Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Tag: Superman

  • Ooooh That Smell

    For a while now I’ve had super sensitive sense of smell. I think it’s getting worse… better… more intense maybe is the word I’m looking for here. Sometimes it affects what I’m tasting or maybe it would be easier to say that I can taste things in foods and liquids that others don’t. A few examples are listed below in no particular order.

    • Mildew on towels (fresh from the dryer or clothes line or hanging on the towel rack for however long)
    • My cats litter box is on the second floor of the house, I can smell if she’s used it from anywhere on the first floor or when I first get home
    • friends and strangers have bad breath that I’ve asked others about but they say they didn’t smell anything
    • perfumes and colognes can be detected strongly from a train car length away or a good block if the wind is blowing properly
    • something in my house smells like chicken, I can’t find it and I’m not sure what it is but I have lots of scented candles and odor eater things placed about to make the smell less evident
    • there is a tree near my house that smells horribly like stale beer
    • I can’t walk in the middle of the prepared foods part near the deli of the grocery store the smells of the foods in the buffet part is well, too smelly
    • dogs and cats – just touching them and I can smell them on me for hours after and I LIKE dogs and cats
    • sometimes when I’m sitting or standing next to someone I can detect that they’ve either been wearing the same underwear for a few days or don’t wipe well
    • there are things that I would have never considered to have a smell at all that have a smell
    • feet, gas, fish, body odor – none of these things would I consider to smell good anyway, but they seem to overpower my senses

    If that’s not disgusting enough for you, some of the taste things include water or tea where I can taste sewage in them (what does sewage taste like? just like what it smells like) and milk starts to go bad to my tongue a week before the expiration date. I can actually taste when food I’m eating has been touched by something that isn’t on my plate – onions, peppers, fish – or maybe the preparers didn’t wash their hands in-between touching the items.

    The smell of things can be so intense that I’ll stop walking down the street to avoid scents coming from someone, or move to entirely different cars on the Metro. At meetings I try to distance myself from smells. If someone comes into a restaurant and their perfume or cologne is too strong my meal can end up tasting like what they are wearing. It’s not every scent, it appears to be just some scents and I’m sure there is a pattern I’m missing somewhere. It sounds crazy.

    When I smell something so strongly I often look around wondering why none of the people near me seem to notice and ask others if they can smell it – they say no. If you were Superman or Wolverine you’d go crazy being able to smell the things they can smell hell, I’ve been crazy a long time and I know this is driving me crazier. When I talked to my doctor about this he actually suggested I might be turning into a superhero – sniffing out crime… I like my doctor, he’s funny.

    Friends have suggested I might be pregnant as they’ve experienced an enhanced sense of smell then, but the condoms have been intact – I know they are only 99.9% effective, but I’m fairly certain I’m not pregnant.

    So after my doctor and I talked he talked to colleagues who didn’t know what this was either and then I had an MRI last week. The results of the MRI were normal or “non specific white matter change in some part of the brain, which is normal and doesn’t explain the smell symptoms” – but it does confirm that I actually have a brain in case you were wondering.

    So if I offer you a breath mint or a stick of gum – you should really take it, especially if you want me to keep talking to you. If I don’t want to shower at your house or spend the night – it could be that I don’t like people but really it’s probably that your towels smell mildewy or that you have a pet who’s smells overtake all my other senses.

    You might see me breathing out of my mouth a lot – yes I’m a mouth breather. I’ll be a mouth breather when I have to be and apparently I have to be a lot right now.

  • DC's Change

    DC Comics announced their plans this week to relaunch the DC Universe this summer renumbering most of its current series and giving almost every hero a makeover to make them into heroes that would fit into the modern world. You can read about on USA Today, CNN or Facebook and probably even on DC‘s very own website. Most of the fanboys I know are not very happy about this news – we’ve seen it before and it hasn’t gone well and usually ends up screwing up the continuity even more than before.

