As long as you live...

"Remember this as long as you live: whenever you meet up with anyone who is trying to cause trouble between people...anyone who tries to tell you that a man can't be a good American because he's a Catholic or a Jew, a Protestant or whatever: you can be pretty sure he's a rotten American himself. Not only a rotten American, but a rotten human being! Don't ever forget that!"

So spoke Superman, warning youngsters about the so-called "Guardians of America" in a story entitled "The Hate Mongers Organization", from the Superman radio show in 1946, as quoted in the excellent new book "Flights of Fantasy -- The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV's Adventures of Superman" by Michael J. Hayde.

The Spirit is Willing, but...

The recent film of “The Spirit” is not really a story, to paraphrase the character's creator Will Eisner, “for little boys.” In other words, it is not for comic book fans who expect to see a faithful rendering of the Eisner classic strip. They really ought to know better. How many films based on comic book properties made it to the screen without revision and revamping? When will they learn?

Nevertheless, this type of revamping is sacrilege in some quarters. Those aware of comic book history revere Eisner, not just as an artist and writer who created his own characters – most notably, The Spirit – but who put a lot of thought into the form of the stories he put to paper. The limitless possibilities he saw of how to put together a story in comic book pages makes his work one of the few inarguable cornerstones of the industry.

What many forget is that the form itself in Eisner’s work more often than not overshadowed substance. Moreover, when Eisner went for the substance later on in life, trying to tell the Big Story with capitals B and S, he became to me a boring preacher instead of a stimulating artist. (Think Sullivan trying to make "O Brother Where Art Thou" instead of "Ants in Their Pants 1939"...)

For the star of this story: Eisner himself never really fleshed out the Spirit as a full-blown character, but rather used him as a tailor’s dummy on which to design his latest fashion. Mysteries, comedies, westerns, science fiction, combat, and romance: all fictional genres eventually made their way into the Spirit’s life “story.” The only constants: he got beat up a lot, he generally met incredibly motivated and beautiful women, and he always wore a blue mask and a red tie.

So here comes writer/director Frank Miller with his film revisioning of Eisner’s character. Miller is a successful comic book writer/artist, who not only knew Eisner well (a book of their conversations on the art of comics was published a while back) but who also creates stories of style over substance. His Sin City stories probably claim the largest fame -- best known by those not comic book fans -- as Robert Rodriguez made them into a largely successful film a couple of years ago.

To Miller’s credit, this is not Sin City II, and “The Spirit” is not a shot-by-shot recreation of Eisner’s stories. He has created a stimulating amalgamation of his work and Eisner’s and for frustratingly long moments in this film, it successfully wows us with a campy piece of visually entertaining work. Where it bogs down is in the all-too-frequent scenes where tedious dialogue goes on and on and on and on without much in the way of something visually interesting to sustain us.

That is the crime here and the root of my frustration. The entertaining parts are extremely entertaining, but because of the bad parts and the extremely bad reviews, not many will know that Miller, like Eisner’s Gerhard Shnobble, knew how to fly in this film. He just did not fly often enough.

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Will Eisner’s The Spirit, to see what all the fuss is about, pick-up “The Best of The Spirit”. It’s a decent sampler of his work with the character. If you would like to see a more successful comic book re-imagining of Eisner’s character, check out both Darwyn Cooke’s excellent modernization and Alan Moore’s “The New Adventures of The Spirit”.

p.p.s. Of course, any book links above should be ignored if you live in the St. Louis area. You don't need any links because you can more-easily visit the friendly folks at Starclipper (see link to the right) who, if they do not already have the books in stock, will be glad to place your order.

And now, we fly off with an Eisner-drawn Shnobble...


BONUS REVIEW: Writer/artist (and Will Eisner fan) Kyle Baker weighs in on the movie.

Things I Read Today

Henning Nelms' "Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers":
"The Japanese define an artist as 'one who has the ability to do more and the will to refrain.' This definition covers showmanship as well. Showmanship adds glamor and drama. However, if we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret."

***

William Gibson's "Spook Country":
"She was fascinated by how things worked in the world, and why people did them. When she wrote about things, her sense of them changed, and with it, her sense of herself."

***

Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis" (Issue #5):
"If your superheroes can't save you, maybe it's time to think of something that can. If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real ...

