My dear departed father could not have known what he had set in
motion that day. All he did was bring was give his son his very first comic book. And had he known the consequences of his actions, he would
probably never have given me that copy of Dreadstar
#4. After all, he was a devout Catholic, he went to mass every weekend -- with
or without his wife and kids. Little did he know that he wasn’t merely turning
his son into a comic nerd, an obsessive collector and scholar of useless lore.
He was setting the stage for unbelief.
That’s right, comics made me an atheist. Well, technically
an agnostic. But that word is so weenie.
It didn’t happen right away. Suspension of disbelief isn’t
something that kids bother with. What do the laws of physics, simple
rationality, and giant plot holes matter? All I knew was that X-Men and Superman were awesome. Who cared that they made little sense? Sure Lois Lane should have recognized that Clark Kent without his glasses --
I’m sure at some point Clark had taken them off around the office -- but is
there a single prepubescent kid who bother questioning such flights of fancy?
When you spend two-thirds of your day immersed in fantasy, whether playing Thundercats during recess or reading Detective Comics in a tree, the thin line
between belief and disbelief is no line at all.
My parents sent me to Catholic school. Soon enough,
belief became an all too important issue. Creation, the Immaculate Conception,
the Holy Trinity, Transubstantiation, the Resurrection of the Dead: that’s a
lot of consequential and scary stuff for a kid to absorb. But belief came easily.
My parents weren’t hardcore Catholics by any means. In
retrospect, they were quite liberal. My mother always claimed that all
religions were basically the same, but we were Catholic more as a cultural matter,
i.e. Basque = Catholic. (And because other religions, in her view, sucked.) Her own
religiosity involved decorating the house with rosaries and Virgin Mary
figurines, as well as making us drink holy water from Lourdes when we got sick. My father, whose political views were steeped in French socialism,
was always rather dismissive of anyone in authority, especially those “goddamn
priests.” He was adamant that we not go to confession after our First Reconciliation. "Tell God you sins," he'd say, "not no goddamn priest." He did like our parish priest, because Father Mike talked about
football and baseball during sermons. That’s probably why he went to mass every week, though he
would later claim he had to “pray for his son who doesn’t believe in nothing.”
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Being a Catholic primed me in many ways for becoming a comic
nerd: there was a whole universe of superpowered characters to obsess over and the eternal struggle of good vs. evil, not to mention objects to collect, all of which was mysterious and wondrous. I often felt sorry for my few Protestant friends, whose religion seemed hokey, unimaginative, and boring. We had legions of
angels battling demons, saints with superpowers, sacred talismans and statues
that cried blood. We had mystery, we had magic, in our religion. Beat that with your sola fide and lame-ass Christian
rock.
By the time I was ten, I was devouring not only comics, but
religious books as well. Not complex treaties on theology, but The Lives of Saints. In fact, I even had
religious comics. Not the schlock that Jack Chick produced -- though I would
become a fan of those in high school in an ironic manner -- but actual Marvel
Comics biographies of Jesus and Pope John Paul II. The local library had books
on angelogy and Jewish myths that augmented the Church-sanctioned tomes
available to me at school and at St. Mary’s Catholic Supplies.
Soon, I was a learned believer. But I had
yet to learn how to suspend disbelief.
My comic reading eventually involved systematizing Marvel's and DC's mythologies into my religious worldview. It was easy for the most part
because Catholics get to believe in science -- and 99% of what I read was
science based. Gamma rays, kryptonite, super serums. Like evolution, these were
all perfectly compatible with the Catholic faith, which worked for me: X-Men
were among my favorites. Magic was also readily absorbed, so I got to read Dr. Strange.
Granted, the Avengers counted a god among their
founding members. But Thor didn’t matter: I never read the Avengers.
Then along came The
Sandman. I was 12 years old and still a believer when I picked up Sandman Special: The Song of Orpheus at
Waldenbooks. Though I don’t remember what caused me to buy it, the story was unlike
anything that I had ever read. It was lyrical, magical, mesmerizing. Within a
month, I had bought every issue I could get my hands on. Among them were the
issues that comprised The Season of Mists.
Things changed for me after reading this storyline.
“The Song of Orpheus” didn’t affect me as profoundly as did The Season of Mists. Perhaps the D'Aulaires
books on Greek and Norse mythology had prepared me for Orpheus's decent into Hades. But there
was something deeply troubling about angels, Norse and Japanese gods, the
personifications of order and chaos, and Dream conferencing together in hell -- the same hell I the priest talked about, the one that was real. What? There was only one God. How could Odin and angels -- God's angels -- exist within the same universe? How was I to come to terms with this scene, which I knew was awesome, into my religious worldview?
Unless, maybe, just maybe, the Catholic faith itself was
nothing but a set of myths like those of the Greeks and the Norse. Perhaps the Bible was
nothing more than fiction -- and far less appealing fiction than Neil Gaiman’s
masterpiece.
Unable to suspend disbelief -- and unable to stop reading The Sandman -- I stopped believing.
O.K. I think by this point in my life I was quite able to
suspend disbelief. And, to be honest, I can’t quite remember why I felt the
need to force Gaiman’s comic into the small spaces that Catholicism provided
me. Maybe I was going through a unrelated and sincere crisis of faith and The Sandman allowed me to project my angst and questions into
something more grounded, into something that truly mattered to me: comic books. Comics opened my mind and allowed me to discard all that which I had hitherto believed.
Over the next few years my questioning turned into outright
rebellion. In high school I discovered Nietzsche and Camus, which provided intellectual rationales for my godless worldview. My disbelief was
now grounded in existential and philosophical concerns, in indentifying the simple
logical consistencies and moral incongruities that apostates of all types have grappled with. And I felt liberated.
It began with comic books. Not personal tragedy, failed hopes, the
experience of war. It was comic books that turned me into an unbeliever.
Sorry, aita.