    I started reading super-hero comics quite by accident really. My Mother would have copies of Archie or Casper the Friendly Ghost and the like but it was never anything like Superman or Spider-Man. Then one visit to my great aunts I found a beat up copy of the X-Men – by beat up I mean this thing had no cover, was missing a few pages and was ripped here and there. What was inside though was beyond my imagination – heroes unlike any that I had ever seen before on panel after panel and all working as a team. I was immediately most in love with Ice Man – and this was before he became all glossy and sleek, he was still more snowman than iceman but he was my favorite. I was really confused about all their powers and didn’t have a clue about their origins but my whole universe changed as a result of that comic book – it became an obsession.

    For the next few years I would search out comic books wherever I thought they might be – the grocery store, Ben Franklin, magazine stands at road side cafes anywhere that might have the slimmest I would scour the store for an issue of anything that looked remotely entertaining. When I was fifteen, living with my grandmother I was fortunate enough to find a local store that not only sold comic books, but didn’t realize they should be taxing me for them – this lasted for about 2 years before the merchant caught on and then was nice enough to let me know why the prices went up – I didn’t know they should be taxed either. It was in that store that I found a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths – which I only bought because I had read everything else the store had to offer. Back when I first started reading comics were about .35 cents each.

    What was inside for me was absolute confusion – I didn’t know any of these heroes and the infinite earth thing was really a lot for me to try to wrap my mind around. I think this was the third issue, I eventually found a copy of the first and tried to piece together what was going on. There were heroes in the story that I did recognize: Flash, Batman, Superman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Robin, Green Lantern, Spectre… but there were also alternate versions of some of these characters which kind of kept me in the dark for a while. I did manage to collect all the issues and I honestly cried when Supergirl sacrificed her life for her cousin Superman – for me it was a defining moment, there are somethings worth dying for. It made superheroes something more for me than just some silly drawings on a page, they stood up for what was right and made the world a better price, no matter what the personal cost may be. It mattered to me at 15, and if I reread those issues today it would still have an effect on me – it was a great story.

    Crisis was supposed to help clean up some of the notorious continuity issues that DC had for the last 50 years or so – they were going to make Superman more super and really make him the last survivor of his destroyed planet, Pre-Crisis there was Superman, Supergirl, Power Girl, Superman from Earth II (which was really the first Earth)… well there were suddenly an awful lot of Kryptonians for a planet that had been destroyed when Kal-El (Superman) was rocketed to Earth as a babe. One of the ways to do this was by killing Supergirl. She wasn’t  the only hero to die during this series, we lost The Flash (Barry Allen), Kole, Robin and Huntress (the old ones not the new ones) and a bunch of others…

    However, Supergirl is not dead anymore – I’m getting off track here, go read my post about dead heroes not staying dead: “…and it sold comics“.

    In 85 or 86 I met my friend Ted who introduced me to a darker side of comic books that I had not yet known. He showed me Cerebus, Magic, Hellblazer, Nexus (which helped me get the US Military recruiters to quit calling – long story) The Titans (ok, maybe not dark, but definitely outside the scope of what I was reading), Swamp Thing, (Mike Grell’s) Green Arrow – it was pretty amazing. We would read for hours on end these spectacular stories that took us to a different world, away from all the troubles that happen to trouble two teen outcasts in rural Wisconsin. Ted even introduced me to the Dark Phoenix saga, which I had missed – most of the X-Men issues were not regularly stocked at the store where I got books. Ted also introduced me to Westfield which delivered comics to his home – wow, unheard of for me. Ted was also the guy took me to my first comic book store – geek heaven, let me tell you (In my adult life I’ve been to much larger comic book stores across the country but the one in Eau Claire was pretty amazing for a small town boy). Ted and I had dreams of writing comics and owning our own store when we were young… sometimes you grow up and dreams change.

    Present Day: Books and Comic books can be read on portable devices – some of you may remember the movie with Tom Hanks in 1988 called Big. During that movie Tom had a job at a toy company and he proposed electronic comics way back then and today it’s a reality.

    I can read DC, Marvel, Image and whatever other companies are out there making comics on my phone, my iPad, and even on my computer screen – and the comic book companies are charging me the same price they would charge for an actual comic that I could hold in my hand and read smell and touch. This technology has to change the way that comics are made and distributed – and I’m sad to say that it’s probably for the best, but I’ll miss the old ones.

