A Marvelous Newcomer

Ever since season 2 of Marvel’s Daredevil premiered on Netflix, I’ve been in a bit of a superhero mood, which was not entirely satiated by Captain America: Winter Soldier’s simultaneous appearance on the service. (It was a great movie! The problem was, it only made me want more of that universe.) I’ve also taken to playing LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but there’s a time and a place to discuss such matters.

I’ve wanted to get in to graphic novels for years now, but the problem has always been knowing where to start. Every time I google “<comic> chronological reading order” I’m baffled by long lists of variations of different continuities, alternate universes and having to read issue #23 of a completely irrelevant comic in between 4 different superhero team-up series before I can continue along the main line. Even simply trying to go through the publishing order, which I eventually ended up doing, required some careful googling before I could figure out which series counted as the first one, and was preceded by no other continuity for the superhero.

I’ve settled on Spider-Man. Spider-Man was my first real superhero, as I watched the movies growing up and thought the guy was pretty gosh darn cool. I was a Batman fan at the same time, but hush, we’re talkin’ Marvel here. I wanted someone who’d fit into the Avengers universe eventually, as my current love for superheroes stems from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is about as mainstream as superheroes get.

So after some good research, I traveled to 1963 in order to read The Amazing Spider-Man from its very inception. And oh boy, how things were different. I may be no comic reading expert, but I’m fairly certain that these early graphic novels are far cornier, have far less subtle writing and most interestingly for me, portray a much different society to what we see in graphic novels (and fiction in general) today. I mean, sure, you can read periodical fiction based in the 60’s, but no matter how well it captures the world-gone-by, it’s never quite caught the fascination of reading source material from the era itself. Plus, modern periodical fiction can never quite escape the fact that it’s still writing from a different society, making present-perspective social commentaries about the time period and omitting other social commentaries which works from the 60’s may have included… such as one of Spider-Man’s first villains being a ‘commie spy’. It’s also interesting to note artistic depictions of the common citizen, attitudes towards women, and hell, even the price of the comics themselves (only 12 cents per issue!).

I also looked up Stan Lee, having known criminally little about the man other than the fact that he exists. It astonished me to discover that he’s in his nineties, meaning that he was already in his forties when he began writing the very first Spider-Man comics. (As a floundering 20 year old student writer, this gives me hope for the future.) I know he’s created plenty of other comic heroes over the years (Spider-Man himself having been preceded by the Fantastic Four). I look forward to becoming better acquainted with his creations.

The original story of Spider-Man itself is also a marvel (sorry). I’m only ten issues in so far, but it’s highly interesting to me that Harry Osborn, Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy are nowhere to be seen, with Peter Parker instead being harassed by Flash Thompson and chasing a far more typical 60’s girl named Liz. Going on, I’m excited to see how the later characters are introduced into the series (if they’re introduced at all besides popping up or emerging in some reboot), and how the rest of the story will pan out. I may be a few years late, but I’m finally hopping on the graphic novel train.

The Flaw in Flawless Futures

I’m coming to the end of my Creative Writing course at university, and as people coming to the end of things are wont to do, I’ve taken to looking back over the course and wondering about the past, the present, and the future. So, in other words, yes, I’m procrastinating from finishing my coursework.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I look a few years into the future I picture myself as a different person, who has undergone some kind of fictional character’s development and matured into the flawless final product of who I was meant to be. And every time I set myself up for this, and every time I simply end up looking back to the start and laughing at how similar I am to the person who started this chapter of my life.

I’ve changed, of course, grown in various ways. Just the other day I unearthed my old alternate Twitter account, in all its dreadfully unfunny glory, and realised that I’d stopped posting to the account just before starting uni. Surely, thought I, this had been a project of a teenage Kristian. And I suppose it was, but I’d have been verging on 18 at the time. So yes, while some parts of us don’t change, other parts do, and it’s my belief that over the last few years I’ve grown more reserved in my personality. Perhaps too much so. But that’s straying into autobiographical territories.

I remember when I went to my course’s open day. This was a few years ago, so my memory is somewhat patchy, but I remember meeting my lecturer, wandering the campus, hearing about the course and thinking that this was my introduction to adult life. This was where I’d grow my wings and become truly independent, forge stronger friendships than ever before and really come in to my own as a writer. By the end of my third year I’d be self-sufficient, no longer neurotic or uncertain of myself or grappling with the edges of my mind. And this may come as a surprise to you, but my predictions turned out to be less than accurate. They were, in fact, the same predictions I’d had when I started sixth form, and even when I started secondary school. I remember sitting in the grand hall alongside hundreds of other kids and thinking, this was it, this was a fresh start, and by the end I’d be a refined, perfected person.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not crying, “Woe is me!” in this blog post. I just find it interesting how the future can appear to one as a solved problem, and all one has to do is get to the other side of it. Even now, as I prepare to leave the educational nest, I can’t help but have this vision of myself in a few years when I’ll have a good job and a place to live, standing on my own two feet and maybe starting on a few books, finally able to be happy in my stability and become this mythical figure I’ve always dreamed of.