Was there ever a word you tried to imagine? The sort of word that could remind you who you truly were inside? Maybe it's more than a word ... it's a face, a scent, a voice. Like a memory of a place where someone cared only for you. A name."

To A Wider Universe...

Years ago, I spent a lot more of my time thinking about the artist Jack Kirby and his works. He is still in my thoughts, but even though I am not as manic about figuring out what the big It of his work means, anymore, I still take time in-between reading new stuff to dip back into his work. There are still plenty of unexpected new ideas found in the old stuff.

Anyhow, in celebration of Kirby’s 91st birthday today, you should either order Mark Evanier’s wonderful Kirby biography or, better yet, read some Kirby-created stories.

Guaranteed entertainment and amazing brain food on every page, and maybe, you'll come up with some meanderings in your mind from the experience, something like I did below in some old pondering of his 2001 series for Marvel Comics back in the mid-70s. As said before: I am not sure what Kirby really means, and I am still not quite sure what I mean with the words below. Do not hold that against, Kirby though. Just read some of his stuff for yourself and see where your own mind goes.

***

NEW SEEDS: Kirby's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

“Perhaps here, a way of being may find the why of being...until then, the New Seed decides to seek the answer himself. What if it turned out to be merely -- simple!!” That’s what Kirby wrote in the final page of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, #7, June 1977, the penultimate chapter of his exploration into the ideas he found in Stanley Kubrick’s famous film. To me this is Kirby telling the reader: “You’re the New Seed. I’ve given you something to grow with, so...grow!” But it also warns me, I think, of digging too deep into his plot of ground, earth-bound and above -- that sometimes the most satisfying, most truthful answers are the simple ones. However, what truths, simple or otherwise, did Kirby see in the film? What kindred thoughts stirred him enough to adapt it to comics, but to carry on past the final scene? Here’s my theory...

“The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not the think of it,” Kubrick was quoted in David Anthony Kraft’s essay on the movie, which appeared in the edition of Kirby’s 2001 film adaptation. This thought puts the filmmaker in the same school of art as Kirby who has been deemed an intuitive artist -- a story-teller who makes his artistic decisions by gut instinct.

Or, like the comic book fan in 2001 #6: “There is, in many men, a sense of the dramatic which governs their lives. In Harvey Norton this instinct is vital and strong! He acts upon what he feels is the truth, and lets the devil take the hindmost...” Harvey Norton’s life, like the other characters in this series, formed itself dramatically to the “truths” his decisions shaped -- just as Kirby’s instinctual drive toward his own truths forged the shape of how he told their stories and why their stories fit into his ultimate picture.

The ultimate picture, the overwhelming theme, would seem to me to be: imagination is what sets us apart from the beasts and is our first step to “what’s out there”. Our creative urges have been with us from the beginning and it’ll be there to guide us at the end. What we do with it, if anything, is what determines how big our next progressive step into the unknown will be. Any step into the unknown is progress, according to Kirby here, because, “pass” or “fail”, it’s the test of life that must be taken. In addition, it’s the answers to the test for which we quest on this odyssey.

The monolith itself, mysteriously appearing to various people throughout time, signifies to me simply a symbol of the inspiration that spurs us to create -- the act of creation itself being a necessary function to humanity, what’s needed to fill our hungers: from the gnawing physical hunger felt by early man to the ”something more” craved by those with bellies-filled. “Where are we going?” Kirby asks in page 1 of the first issue, and he answers: “Somewhere in the dawn of time, we began --somehow, in these perilous times we keep moving on -- and some time in the future, something will happen to change us! . . .The monolith may be the cause! It does not belong to this world -- yet it does belong to us all!”

The Beast-Killer in issue #1 finds inspiration in the monolith, he comes away with the extra-spark jumpstarting his way to improve his tools and better fill his plate. He runs his own life apart from the pack, the others who “shun the stone-spirit and cannot hear its voice!” His ancestor, Woodrow Decker, stuck on a planetoid and whining about his fate, seems at first to be a strange recipient for inspiration -- “he has the drive for discovery -- but lacks the will to fight...” Then, a strange Kirby-creature appears and attacks, and Kirby writes: “Yet, in the cracks and crevasses of the ruin, there are things which have fought for life -- and survived uncountable eons -- where life should be negated...” Moreover, when it attacks, Decker fights to save his friend. It appears to me that the ruin is not only on the planetoid, but also within Decker himself, and the things that fight for life could include his strength of character. This fight is why he’s able to go on through the monolith for the ‘final’ inspiration.

