up on the internet because I'm not as well versed in Hulk comics as I wish I were) are open characters who are part of the MCU and haven't shown up since their origins back in 2008. Admittedly, The Incredible Hulk , which I watched last night, is not the strongest entry into the MCU. There isn't anything egregiously wrong  with it but there isn't a lot that's right  about it, e...

If you don't subscribe to Netflix, here's a write up about the documentary Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press from The Atlantic .  The documentary is pretty good, though, if you're sensitive to profanity and frank discussions of awkward experiences, you may not enjoy it. There are some problems (like most documentaries, it manipulates via music what you're supposed to feel throughout certain sections, and the second half feels too heavy on "broad strokes" style storytelling since the ostensible focal point is Hulk Hogan, and that section is finely detailed. Still, it's a worthwhile viewing. I don't want to talk about free speech, though. I'm interested in a strange, protracted argument that Terry Bollea (the man most people identify as Hulk Hogan) gives during his time on the witness stand. The details are embarrassing, but it isn't the details that Bollea is giving that made me sit up a little, it was the crux of the argument: According ...

I've long recognized that I have dichotomous tastes. A life-long fan of comics (mostly superhero comics, but there are some others that I appreciate), video games, and parts of anime, I've grown up subsisting on a steady diet of the fantastic. The Chronicles of Prydain  formed a background of middle grade and young adult fantasy (since Harry Potter  wasn't around--and when he showed up, I was anti-Potter), with Anne McCaffery's worlds filling in the gaps. I watched some Star Trek  with my mom, thought Star Wars  was fine (until it wasn't, ruined by constant viewings of the VHS tapes by my little brother--to the point it bred a bit of antipathy in me about them), and I read Animorphs . Both science fiction and fantasy swirled throughout much of my early life. Because of my obsessive personality, I definitely focused on Spider-Man a lot more than other properties, relying on that fusion of science fiction/fantasy that, frankly, has always been the most comfortable ...

I'm listening to All the Single Ladies , a tracing of feminism in America. I'm only a couple hours into it, so I'm not really reviewing the book, but listening to some of the struggles that women have had to deal with in the United States reminded me of another book about important steps in the feminism movement: Wonder Woman. The book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman , is an interesting read that's focused more on the bizarre, somewhat eccentric life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. With the new movie (please be good, please be good) on the horizon, now's a great time to get into what was happening in the background, before the comic became one of the mainstays of the DC brand. The book, however, treats the personal, familial dynamics more thoroughly than as an analysis of the character, which is fine (though I was hoping for more of the latter when I read it), so there were a lot of different pieces that were unexpected in the story. Fo...

Self-realization happens slowly. I have dim memories of being five-or-thereabouts and raising my arms in exultant joy that I was eating pancakes for dinner. I remember seeing myself in the dark reflection of the sliding glass door that led to the backyard of the Provo home that I had assumed we would live in until I died. Now that I see my second son's mannerisms, I believe that I tilted my head to one side the way he does, and I don't know if my memory is incorrect or not. One of the things that I dreamed of becoming some day was Spider-Man. I read novels about him, bought comics on occasion, and watched the '90s cartoon show fanatically. My own brown (ish) hair, white skin, and almost-kind-of-like-his body type only propelled me further into the fandom. If I married a redhead, I'd like to think it wasn't some vestigial sublimation of a too-obsessive childhood desire and that I was attracted to my future wife for other, more significant reasons. (Because I did, i...

A couple of years ago, Salt Lake City developed a hankering for some Comic Con (or ComiCon), ushering in a new wave of geek ephemera and focus on fandom. While my wife and I missed the first one or two, we decided to attend one of the cons when some of the Lord of the Rings  actors (particularly Sean Astin) showed up for the experience. Gayle put together a dress that looked like Arwyn from The Return of the King  and I wore some Hogwarts robes. We got a picture with Sean and generally had a good time. Since then, we've attended each convention, always going in costume. We've worn steampunk, Hogwarts, Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, and Queen Elizabeth with her Shakespeare. The boys sometimes come, wearing superhero costumes, dressing as Leonardo da Vinci, and even dressing up as dinosaurs. In short, we go and we participate and we enjoy the experience. Now feeling fairly familiar with how a convention works--how much there is to see and enjoy, how much time one is standin...

I was at a writing conference, attending a panel in which the presenter (who wrote the fascinating The Mythology of Superheroes   and is a Ph.D. of comic books) was discussing the problems of female representation in comic books. One of the older (white-haired) attendees groused that it only made sense for women to have traditional roles in comics because they are biologically weaker than men. Despite the fact I was not the presenter*, I couldn't help but bark out, "But they have super powers! They can punch through walls! There's no strength difference in comic books!" The point was, I thought, pretty clear: The beauty of fiction is that things that in our own world from which we cannot escape--expectations of woman timidity, softness, and "weakness"--is irrelevant. Women in fiction, particularly speculative, fantasy, and sequential art have the potential to be completely emancipated from any crusty concepts of traditional gender roles, biological expecta...

I have loved superheroes since I was little. I have a memory of finding a length of yarn at my grandma's house and begging my mom to tie it around my wrist so that I could have a spider web shooting out of it. If I recall correctly, I was bothered that she put it in a cute little bow, and the length left over wasn't as long as I had hoped, but I do know that I ran around, pretending to attach the excess yarn to the walls and swinging through my grandmother's home. In the sixth grade, my world completely changed and Spider-Man , the cartoon show, debuted. And, just like that, I was hooked. (I would say "I was caught in the web from then on," but that would be cliched and too much of a dad pun, so I'll leave it at "hooked".) The vast majority of my childhood--including up through my early college days--found me reading Spider-Man novels* (I still have them, and they fill up an entire bookshelf on their own) or writing and drawing my own Spider-Man ...