Some would chastise me for that cynical last paragraph and say that such ideas are optimistic. And hey, fair play, they, you know… are. I’m supposed to be an optimist myself. But I know me. And it’s not that I don’t believe in myself or anything like that. It’s more to do with the idea of always being the same person at your core. Even if I do find my own place to live, get a good job, start becoming a writer and all these other excellent things, I’ll probably always be neurotic, uncertain of myself, less interesting and less remarkable than I’d like. And that’s okay, because that’s what makes me, me. If these things do change, they’ll happen slowly, over many years and in many small, undocumented little skews to my personality as I grow in the world. Maybe you only ever get what you want when you stop wanting it. When I was a kid, I’d hear a group of friends in their early twenties chattering excitedly about one thing they all enjoyed, and I dimly remember wanting almost nothing more than to be that age, with those enthusiastic friends and conversations, and the independence to go wherever with them, whenever. And I have that now. And I should be more thankful for that.

The biggest issue in my life right now is stability. I need a job. I need my grades. I need independence, and safety of mind. I need other things too. But I’ll always overlook the problems close at hand, towards the idea of a perfect me some years off. And this isn’t some magical revelation that’ll solve all my problems and give me a whole new perspective in the world, because that’s not how the mind works. It’s merely… an observation.

Eavesdropping

So the other day, my Creative Writing lecturer told us she wanted all of us to eavesdrop on a conversation in order to get a better understanding of dialogue… and, frankly, just because it’s interesting. That’s right, the secret’s out, writers are listening to what you say on the bus and probably not using any of it, because here’s what I’ve learned:

You’re all incredibly boring.

Okay, that’s a little rude. You’re not. In fact, in the context of talking on a bus, I probably am as much as anyone else. But sometimes I feel like I hear the same speech patterns over and over. Somewhere towards the back of the bus, Roxie is asking, “Is he with you? Is he with you? No no, don’t tell him I’m here, pretend I’m your mum. Yeah, very good. Hey, has he said anything about me? …no you see that’s what I thought but, but not being funny right, that what he said about Janine is bang out of order… yeah, no, I get that. Yeah. No, I do. Look, can you tell him I’m with Harry right now? Yeah. Well no obviously, but… yeah, exactly.” And I’m not making fun of that type of person, because everyone’s entitled to their own way of life. But I hear that exact conversation with different names on different buses. It’s amusing but mostly predictable.

So here I am, still looking out for some interesting tidbit of eavesdropping which I can present to class next week. It’s surprisingly difficult to find anything really juicy and interesting out there. I mean, I heard a heartwarming exchange between an old man and a young woman on a bus (surprise surprise) the other day, for she was genuinely interested in what he had to say. I might use that, if I’ve got nothing else. I just can’t find anything. Maybe I need to be more of a gossip.

I thought I’d pick up something interesting when I went to Devcon this weekend. (Think Comic Con, only much more local and much, much smaller. Big turnout though.) However, I spent most of my attention span on my friends and the possible buying opportunities in front of us. (In the end, I only bought a tiny little Bulbasaur figure. I was frugal!) One amusing moment was heard when we were waiting in line; there were two children behind us arguing as to whether the bounty hunter patrolling the line was Boba Fett or Jango Fett. In actuality he was neither; he was either custom painted or a character from the extended universe, which I know almost nothing about. But it as fun to hear them arguing all the same.

Whilst it’s not quite the same thing, I feel obliged to pick up the topic of people-watching now. I’m an avid person-watcher. People are fascinating. Sometimes they’ll amble along to a window, frown at it, walk away, and then change their minds, awkwardly doing a 180 and hoping that nobody has noticed their sacrilegious indecision. I see people waiting for their friends, pretending to text on their phone because it is quite obviously a social law that one may not wait around for someone without being seen to still be busy talking to somebody else. (I, too, am guilty of doing this.) People-watching at places of transit is especially interesting! Reading the expressions of somebody who is about to get on a train can be fun, so long as they don’t look your way and eye-contact is established. Then it’s the most terrible thing in the world… people-watching is not without danger.

But what’s most amusing about people-watching is that, despite the fact that you’re probably the only person observing them, people are entirely concerned about how everyone in the vicinity is judging them, and thus act accordingly.

