Comic Books Were My Comfort Food

I've dropped the ball when it comes to writing entries for my blog. The act of writing is just for me. The act of sharing that writing in a blog is, I suppose, a bit of ego stroking. I'd like to think that there are people out there who care about what I have to say and who share my point of view. This might even be true. The problem is, I'm getting old.

I turn 60 this year. People my age aren't generally "computer" people. They don't read blogs. Heck, almost no one reads blogs anymore. So, maintaining this practice of writing and sharing ideas in this space begins to feel more and more pointless with every passing year. But, I'm still going to do it.

I like expressing my ideas out to the nebulous expanse that is the internet. I pretend that I'm speaking to friends who can understand and empathise with my points of view, and that is somehow comforting to me. I know that I'm deluding myself to a great extent, but that doesn't matter. Call it the "placebo effect" if you must. Just getting words out of my head and organizing them helps me.

When I was going gangbusters on this blog for several months last year, I tried to share entries about board games and RPGs during the week and a sort of personal life story during the weekends. If you were reading along during that time, you know that my childhood was a little bit turbulent. (See how I'm addressing you, the reader like there's actually someone there? Placebo effect.)

I'm working on yet another superhero RPG. I love superheroes. As a kid, comic books were my comfort food. As a teen, RPGs were my saviour. As an old man, both of them seem to remain just out of reach. Something that you don't think about when you imagine getting older is how your world will change.

 

Sure, everyone struggles with their mortality, and fears growing more frail and eventually dying. I realize now as I glance to my right at the walker that I now need in order to move around the house…  I realize now as I look in front of me at the healthy breakfast that includes cholesterol free egg substitute and an orange, which is a direct result of a recent heart attack…  I realize that dealing with my own mortality is the easy part. 

The part that no one talks about is how the world continues to grow and evolve and change while we as human beings tend to stall. We learn to value certain things. We settle into a personality and a pattern of expectations and beliefs based on our past experiences, and then the world moves on, and everything that we believe crumbles away. Oh, I still believe what I believe. It's not actually belief that crumbles away, it's relevance. 

It doesn't matter what I believe because my world doesn't exist anymore. I was so excited to see the new James Gunn Superman movie. He seems like a man who comes from the same world that I come from. I'm still excited for the film. I have plans to see it on my birthday in July. But, I realized today that it won't be what I want it to be.

I just finished watching the season 1 finale of James Gunn's Creature Commandos. It's good. It's really good. It's not what comics were for me in my youth. It's certainly not "comfort food." If anything it's "discomfort food." Creature Commandos is disturbing, sad and dark. It's a good example of why the world isn't for me anymore. 

If you aren't a 60 year old man with a 10 year old kid from 1975 living inside of him, you might like it. Hell, I "liked it." As I said, it's very good. But it's not part of the world that I remember or that I yearn to revisit. It doesn't give me what comic books used to give me. Those comic books don't exist anymore.