Like any true artist and others we see go through the monolith, Decker sees things there beyond his comprehension and to survive the experience he must change. “Decker must become something else!!” Kirby writes, if he’s to go forward in his journey of growth and discovery. Then the old self dies and the new self, in the form of the New Seed, is born. “It is not the first of its kind. There have been others. There will always be others, as long as earth breeds human life...”

The next three issues continue this thread and contain their own separate, more complicated story: Vira the She-Demon and her ancestor Vera’s story are connected to the story of Marak and his descendant Marik (and Jalessa) in that the matriarchy established by Vira’s inspiration passes down in time to Jalessa’s authority. And it’s Jalessa’s land and power which Marak seeks to conquer. Vira, Marak and Jalessa all use their inspiration for growth, but while Vera, Vira’s far-future descendant, passes through the monolith like Decker and becomes something more, Marik remains curiously the same. Why he doesn’t become a New Seed is the curiosity: in his final phase he finds again his true love and his mind and soul seem satisfied. Is it because he finds his soul is satisfied, needs nothing more, that he doesn’t go on -- that for the ‘artist’ to continue growing he must remain ‘hungry?’

Next, we meet in issue #7, Harvey Norton, a comic book fan, who, though he finds fantasies easily catered to, remains hungry for something more. His fellow-fans have become almost repugnant to him, a dark reflection of himself, perhaps, that he sees for the first time. The whole world is a fantasyland and Harvey, with inspiration drawn from within by the monolith, realizes “I-It’s not real! It’s film and solar lamps! It’s wave machines and plastic sand! I-I’m a captive -- in a man made cage of illusions -- a world-wide Comicsville -- which has less substance than my own dreams...” In a scene like the famous favorite from NEW GODS #7, Harvey meets the monolith for the second time. His dream of something ‘bigger’ takes him away from Comicsville, out into space where he meets his ‘more’.

His love of comic books serves him well in space. While his fellow fans seemed to be satisfied with seeking only more of the same, repeatedly, Harvey took something else from his fantasies: a heroic ideal.

His final encounter with the monolith spurs on the ‘final’ change, his mutation into a New Seed taking on the trappings of a superhero, Captain Cosmic. Harvey “looks back upon a life of great adventure and a never-ending future of jousting against injustice.” Moreover, “what is the new seed, but man’s admission to a wider universe...”

What is the New Seed? We come full circle to my opening paragraph because it’s in issue #7 that Kirby offers some of the answers. Unlike the other parts, it begins with the creation of a New Seed and we follow its journey. It still learns. It still sees. “Find the reason for being and unlock the secret of the universe! To do this there must be life -- there must be a living will to seek...” The continual quest, the odyssey, the journey is what makes life worth living. To do less, to stop the search, to stop questioning, is when we die as humans because this failure to use our potential, I think Kirby says here, runs contrary to a promise we need to keep.

What more potential could come from this series? Kirby took a turn in issue #8, beginning the saga of Mister Machine and leading into the Machine Man series. It would seem to counter Jon Cooke’s feeling in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #11 that Kirby did not understand H.A.L. from the original movie. This last three-parter explores the soul of a machine and explains, to me, one possibility of why H.A.L. went mad: he wasn’t raised as human.

I don’t know the real reason why Kirby chose (or Marvel wanted him to choose) the 2001 book and I don’t think it’s been explained why the book stopped when it did. Sales? Licensing problems? Whatever the case, I don’t think Kirby needed to go on here. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY remains to me one of the few late Kirby series that gave just enough.

As with most of Kirby’s work, “just enough” is everyone else's cornucopia. Or, in this case, everyone's Monolith.

Gon Today

Ain’t he sweet? Cute, loving, and full of mischievous fun, Gon is definitely the kind of carnivorous little dinosaur it is a pleasure to know. However, if you tick him off (or, in one case, if his temper takes off when he is stuck with a tenacious tick) you might as well say “so long” to life as you knew it.

Nothing stops Gon from getting what he wants, whether it is the biggest fish, a pile of fresh fruit, or the most horrifying revenge you could imagine. Whole forests destroyed and mountains topple down in his wake if that is what it takes to complete Gon's current quest.