The Snake of the Coin

If you’re not already aware, owning a domain name costs money. This morning, I logged into WordPress, and it rather immediately prompted me that I needed to give them my yearly payment of $26 to keep kristianrichmond.net from turning into kristianrichmond.wordpress.com. And I leaped out of my chair, pointed at the screen and said, “They’ve doubled the price!” And of course they hadn’t. I’ve simply grown more responsible with money, and forgotten how reasonable this arrangement had seemed in years prior.

The thing is, people with money always want more, and that applies to even the humblest of us. A guilty part of me yearns to be a millionaire, so that all I covet I may possess, and my days of frivolous balance-checking will be over. Of course, that’s a terrible way to think and I definitely don’t construct my being around such a philosophy. More money breeds more greed, and eventually your Christmas list just gets pricier and pricier until you fall into jaded boredom and discontent for the rest of your days.

And yet, even with this knowledge, the question, “What would you do if you won the lottery?” always invites the mind to spin off with wild possibilities which we have to drag ourselves back from with some effort. For instance, one of the reasons I like the game GTA: V is because of how well it portrays the idealised high life (minus the rampant inconsequential murder and drug abuse). I don’t play it very often, but when I do I sometimes just sit in my penthouse and admire my array of fast vehicles. Not exactly a lifestyle that’d suit me in real life, but virtually…

Back to real life, though (for this isn’t my gaming blog), it really is horrible how money runs our lives. I’m no economist or expert in societies, so I wouldn’t exactly be able to come up with an alternative, but this constant day-to-day decision-making of what to spend money on, what counts as a responsible purchase, and in some cases what you can afford to go without is not only boring, but disheartening. I’m not even 21 yet and I’m already growing tired of it. Sometimes it makes you wonder if there isn’t some alternative to all of this.

I shouldn’t complain too much though. As I say, those with money only want more money, and it’s all too easy to overlook that what I consider as being poor is still a damn sight richer than what much of the world struggles by with. Poverty is no joke, and instead of complaining that I don’t live in some penthouse apartment with all the books and games in the world, I should instead be looking to what I already have. And this is what I try and do frequently, to keep that small, greedy part of me in check whenever it rears its ugly head.

In short… the more money you have, the less it has value to you, and the more you want the unattainable. And therein lies the heart of the world’s corruption.

House of Apes

I was going to write something different before I set out for the day this morning, but something on my Facebook feed caught my eye. It was this video. If you don’t have time to watch it, don’t worry, I’ll be specifying in just a moment.

Now, I’m not exactly up to date on my pension politics, though it seems like most of what Miss Black says is pretty damn strong. No, what I want to draw your attention to is around 1:02 in the video:

One of the guys who was taking [the class] said to me that as a politician, if you ever find yourself in a difficult situation where you think, “I’m in the wrong here and I need to get through this interview,” he says don’t address the issue, just start talking about what you want to talk about. And it hit me immediately, that’s what this government is doing.

This is one of the most infuriating things about any political debate. It’s not a debate. It’s an exercise in stubbornness. And I’m not just pointing my finger at the Tories here. Labour does this too. Every political party does, almost every politician. They are being taught this as the right way of debating, and all it does is stop anything from ever being resolved. Not only is our voice rarely heard in the House of Commons, it is either misrepresented or blatantly ignored when some politician finally takes enough pity on us to try and give us an argument. And we call this democracy.

I’m the last person to defend David Cameron, but look at these headlines:

David Cameron launches personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s appearance

(The Independent)

Cameron ‘put on a proper suit’ jibe at Corbyn at PMQ’s

(The Guardian)

Even our own damn journalism doesn’t view the situation in an objective manner. Many headlines fail to mention that it was a Labour backbencher who asked David Cameron what his mother would think in the first place.

Her son, his voice croaking with what The Independent’s sketch writer Tom Peck neatly defined as “that rare combination of manufactured outrage and outrageous good fortune”, was naturally incandescent.

What are we doing here? What are we achieving? Is this politics? He said, she said. No truths are being told here, merely skewed opinions to anger readers on their respective sides. Here’s what happened: a Labour politician taunted David Cameron about his mother, David Cameron taunted Jeremy Corbyn about his suit and stance regarding the national anthem, and Jeremy Corbyn tried to steer matters back to the discussion of the NHS, albeit whilst still discussing the stances of their respective mothers.

Nobody was in the right.

I’ve seen more maturity in a children’s playground. And this indignance about the way politics is handled isn’t exactly exclusive to me; many are upset by it. But I feel like many people are upset about it regarding one party or the other, when they’re all at fault. If you want my true personal opinion, I’ll go ahead and say that Jeremy Corbyn seems to have the right idea about the way government and the country should be run, but hell, I’m still willing to accept that he can be wrong.

Would an open mind and the will to admit you were wrong really kill you?