What Comics Taught Me
I consider myself to be very lucky.
Growing up, I’d be given a legal pad, pen, and *maybe* a pack of crayons and left to my own devices. Whether I was being disruptive at church, tagging along at a sister’s dance recital, or my parents simply wanted a few moments of quiet, the blank pages and opportunities they presented were enough to keep me occupied for hours. This unstructured boredom bred creativity, and it has taken an embarrassing amount of time to draw the distinction between those years of scribbling and my current ambitions of a career in creative.
As I’d jot and doodle, I would often find myself drawing comics. Superhero conflicts involving high-flying characters and, truthfully, very profound plotlines for an eight-to-ten-year-old. I drew inspiration from my dad’s comic collection, some favorites being the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Thor, and Spider-Man. Occasionally, pop culture icons such as Mario and Bugs Bunny would make appearances, generally seeking some sort of revenge or protecting the less fortunate.
The more comics I wrote, the more I read (looked at the pictures and skimmed dialogue), until I had a good enough understanding of plot, setting, and character to create my own comic universe(s). This is what it means to be a kid, and I’m sure at least someone reading this has done something similar. But for me, it paved the beginning of a path that I still walk on over a decade later. My childhood obsession with comics helped choose my interests, hobbies, college major, and career aspirations. Today, I decided to walk back down that path and take a closer look at the surroundings.
Comics taught me the most about characters. The medium of hand-drawn images aided only by speech bubbles branded the faces, silhouettes, costumes, body language, and (forgive me) aura of each character into my mind, just as it did for millions of others. Eventually I learned I was not an artist and would not be Alex Ross, but as time and writing goals progressed, I continued to imagine every character in this medium. I had to see them in comic panels as I wrote so that the reader could as well. This visual ideation has helped develop stories, essays, and concepts over the years as creating has grown from a hobby to a desired career.
Aside from imagery, comic book characters were my introduction to understanding character arcs. Spider-Man and his dual-identity turmoil, Batman and his trauma, the X-Men and mutants coexisting with humans – I was introduced to heavy topics and characterization that shaped the way I thought about characters, which sticks with me even when I’m not writing stories. For example, I characterize marketing personas in the same manner when working as an ad copywriter. Whether in a social post, out-of-home display, or radio spot, the ad was written for this persona – this character – that had its own conflicts and motivations, just as a superhero in a comic. Despite taking creative strategy, copywriting, design, and storytelling courses, this form of characterization transitioning marketing persona to the actual concept has never been part of the curriculum. Instead, it’s become a step in my creative process that has emerged from my comic book affinity.
Comics also taught me something that was recently repeated by my creative writing professor: make it weirder. My childhood doodles reflect the standard of superhero comics by making the nonsensical sensical, the unknown familiar, and the familiar unknown. I often think about the Silver Age Fantastic Four run and the grandiose weirdness that accompanied their adventures. Some of my favorites were their cosmic expeditions, elevated by Jack Kirby’s art, to strange worlds that were built from a single thought as if it were an atom. From the legal pad panels to short stories in high school to “bring me 50 lines by the end of the day”, comics inspired me to push ideas a little further, even those that weren’t about fighting aliens or traveling the galaxy. I use this philosophy in school and my advertising and PR positions, remembering that even the most tedious prompts and briefs still present an opportunity to show the reader something interesting and make the audience feel something new.
In my experience, creativity is a muscle, one that needs to be worked the same as biceps or quads. Though I can’t say for certain whether reading or writing comics is what made mine stronger over time, I do know that either way you get out what you put in. I still have pages – no – books full of character profiles, backstories, full-page panels, costume designs, and world-building. I reread my favorite runs, Infinity Gauntlet (1991) and Born Again (1986), gaining inspiration from their ability to even be created. Without those early tools to explore my own ideas, and later discovering superheroes and comics, who knows if I’d be on the same trajectory.
I’m nowhere near a comic book writer, and even further from an artist. But that’s not my relationship with comics. Instead, they’re a form of expression. I personally struggle to identify a medium more accessible than comics that does a better job of capturing ideas. When writing client copy, I think in panels. When constructing a short story, I draw the characters (poorly) and show myself how they interact with each other. When I need inspiration, I pick up a Silver Surfer issue that I bought for 89 cents to remind myself of the possibilities of human creativity. So yes, I consider myself to be very lucky, lucky to have stumbled into a seamless and effective mode of exercising my creativity and leading me to consider a career in which I can be paid to use it. For that reason, comics are sick.
P.S.
Can you tell I think Marvel > DC?
