The Write Reasons

There aren’t a lot of things better than rediscovering some good shit from back in the day.  I just reread most of Frank Miller’s first run on Daredevil from back in the 80′s.  I can’t adequately express how exciting those books were.  Without this comic, there likely would never have been the seminal game-changing works of 1986, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (also Frank Miller, as we all well know).  The writing was complex, but it never lost sight  of the importance of entertainment, of being fun.  The art was raw and hyperkinetic.  More than almost any other comic before or since, you smelled the spilled blood, and felt the knuckles against your jaw.

Both as a reader and as a creator, I can see how these qualities are taken for granted now, and how comics have become less about the unbridled fun, and more about a certain…self-expression.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a creative person (I balk at the appellation artist, because there are qualitative overtones in that word that I cannot bring myself to accept), and I understand the importance of telling stories that resonate with me, stories that I want to tell.

But I also want to tell stories that the audience wants to read.  I want to make people feel things, I want my readers to emote.  I want to create that sense of excitement that I felt today as I reread Daredevil’s incredible battles with Bullseye, and I want to make my readers (or viewers) ache with the kind of loss that Matt Murdock made me feel as he accepted that his first love was dead.

I’m not sure that Frank Miller, who I absolutely idolize, sees his work this same way now.  I think his stuff has become much more personally driven.  All-Star Batman and Robin almost satirizes his own earlier works, and I know that his upcoming Holy Terror, Batman! is a direct byproduct of the fact that he lived in New York when 9/11 happened.  There is no shame in this man’s game.  He’s a legend in the industry and he has earned the right to create his art as he sees fit.  And he will deservedly have an audience for it.

I just miss the days when he was the baddest-ass in mainstream comics.  Byrne’s FF, Simonson’s Thor, Wolfman and Perez on Teen Titans, Levitz and Giffen on Legion of Superheroes, Miller’s Daredevil…these were the books I grew up with…comics in the 80s.  Creatively, this is where I come from.  This is my home.  And I guess you can’t go home again.  Dang it.

Back On The Table

Immediately after my wedding, but before the pictures and the reception, my former wife and I raised a glass in toast to the gathered guests.  I delivered the toast, and the essence of it was that she and I were…and this is a word I use only in this context…blessed to have such good people in our lives.  I can’t and shouldn’t speak for my former wife anymore, but this is a sentiment I’ve always had, and is one that I continue to have now.  I have always been fortunate to attract good people to myself.  My friends are the best people in the world.

In my experience, one of the sad but unavoidable byproducts of settling into monogamous bliss is the inevitable increase in separation between one and one’s friends.  The more serious you get, the more marked this separation becomes.  It’s not that you love your friends any the less, it’s simply that your life has changed…it is no longer exclusively yours.  (And if you don’t believe this, you should not get married.)  And in some cases, you have to make a choice.  Sometimes your friends have needs that you cannot meet if you are to meet the needs of your significant other.  And hands down, your significant other comes first.  I still believe that, because your significant other is your premier friend, your most important person.

But my former wife and I are no longer together, obviously.  As sad as that is, I’m a glass half-full kinda guy.  The dissolution of my marriage has made me realize there were things…and people…that I took off of the table for my wife’s sake.  There’s no reason those things, and those people, can’t be put back into play.

Truth is, I’ve always wanted to live in New York City and I’ve always wanted to live in London.  Those were absolutely not options in Natalie’s world, so they stopped being options in mine when we took the vows.  But as a single man, those balls are put back into play.  Maybe I’ll make those moves some day.  I don’t want them as badly as I once did…my roots in Los Angeles run pretty deep now…but they still intrigue me.  Those moves are back on the table.

Far more importantly, though, I have reconnected with and spent time with so many of my friends in the wake of my separation and impending divorce.  For me, many of my friends are more than friends.  I have one friend with three children, three daughters, and those little (and not-so-little) girls are family to me.  This friend and I had been separated for years, in part her doing, and in part mine, because of my marriage.  And now we are close once more.  As I get older, I realize that the circumstances of my life have possibly put children out of the picture for me.  I hope not, but you never know.  And those little girls, who call me Uncle Justin or Uncle J…they mean the world to me.  Because they are good people born of a good person, one of my best friends.

But my nieces are hardly the only reconnections I’ve made.  A lot of great people have reentered my life.  One friend is walking my path of separation and divorce, and in similar fashion.  Like me, that guy grew more distant from his friends while in his marital family, but now he is able to grab his friendships once more, and with both hands.

Very few people understand what it is to have friends like mine, or to be a friend like me.  I feel bad for those people.  My friends make me feel loved when I am alone.  They lend me strength when I feel weak.  And they fill the time we spend together with joy and laughter.  I am truly…and I do not use this word lightly or by accident…blessed.

Gatorade for my Soul

Twice this summer, I’ve been to the beach.  Not just any beach, either, but the dog beach at Huntington.  Now, I’m not really an animal person.  I had some dogs as a kid, and the families had some cats.  I had a few fish at one point.  But I don’t need to own pets.  However, the dog beach is enough to make me reconsider this.

Look, everybody loves the beach.  The sun, the sand, the water…it doesn’t take a saint for these things to touch you in a very real way.  If you’re not a Scrooge, you probably really enjoy the sights and sounds of children as they frolic in the water.  It’s hard not to be affected by this in some way.  But Huntington is a DOG BEACH, where people can bring their dogs and have them off the leash.

It’s the most joyous pandemonium you have ever seen.  These dogs, which probably mostly live indoors, only enjoying the outdoors at the whim of their owners, and then all too often on a leash…these dogs go APE-SHIT.  It is pure joy, undistilled delight.  They bark at one another, they jump in the water, the shy away from the water, they protect their towels and blankets and umbrellas…and they basically get to be dogs.  It’s awesome.

It was made all the better because I was there with some of the people I love best in the world, one of whom is my little niece/goddaughter/good friend’s kid.  She’s eight, and if she were any cuter, she’d be a puppy herself.  She’s afraid of the water, but she can’t stay away from it.  She jumps over the smallest of waves, and rages and kicks at the water, daring it to get her…which of course it  does.  And I fret about undertow and her fears…and I can feel myself becoming a better man, a healthier man, through my love for her and her sisters and her mom and her aunt(s).

In a year of disappointment and pain, a year where I have walked a road in the long desert of recovery and rediscovery…days like Monday, true holidays…days like that are Gatorade for my soul.