    So back to the point of my rant here, DC is relaunching 52 titles over the next year and giving almost every character in the DC universe a makeover. They say they’re doing this to clear things up for new readers and bring in new readers as well as keep old readers. I don’t know that that’s what’s going to happen nor do I really believe that that’s their sole purpose here. See some people think all of these #1 issues are going to be worth big bucks, but I’ve been around long enough to remember all the “Alternate Covers” back in the 90s that they printed hundreds of and sure enough suckers bought em, but I don’t think most of them are worth what they paid for em.

    If you want to know why some comic books are worth a lot of money from way back when you really need to see a documentary about it from the History Channel (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373763/ ) and realize that those comics were around during the war and parents (and children probably) donated them towards the war effort making the remaining copies the rare finds that they are.

    So to DC I say, good luck guys and gals. I’ve been reading DC and Marvel comics since that first X-Men book and chances are I’ll continue to read them until my eyesight fails. But I hope for their sake that this isn’t a gimick, that this wont be like the episode of Dallas when Bobby was in the shower – change is necessary for everything, but meaningless change wont help you here . Also, as a 15 year old boy I cried when you killed Supergirl not just because it was a tragic sacrifice, but because at the time you had made the story so engrossing I actually cared about her – return to those days with your stories, return to the days when a death had more finality and a hero was believed in because they brought a sense of hope and wonder to the minds of readers. Make us care again and make it worth out $2.99.

  • …and it sold comics

    It was 1985 – 1986; DC Comics was in the middle of Crisis on Infinite Earths, one of the first 12 issue maxi series in comic history. It was a plan to simplify the DC Universe, which quite literally had infinite earths. They promised heroes would die, history would be changed… the DC Universe would never be the same.

    I remember the cover clearly in my head (yes, I own the comic, but it’s wrapped in plastic safe and sound); Superman, outfit torn all to hell, holding the limp body of Supergirl, surrounded by all the other heroes in the DC Universe. Inside this issue Supergirl sacrificed her own life to save that of her cousin: Superman. I was 14. I cried when I read that issue.

    It was a defining moment in comic book history. It was a defining moment in my history… and it sold comics.

    Other heroes in comic book history have also given their lives for others: Jean Grey (a.k.a. Marvel Girl), Flash, Green Lantern, Thunderbird, Green Arrow, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Donna Troy… I probably could add to the list ad infinitum.

    In 1988 DC offered readers the chance to vote to let the new Robin (Jason Todd) live or die in an upcoming issue. This was a very controversial idea and sparked all kinds of debate. Believe it or not the readers voted to have Jason killed… and it sold comics. In 2001 Marvel’s Colossus injected himself with the serum for the Legacy Virus, knowing it would kill him but would save countless others from the deadly disease… it was sad, and heroic… and it sold comics.

    But, these heroes don’t stay dead.
    Jean Grey is alive and well, apparently she didn’t die, but her body was taken over by a universal spirit which later tried to destroy the universe. Supergirl is alive. I don’t know how they plan to explain this one to me.
    Jason Todd is alive… Green Arrow, Green Lantern…. I’ve even seen an X-Men comic with what truly appears to be Colossus gracing the pages (I haven’t actually bought an X book in a while so I could be wrong).

    Donna Troy (Wonder Girl for those of you not in the know) has died and come back to life so many times I don’t know what to think. This month, she gets her own special: The Return of Donna Troy. To be fair DC should consider adding numbers to specials like this; The Return of Donna Troy part 347.

    Here’s the thing: The storylines where these heroes have sacrificed their lives were significant (well, most of them). These stories affected your readers in such a way that they are sometimes considered to be defining moments in our lives. When you continue to bring these characters back to life again and again it lessens the lesson, lessens the experience, and lessens the value of the character, the comic and your company. Comic books are, in my opinion, an art form.

    Superman and Lois Lane get married; Peter Parker and Mary Jane get married, Green Lantern’s assistant gets beat up for being gay; George W. Bush and Lex Luthor were both President of the United States; Green Arrow’s sidekick is HIV positive; Supergirl dying… this is life imitating art guys. These are stories that touch the imagination and make us think about the hard issues, the life issues, the happy issues, the sad issues. Don’t make cheap excuses to sell comics.