Created by Masashi Tanaka, he first appeared in Kodansha's Morning magazine in 1991. These completely wordless stories of a tiny orange dinosaur, anachronistically alone in today's wilderness, draw you effortlessly along with their amazingly lush and detailed illustrations. Frenetically paced action, occasionally slowed down by sometimes-sappy rest stops, mix together well with a dark sense of humor.

Make no mistake about the word “dark” and do not let the cute picture above fool you. There occasionally pop up in Gon stories what some consider overly graphic depictions of violence, but nothing worse than actions frequently seen on Animal Planet -- plenty of ferociously chewing teeth, head-butting and bloodied claws. Gon has a temper. He is not a role model, unless you use his actions to point out how a serenely peaceful scene can be completed destroyed by one person’s temper tantrum.

Not much on the Internet available about Tanaka, and Gon himself seems better known as a playable character in the Playstation Tekken 3 game. DC Comics reprinted several volumes of the Gon stories beginning in 1996, but I have not found any information on whether this collected all of the Gon stories, or whether Tanaka is working on new material with the character. DC began reprinting their reprints last year, but in the original manga flipped format, and there has been more talk about an animated movie.

Speaking of which, thanks to the recent Starclipper blog's Gon posting, I found an “end video” from the Gon chapter in Tekken 3. I never would have imagined Gon animated so faithfully well. If you want a quick look at what the Gon books are like, in spirit and character, this clip tells the tale. For those who are already fans: be prepared to smile.

Inevitable Alterations

The mind searches furiously for a key to it all. What is it? What went wrong? Why? How? The body meanwhile does what it must to survive! Escape is not sought nor desired nor even possible. The alteration, subtle at first, then mounting in intensity, growing bolder, more visible, more disruptive as time went on -- the alteration was inevitable.

For the chaos, the tumult raging all about this last of his superior breed could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire to which he alone remains heir. The energy -- the creative force -- could be disciplined only so strictly, held seething in check only so long, before it burst forth ravaging, mindless uncontrollable. That's the answer! So obvious in retrospect! An organism ceases to live when it ceases to grow. The element of change, which loomed so terrifying -- was in fact the only hope of salvation.

To resist, to dam the flow, to go rigid...was to abandon all hope.

Steve Gerber wrote that (or at least co-wrote that) in the first issue of the comic book Omega the Unknown. Gerber and co-creator Mary Skrenes have always closely held the book and its mysteries to the vest, so we probably will never really know who did what. Just another mystery of life without an answer. What is it?

We feel most comforted by stories with answers, with endings, where there is a chance to frame everything into one picture. All the answers we need in a glance. Steve Gerber will not be ending any more stories. Dead at 60. Why? How?

It is common in the world of comic books for the artist to have a unique style. Uncommon is the comic book writer with an irreproducible personal voice and viewpoint in his work. Steve’s work is uncommon in this vein. …Could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire…

One of my favorite Gerber stories, the revival of the Metal Men. The overall theme of the story tells us of the sometimes-hard-to-find good in everyone, but now I am seeing something else in the background. Doc Magnus overcomes his madness in the story because of his work – not only in that he creates, but also that his Metal Men creations save his day by the end, by bringing him clarity and peace at last. I hope Steve too had peace at the end and that he recognized the outstanding quality of his work.

I hope other generations of writers and artists can continue to wrestle with the lessons of his works and their quality. For those of us who bought his stuff off the stands, his stories will continue in re-readings. The sadness, as always, is in the stories he never got the chance to tell us or to finish.

It is another element of change, and to do right by ourselves we must make the best of it we can. As we could often find something good in the baddest of Steve's villains, we could also heed the card left by his anti-hero, the Foolkiller, which said: Today is the last day of the rest of your life. Use it wisely, or die a fool.

Good night, Steve…we're a much wiser bunch because of you.

The basic nuts and bolts of Steve's life can be found here.

More information from a personal perspective may be found at the site of his friend Mark Evanier. Donations may be made in his name at Hero Initiative.

What can a Cat Man do?

“My name is Joe. I pick locks. I pick my nose.”

So goes the Cat Master, the leading character in King City, by Brandon Graham. Well-regarded on the Internet comics blog scene, Graham’s first volume is as entertaining, crazy and well drawn as advertised.

Joe’s lock picking practice makes for a natural beginning to the action but we follow this arc into spies, drugs and his bucket, with which he carts around his special cat.

The cat, when injected with cat juice, becomes anything. I mean, ANYthing, from a periscope to a key-copying machine to a parachute.

