Comics / Spotlight / Progressive Panels

Thankfulness

By Andy Frisk
November 24, 2011 - 00:07

I am an incredibly lucky person. As the American holiday of Thanksgiving approaches, many of us actually do take the time to reflect upon what we are thankful for, instead of simply paying lip service to the idea of being thankful, an action that is so fashionable this time of year. I truly can say that I am thankful for my health, my wonderful wife, my family, my job, my education, and all of the things that we truly should be thankful for. I do not say this lightly or without reverence. So many people in the world are in desperate need of the things listed above. Again though, I am an incredibly lucky person. I have the leisure time, after a day at work, to talk about something that I am thankful for that isn’t a necessity, or even something that I couldn’t easily live without. I’m thankful for being able to have a lifelong relationship with books, and just as importantly, comic books. While this might at first be an odd thing to be thankful for, I really do not think that it is. Reading and collecting comic books over the course of my life has introduced me to a life long love of reading, which has served me well. It has introduced me to some amazing people, and helped solidify bonds with people I’ve known for years. None of these things are really anything to scoff at or to shun thankfulness for.

As a kid I loved books. My parents realized this and bought me books whenever they could. The grade school book clubs that we would often get little flyers for were poured over with a feverish delight by my young eyes, and I begged my parents to buy me as many as I could get out of them. They obliged to the amount they were able to, and I always highly anticipated the day that the books would come in. My parents, also being open-minded, bought me a large amount of comic books as well. They were smart enough to realize that even though comic books were full of pictures, they weren’t the brain rotting junk that many parents thought they were, mostly because they took the time to read through them after, and sometimes before, buying them for me. I learned a great deal from comic books. I dare to say that I learned as much, if not more, from comic books than the books that were geared toward my age group at the time. Serious themes were hidden beneath the four color costumed characters that graced the pages of most comic books. I think that my parents realized that superheroes and their tales were allegorical stories not unlike the fairy tales that are the staple of kid reading materials, and that comic books were serious, and appropriately palatable, tools in stimulating my intellectual development.



Some of these comic books, and characters, have lived in my memories not just as fun and intelligent reads that I was lucky enough to be privy to, but as links to memories that I have cherished for a lifetime. From my quest for a Superman action doll for Christmas, to my first “adult” comic book, an issue of Conan The Barbarian, superheroes and comic books have served as a bedrock for so much more than just an imagination filled afternoon of reading. The thinking and reasoning abilities stimulated by my love of, and constant reading of, comic books in my youth planted the seeds of an informed and inquisitive mindset that has grown into the necessary reasoning and inquiring mindset that has kept me an intellectually stimulated and informed member of society in my adult years. 

 

So while I review the things in my life that I am seriously thankful for and blessed with this Thanksgiving, my love of comic books, stimulated by my parents, is not something that I should be ashamed of being thankful for having as part of my life. There are many worse things that I could have been exposed to, and still stimulated by in my adult years. Comic books are not one of these things. While most comic books will never measure up to the likes of the most powerful, and influential (to me) classics like John Milton’s Paradise Lost or Melville’s Moby-Dick, some are not that far removed from the intellectual level of these works. I would never have been able to even begin to understand, discuss, and enjoy these works of classic literature if I wasn’t stimulated by comic books at an early age. Being able to understand and appreciate literature in its many varied forms, because of comic books, is indeed something to be thankful for. 

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12