* NOTE: To anyone reading this who has not bothered to read a comic since his kiddie days of pretending to fly around like Superman, you won't understand this. You most likely won't see what I mean when I begin to speak of the depth of thought that must be reached to attain the true meaning behind some of the stories that are made today.*

    I have been contemplating what to write in this post for some time. I know that it if the post is written incorrectly, it will seem like I am some comic nerd who spends all his money on comics and ends up eating cat food for lack of money to buy food with. So to properly write a post on comics and what comics mean to our culture, is a very hard thing to write.

    First off let me declare to everyone that I am a nerd. I enjoy reading comics, I enjoy Star Wars, plus I build web-pages for fun. I think this is, in most high school's, the definition of a nerd. And since most people who read this are probably still on a high school thinking level I try to stay there. However, what most non-nerds don't realize is what an impact comics have on our culture.

    Years upon years ago, the Romans, the Greeks, the Norse, the Egyptians, the American Indians, almost any culture had stories of gods and demi-gods. People who were in most cases, superhuman, and faced in almost all cases, superhuman odds. However, occasionally, a story of a regular human slips out. The Odyssey, a story of a man who was cursed to roam the seas. As I have never read the odyssey, I cannot tell you exactly what went on, but I do know that Odysseus eventually overcame the wrath/ curse/ bad navigation skills that plagued him and he made it home. Stories such as these, as unbelievable as some may seem, is what gives men hope, is what forms ideas that man may seem or be more that he really is.

    This is what comics do for us today. The stories of gods and demi-gods are long gone in the modern world. We know that there are no Gods on Olympus nor any in some mythical place called Asgard. What we have been blessed with however, are many wonderful stories that are handed down by writers, who give us humans and super-humans, triumphing and failing, over superhuman and human odds. 

    I had never really been into comics until I reached the age of 17 or 18. Never had time nor money for them. Both resources went to other things. Then I got the chance to read a graphic novel called Kingdom Come. Kingdom Come, set in the DC Universe, takes the book of Revelation and sets it to terms in a universe of superheroes. It shows a world with that has lay back and let the "superheroes" do all that mankind needed to do. As put in a recent comic line, Justice, "We could have touched the stars. Instead you brought them to us. We didn't have to seek the heavens when we had you here with us now." In Kingdom Come, the world grew like this, and the sons and grandsons of the Hero's that once were, took up their own positions of power, to become protectors of men. Only problem was they didn't protect, they just fought. Killing innocents accidentally meant nothing to them. They were super-humans. In Kingdom Come, all our favorite heroes, fall prey to the biggest human weakness, pride. Then at the end, when seemingly at they're lowest, they rise again, better than before, human or superhuman, and all realize that to help mankind, they must live as mankind, not above or beyond it.

    This is the magic of comics, they are not merely stories to keep children's interest for a little over half an hour like they used to be. Comics are a means of telling stories of greatness. Stories of good and evil, stories that define good and evil, stories that fall into the gray areas around good and evil. Comics today, are our mythology. Instead of having Zeus, Hermes, and Hera; we have Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman. Once again, we have heroes that represent not only the kind of people who we want to be, but also the kind of people that we are. Heroes who fight daily with the same human weaknesses that we have. Heroes who win over the same human weaknesses we have. These heroes, have in essence, become our role models for society. We have the mild mannered good guys, supermen. We have the dark and mysterious batmen. We have the swimsuit wearing, I mean, peace-bringing wonder women. For every archetypal hero, there is also a man or woman, maybe some reading this page, who can relate to what comics are really all about.

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