35\u00a0 bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds<\/p>\n
History changes the past.\u00a0 Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.\u00a0 I knew this\u00a0because my mother told me so.\u00a0 I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or any of the darker comic fare.\u00a0 Like many kids I hid the Superman and others inside my stacks of Tarzans.\u00a0 Also, like many in those days, when Marvel comics came out I was a teen-ager and Mom was no longer a taste-maker in my world.\u00a0 The Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Silver Surfer and my personal favorite, Dr. Strange became staples in my library alongside War and Peace, Crime and Punishment.<\/p>\n
Only in the past couple of months have I learned why comics were bad.\u00a0 Fredric Wertham, a German born immigrant and psychiatrist, saw Superman and the superhero ilk as sub rosa evocations of the \u00dcbermensch, Nietzsche’s man who transcended morality and who Nazi’s believed justified their crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, all I can say is, that Fredric must not have read a Superman comic.\u00a0 Superman fought for Truth, Justice and the American Way.\u00a0 Any kid who watched the TV program could tell you that.\u00a0 Batman was too troubled to be an ubermensch or an undermensch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This history has changed my past.\u00a0 I always thought it was just a pacifist quirk of Mom’s that she restricted my comic reading, after all I learned from her to carry bugs outside in a kleenex and liberate them.\u00a0 But no, it was another parenting influence, like Dr. Spock, only this one was a psychiatrist who probably believed Freud had it right after all.\u00a0 It helps me see Mom as a parent, a person searching for advice on how to raise her children, how to keep them from harmful influences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Boy, when I think of the fifties I realize how few really harmful influences\u00a0seemed available, at least in Alexandria, Indiana.\u00a0 No\u00a0 rap.\u00a0 Few drugs.\u00a0 They weren’t on our radar.\u00a0 An STD might have been an additive for gasoline.<\/p>\n
I began watching horror and science fiction movies as soon as I could scrape $.25 together to spend on my own.\u00a0 I don’t know why Mom never stopped me from seeing those.\u00a0 Or, maybe I didn’t tell her.\u00a0 I can’t recall and she died when I was 17 so I never got a chance to ask her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
35\u00a0 bar steady 30.04 2mph WSW dewpoint 26 Spring \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Gibbous Moon of Winds History changes the past.\u00a0 Comic books were bad, bad, bad when I was a kid.\u00a0 I knew this\u00a0because my mother told me so.\u00a0 I could read Tarzan and a couple of others I can’t recall, but never Batman, Superman, or … Continue reading History Changes the Past<\/span>