Comic book-learnin'

Saw this Bookninja post tonight, in which the author snidely dismisses comic books as an educational tool.

I can see his point as far as Disney comics, but I hope he doesn't mean to say all comics are useless for young readers. If so, he should be spanked with a rolled-up copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 until he cries, "Make mine Marvel!"

When I was a kid, my mom worked in a drugstore that had a decent selection of comic books for sale. Every month, the new comics would come in and the unsold copies from the previous month would go back to the wholesaler for credit. The thing was, the retailer needed to return only the torn-off front covers to be credited for the unsold copies.

My mom, ever the practical one, couldn't bear to see all these denuded comics going unread and unloved into the dumpster behind the drugstore. So every month, she would spare them this fate and bring them home for me. How I loved those days when she'd show up after work bearing an armload of the latest coverless issues! It was better than Christmas.

I was particularly fond of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk—I remember saving them for last—but I'd read every comic my mom brought me. Holed up in my bedroom for hours on end, blowing off the neighbourhood kids who'd stop by wanting to play, sometimes skipping supper because of the page-turning goodness in those beloved comics.

But they were more than merely entertaining. Because of comic books, I knew things my comic-deprived peers hadn't yet begun to fathom. I knew the speed of sound. I knew the speed of light. I'd heard of gamma rays and radioactivity, genetic mutation and suspended animation. While the neighbourhood kids were downstairs coming to blows over whose little green plastic soldiers had won the Battle of the Basement, I was upstairs reading about WWII and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The list goes on.

When I realized that even my parents and teachers didn't know some of what I was learning from comic books, it was my first taste of knowledge as power. Luckily, I also got a taste of moral education out of my comics. I learned that with great power comes great responsibility. I learned that only bad guys gloat when they're winning. I learned that giving up isn't an option when the fate of the universe is at stake. All useful lessons for when you're grown up and working in an office.

But most of all, those comics sparked my imagination. Maybe it's because they didn't have covers; I always had to speculate about what the covers would look like. Our hero bursting through a brick wall, perhaps? Maybe that issue's featured villain in a menacing pose? Or maybe just the hero in profile, caught in a moment of quiet contemplation. I remember a couple times, seeing the actual cover some time after making one up in my head, and being disappointed because it didn't live up to the one I'd envisioned.

All of which brings me back to Bookninja guy and his snobbery about comics. Hey, I appreciate James Joyce too, pal, but that doesn't mean I don't still have a soft spot for J. Jonah Jameson. And when it comes to education, I'll take a comic book over a composition book any school day of the week.