Though Graham’s end notes shows he thinks a bit too much about his work, the effortlessness of what he’s put down on the page here shows he’s able to use this thinking subconsciously and unobtrusively to the reader’s advantage. And not just with the personality-filled pretty pictures and ideas.

He does well with not only the dialogue between characters but also Joe’s frequent monologues. My favorite is when he considers his long-lost love, who Joe remembers while looking into the mirror:

“That girl used to put glue in her hair and jump on the bed and taste like grape candy. And how do you get over that?”

A gallery of Brandon’s work, including his depiction of Joe's cat seen above, is at http://royalboiler.deviantart.com/gallery/

King City is available at better comic books shops and bookstores carrying manga from Tokyopop. He’s also got another series, Multiple Warheads, coming soon from Oni Press.

Happy Birthday Captain America, Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandos, Fighting American, Boys Ranch, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, The X-Men, Etc. Etc.

It must have been early 1966 when I first encountered the work of comic book creator Jack Kirby, who would have turned 90 today. I did not then get to read a story he drew – I merely glimpsed the work in question, in passing, from a few respectful feet away, held by boys a year or two older than I was. The gang huddled together, backed up against the lockers waiting to enter the classroom, and they turned each page slowly only when each member was ready to find out what happened next. They chuckled in pleasure, in anticipation, to themselves, one of them exclaiming “Oh, yeah!” as another page turned.

It was several years before I actually read the story myself. I had no desire at first sight to find out what was hidden beneath that horrifying ugly cover of a devil-horned giant, with a bald, naked silver guy (on what might have been a surfboard) chasing three normal looking blue-suited humans and one orange rock man.

It was probably disturbing to me as well that the rock man had no shoes. Batman was on TV that night though, and I had questions about the show to ask of classmates my own age. The cover left my sight, but I did not realize then it was still in my mind.

Later months and years went by: my hipper younger-brother occasionally purchased some other comics by that “Marvel” company. I immediately recognized the characters as the ones I had glimpsed before. Kirby’s artwork was not to my taste but like all comics then we read them indiscriminately out of some sort of unspoken childhood obligation.

The artwork on the insides was as disturbing as the covers, but without looking them up again, I can still remember my first sight of the character called the Black Panther – like a living black shadow, ready to pounce upon the creations of another guy called Psycho-Man.

Then there were the Inhumans: Gorgon with the hoofed feet, Karnak with the sensitive hands and big head, Medusa with the living red hair, and their giant dog Lockjaw with the perpetually pouting lower lip.

There was also a story of the bald, naked silver guy on the surfboard fighting a really ugly robot. I remember the end of the story where the robot -- called, of course, Quasimodo – defeated by the Surfer’s “Power Cosmic” showed his loss with a face in anguish greater than I had ever seen before.

These were not the homey, safe DC Comics of Batman, Superman and the Flash. These were the powerful forms of the Marvel Comics Group, and their stories seemed to me always drawn by Kirby. His story telling between the covers thumped my head the hardest. Perhaps my disturbance came from a combination of the power of Kirby’s story telling, along with how gritty and urban they appeared alongside the seemingly more sedate and conservative DC Comics.

Artists of the time tell how Kirby created a style of story telling barely constrained by the limits of the page. What Scott McCloud called "The Invisible Art" of Comics, was how the best comics drew the reader's eye from panel to panel, from page to page. Kirby drew instinctively this way and reading his work, following the frames of what his mind said was the best way to tell this story, can become addicting. My mind became educated to the unfamiliar style and I began to keep my eyes out for more.

I later found that Kirby had been creating comics since the beginning of the industry, most notably his first hit: co-creating Captain America with partner Joe Simon. The two moved from company to company in those days, coming up with more ideas and characters, creating the first romance comic, as well as turning out significant work in westerns, science fiction, combat and supernatural stories; and of course, more super heroes. After twenty years experience under his pencil, Kirby teamed with Stan Lee to birth “The Marvel Age of Comics” where the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and Spider-man all began. Though Lee was the glib front man, putting words to the pictures, a whole lot of the more-significant ideas, according to subsequent research and interviews, most attribute now to Kirby.

Eventually Kirby wanted more money, more credit from the company he’d led to greener pastures, so his children would not have to worry about insurance or college. Unable to come to an agreeable contract with Marvel he moved to DC Comics and came up with the so-called Fourth World series of books: “New Gods,” “The Forever People,” and “Mister Miracle - Super Escape Artist.”

