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When the comics gene kicks in
By Deborah Taylor-Hollis
Growing up, I had many rituals and ongoing educational experiences joyously foisted on me by loving, if misguided, grandparents.
I learned how to ride horses on a pony-go-round, that existed solely as the last stop for aged Shetlands with bad attitudes and that endlessly circled a small pen in the Sierra Nevadas. My favorite was Casper, a black one that I visited so frequently that my grandparents also bought me my own little cowgirl outfit. I can still recall the gentle way he bit your finger tips off if you did not remember to hold the apple just right.
I recently was reminded of these paths to adulthood while listening to my son laughing his head off, reading an old Calvin and Hobbes anthology of cartoons.
Bill Waterson, the creator of the magical strip about a savvy 9-year-old and his stuffed tiger, (a being that is actually a full-sized living meat-eater that only the boy can see), retired the daily comic almost 10 years ago, leaving us with a terrible ache to read more about the boy who sneaks into the house to avoid being tiger prey, who seems to think that his parents are poor at their jobs, and should either be replaced from the temp. agency, or pay him more to train them, and who has a Poe/death wish/existentialism-style with his snowmen.
I hear my own 7-year-old, who can barely read two-syllable words, rolling on the floor laughing over these ancient strips, and remember my own training in reading comic strips.
My grandfather taught me how to read the big words one comic panel at a time, just as my son is learning now. I guess age 7 is when the comics gene kicks in.
With me, the comic in question was "Dennis the Menace" by Hank Ketcham. Dennis is conniving, scamming, pulling one fast one after another, while his best friend, Joey, and his archenemy, the always-curly Margaret, try to stop him before he strikes again.
Dennis was the archetype for most of the "bad little kid" comics--a fact that does not escape me now as I watch my son laughing over the same jokes, finding the same situations funny, and--dare I admit it--trying to plot out replicating the same inane stunts.
I would read Dennis and try to figure out a way to get my friend to come with me and drive the wagon down the hill, blindfolded, without steering. My son sits in his room, laughing, plotting ways to take a sled down a mountain with his stuffed dinosaur, without steering, naked. The old saying "The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree" holds terrible truths in this equation.
Some people would immediately yank the comics, lecture the child on the proper way to play, demand that he never discuss getting naked in the snow again, and pre-book several months of parent training classes. Me, I bought more Calvin and Hobbes.
Yes, I am concerned that I will come home some day to find hundreds of decapitated snowmen on my front steps depicting some weird frozen science fiction holocaust. But I also know a learning tool when I see it. If my son wants to read comics, and hones his reading skills to become a better reader by reading them, then so be it. Eventually, if I am lucky, he will want to spend his own allowance on reading material--and that's when you know, as a parent, that you have hooked them.
My own hook was DC Comics, the creepy ones. "The Crypt Keeper" was barely invented when I first shelled out my hard-earned cash to buy the monthly horror comics. I would buy the scariest, creepiest, most disgusting things on the market back in the '60s: dark nasty stories that would later inspire Stephen King and Wes Craven to delve so far into their innermost terrors that they became millionaires, and scared yet another generation of kids. I wanted the comic version of Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft.
Eventually, the entire horror comic industry was stifled by government fears of warping young minds, spreading violence through comics, and peddling smut to kids in the guise of blood and gore.
William Gaines, one of the original Horror comics publishers, bounced back by producing a whole new genre of reading material for young teens: MAD Magazine.
Looking back on the last 50 years of juvenile literature, from Caldecott Award winners to Teletubbie Books, I have to say that I am proud my government inadvertently persuaded a publisher to come up with such a truthfully satirical magazine, without actually putting a huge dent into the truly disgusting comic book trade. I can't wait to buy the first edition of "Hannibal the Cannibal" comics--for me, I swear.
Find Deborah Taylor-Hollis browsing for cheap thrills at Mike's Coliseum Comics store or write DTHollis@metronews.com.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
