Confession time.

Robin is a great character.

Several years back an acquaintance commented that Robin was the most useless character in all of comics, which immediately prompted me to not so subtly point out to her that if she didn't see the storytelling potential in someone trying to define themselves while growing up in Batman's shadow that she knew jack-shit about writing, and that Jack had left town.

Side notes: she fancies herself a writer (don't we all), and most of the conversations that went on in my formative-years circle were vicious by nature--meaning that if you made the mistake of speaking without thinking your were immediately torn to ribbons.

Good times, good times...

I am a child of the late 70's and the 80's, and comic books played an integral part in my formation. Two "new" comics in particular played a major role: THE NEW TEEN TITANS and THE NEW MUTANTS. Both books began in the early eighties ('80 and '83 respectively), and helped a young damaged Phil through one of the most difficult periods of his life.

Interestingly, I discovered both books on the same day. It was fall 1984, and my life had taken a couple of terrible turns. My grandmother had decided the previous spring that we should move out of the house I had grown up in, forcing me to change schools less than a month before the end of my fifth grade year; I literally came home from school one day to find my entire life almost completely packed. This was devastating to me; I had never even considered the concept of moving before that moment, and I was deeply hurt that I hadn't even been asked how I felt about it (sadly, I have more than one of this type of story...and people wonder why I have trust issues). Right after the move Granny had a stroke, paralyzing the entire left side of her body.

Pertinent information: my grandmother raised me, and is the only authority figure I have ever really had or truly respected.

I am not going into these events right now; it's a story for another day and place. Needless to say, my world completely changed in a few weeks time, and an already solitary child became more internal than even HE thought possible.

Back to our narrative: young Phil is sitting in English class, despondent to the point of almost no longer speaking. I am not trying to tug your heartstrings; I kind of just shut down, not caring if I pissed the world off by not interacting. The other kids were creeped out by me, and I guess the teachers pitied me. They all left me alone for the most part, except for a couple of bastards who saw me as easy prey to mercilessly pick on (may they receive what they have earned). This particular day I noticed a handful of comics that someone had left on a table beside my desk. I don't know where they came from or why the teacher didn't take them from me when I so blatantly ignored her teachings and started reading them, but those comics provided exactly the type of escapism that I needed right then.

There was something about the Teen Titans and the New Mutants; they were both about younger superheroes, which obviously spoke to me. There was the promise of tomorrow and unexplored potential, and with that something that I sorely needed: hope. This is fairly simple concept for me to consciously understand now (hindsight being 20/20 and all), but like most things I feel that I understood it on a more primal level as a youth, and therefore more perfectly.

I knew several of these characters already, as I had been reading comics since 1977, when I badgered a cousin into helping me start learning to read with them (I know, I'm old). Robin could have grown up to follow in Batman's footsteps, but rather chose to become his own man and became Nightwing. Kid Flash chose to honor his deceased predecessor Barry Allen and take up the mantle of the Flash. Poor tortured Raven constantly battled with her dark side, a "gift" from her demonic father Trigon. The New Mutants did what no one thought was possible and upped the ante on the X-Men by not only dealing with the prejudice aimed towards them for being different from humans but by also being teenagers to boot; a minority within a minority, so to speak (like Sammy Davis, Jr.).

Tell me again there are no stories to tell here.

Probably my favorite character from those teen superhero days was a New Mutant named Douglas Ramsey, also known as Cypher. Doug had what he (and some readers) considered to be the most useless mutation of all, tragically never understanding that he might have been the most powerful mutant to ever walk the earth. Here is the explanation of Cypher's mutant ability as listed on Wikipedia:

"Doug's inborn mutant power was the ability to intuitively understand and translate any form of communication, be it written, spoken or non-verbal, and regardless of whether the origin of the language was human, computer or even completely alien. His power was not related to his intellect, but allowed him to make leaps of comprehension that he could probably not explain to anyone else, but which were invariably accurate. He was able to translate the language of a long dead species, without any common terms of reference, within a matter of hours. His power made him a master of computer languages, since any software language was effectively instantly within his grasp."

Sure, there are mutants who can punch holes in mountains with energy beams. True power is subtle, and as I entered my teenage years this concept became almost a mantra to me. The Teen Titans and the New Mutants helped me see that I could be more than the sum of my parts.

I won't lie to you; a small part of me died on the day that I accepted that I would never develop super powers, helping drive in that final nail on the end of my childhood. But that desire for something more is one of the main reasons I am here today, and for that I am truly thankful. I am also thankful for getting to revisit that sense of youth and wonder last year in a great little Marvel comic called RUNAWAYS (click here for my thoughts on that book). There is also a new TEEN TITANS book, and although this team is a shadow of the Titans from my youth, they have grown on me enough to be saddened by the death one of them (not that Connor's passing really meant anything, since they'll probably bring him back within the next couple of years).

Eventually I had to come to terms with the fact that the comics industry is exactly that: a business, with never-ending stories and continuity nightmares making them lose any sense of mythology that they ever could have had. It doesn't really matter that I think the direction that the industry is heading towards is probably terminal. As my friend Matt so eloquently put it to me one day: you have to take from it what you can and let the rest go. Wise words, my friend. What have I taken from comics, you might ask?

Robin is a great character.

Wowzers. This has been the most exhausting entry I've written in a while. My apologies to anyone who has weathered my ramblings tonight; as per usual I am all over the board. I know that I promised my loyal six or so readers a recounting of my Mexico trip, and I promise it's coming soon--the thirty-plus pages of notes I took while there won't rest until they have fulfilled their purpose. I just haven't had it in me to commit yet to what is going to be one bear of an entry, but again, I promise: it IS forthcoming.

"You've got about 2 seconds to get that camera outta my face, jabroni."