Words and pictures both by Kirby, they were his most-personal effort to-date. The “New Gods” stories somberly carried a serious weight of the past, with super-beings of two opposite worlds caught in an eternal planet-shattering battle, while “The Forever People” showed the cost of that war on the young but, dressed-up in the fashion of the late 60s youth movement, it also told the tale of hope for the future. “Mr. Miracle” was about another cost of war – individuality – and to me it represented Kirby himself the most. He had escaped the slums of New York by natural talent and tenacity, fought in Europe against the Axis tyranny, slipped through the knots of mediocrity tied tight by corporate interests. As long as he kept his ideas flowing by the power of the mind he could always survive.

Of course, the Fourth World did not last long. Kirby never gave us the big finish he’d had in mind, and no one can tell where the characters could have gone because no one is Kirby.

The later years of his life, while not as productive – his work no longer seen as hip or cool he did not get the jobs from the major publishers – found him in a controversial bid for creator’s rights, as he used the legal system in an attempt to get his original artwork back from Marvel.

While younger artists without half his creativity got big deals and solid contracts, Kirby went without. He never saw his creations become multi-million dollar motion pictures, or his works become hard-bound collector’s editions.

For those of you not impressed by the comic book, you can also view Kirby’s influence outside the four-color printed page:

You could crawl out from under a rock and check Star Wars (Lucas has admitted being “influenced” by Kirby’s “New Gods” series as much as by Kurosawa’s “Hidden Fortress”). Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” based in large part on his research into the life of Kirby.

Kirby worked harder than most. When I was first getting into comics, it seemed at least two or three books a month on the stands carried his stories. Right now, it seems that DC, Marvel, and newer publishers like Image Comics have more Kirby in reprint form the first few months of this year than any time while he was alive. You can find these in your local comic book shop. If you ask for a Kirby comic in a shop and they do not know who Kirby is, then you should find another shop.

In order of importance, I would recommend “The Fourth World Omnibus” and “Fantastic Four” – after that, you could try others like Kamandi, The Eternals, and Captain America. If you become extremely fanatical after that, you might even enjoy the more-quirky Devil Dinosaur.

The New York Times ran a great piece on Kirby over the weekend, and Kirby’s friend and historian Mark Evanier (his great blog you’ll also find linked to the right) will finally get his long-awaited Kirby biography on the bookshelves this October.

There is also a virtual visit and more information in store at the Kirby Museum and a very good Kirby documentary included on the ‘deluxe’ edition of the first Fantastic Four movie.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kirby! As a schoolmate of mine said a long time ago: “Oh, yeah!”

Strange Visitor

Black and white citizens from the silver screen in my childhood dreams huddle together under the towering shadows cast by the bright white sun on the skyscrapers of gray steel and stone. The huddled adults – all dressed up to go nowhere in Sunday suits and hats -- point up to something like always, with a look part fear and part wonder, at something strange they've never seen before.

They look up at something from beyond the light, or perhaps from the light itself. I cannot tell. I am the exception, the lone strange child of the scene. The adults look confused, despite their view of what the something is. It may be a bird or a plane.

In the sky there is music swirling up, up: a softly whooshing wind of harps segues into a thunder of trumpets heralding the sound of a tornado. Then, a cliché, without warning, there is silence and the gentle touch of a powerful hand on my tiny shoulder.

"Would you like to fly?" asks a voice as genuinely warm and friendly as the smile of the man with the question, the man who was neither bird nor plane but was most definitely the cause of the confusion. He is a mystery man to others, with many secrets to his name. I know his secrets. I know his name. I answer "Yes!"

We flew into the sky until I woke up with a smile, knowing that I had dreamt the dream before and I would dream it again.

I did not know how far the dream would take me because I did not know this friendly flying fellow was more than just a television character. I did not know there were also over twenty years of radio, movies, newspaper funny pages and, most of all, comic books, telling his tales.

His stories seemed already endless, like a dream, and stories are tales of things that can happen, possibilities of life. Perhaps that is why the huddled masses looked so long in wonder up in the sky. Possibilities in our lives, the belief that we have the power to make things happen if we try hard enough, is what gives us hope -- and with hope we all can fly like the strange visitor in my childhood dreams. Like Superman.