Uncanny Avengers #4

I am an adult who reads comic books. For some reason there is opprobrium attached to this distinction. But comic books are no longer the juvenile media they were when I read them as a child. The superhero titles published by the two industry giants, Marvel and DC, are for the most part morally complex, well written and aimed at an adult audience; if they are targeting juveniles, they're juveniles who can, for instance, stomach abstruse details about Norse mythology and comprehend theoretical physics. I've learned a lot about accepting pain and moving forward by reading The Punisher, Marvel's ongoing saga of nihilist vigilante Frank Castle.

But before I say anything else, check out this page, written by Rick Remender with art by John Cassaday, from Uncanny Avengers #4. The Red Skull is breaking it down for Captain America:

This is something that could have only appeared in an underground comic when I was a kid. If the text is too small to read from the scan, here's what the Red Skull is telling Cap:

Seeing your nation with fresh eyes my dear Captain America, I assure you --  

You've lost your war. 

It just happened so slowly you grew accustomed to it.

But if you look to your heart, you will realize the truth. 

You're no longer fighting to preserve this rancid nation -- 

You're fighting to change it back. 

To add some semblance of sanity to an incurably sick culture that breeds only parasites, greedy polluters and psychotic madmen. 

A hopeless struggle you continue out of habit.

You imagine that if you fight hard enough, one day you will wrest control from the bankers who own you and return this nation to its former glory. 

Clean streets. Honest neighbors. Attractive wives. Green lawns. 

But in reality this is, and will remain, your America. 

An uneducated population fixated on competition, material wealth and voyeurism. 

Violent monsters doused in antibiotics to offset their diet of sugary sweet drink and mounds of carcinogenic cow flesh! 

THIS IS WHAT YOU FIGHT FOR!

Damn. That's a fine Marvel comic book.

I started reading comic books again four years ago, around the same time that I started having trouble with my last girlfriend. At first I just wanted to make an inventory of an old comic collection that I had stowed in the closet. I started reading some titles, like the Black Panther vs. Killmonger saga in Jungle Action, that had left an impression on me growing up in the Bay Area in the 1970's. Next thing I knew I was going to a comic shop. As my relationship imploded it was nice to sojourn with the heroes of my youth.

I'm going to try to make Saturday the day I post about comic books. So far we've got a few regular features on this blog. We've got a Friday evening "Hippies vs. Punks" post; a Sunday morning movie review of a recently-released-to-DVD Hollywood film; a Sunday evening archive project, working through letters I wrote soon after being belched from the academy into New York City in the late 1980's; -- to go along with the daily quotidian commentary of reading the news and listening to music and running and going to work.

I recently caught up on all the back issues of Thor and Journey Into Mystery. It chewed up weekend after weekend in February and March, but I'm glad I took the time. Kieron Gillen's run on Journey Into Mystery was impressive; it featured the reborn boy Loki as the protagonist, and it managed to capture the pure-heart mischievousness of youth; it managed to make the star of the comic book the putative prototypical comic book reader, a boy.

Marvel's Thor turned fifty last year. In this fiftieth anniversary year of the Kennedy assassination I will mention that an epiphany I had during the millennium when I was deep in the reeds of the Kennedy assassination literature is that there is a connection between Jack Kirby's "The Mighty Thor" and Jack Kennedy. Thor's face as drawn by Kirby looks too similar to JFK's for it to be an accident. Kirby is saying something. What?