My Life With Comics: Superman, Anger, and Grad School

(Note: I think I wrote this back in May, but I never posted it. Not sure why.)

Though infrequent, I sometimes like to use this blog to share some of the ways that comics intersect with my life. Probable TMI warning.

(Retroactively, it occurs to me that it's about a year since I officially quit the PhD program.)

I have to admit that it's really nice to be getting back into Superman. I've not read him for some time, not properly.

His story, of course, was of primary importance to the dissertation I was going to write, and to the book I still intend to write. But distancing myself from that stuff for a while was, I think, a necessary part of moving on from being a grad student.

I was pretty angry about my withdrawing from the PhD program for a long time. I am still angry about it. But I'm getting to recognize that I was even angrier while I was in it, and perhaps that should have been indicator enough that I wasn't cut out for academia.

I'm fascinated by the iterations of Superman. In a recent issue of Doom Patrol, a metavillain shows a potential buyer of dimensions the "map" of superheroes, their genealogy from the God of Superheroes on down. Superman's is the most direct line to this god, and has little, perhaps no, lineage in the way that Batman (Midnighter, Nighthawk, Daredevil) might. But we still see iterations of the character, both through his own stories, and through those of the Superman variants that appear in the stories of other publishers. Supreme. The Sentry. Hyperion. The Plutonian. Samaritan. Every single one of these stories is chronicling the joining of human and divine being, considering the ramifications of transcendence. Ben Saunders likens Superman to the Platonic notion of The Good, which is often why I'll tell people I believe in Superman. In the Good. And I try my very best to understand, like each of those iterations, just what that means.

I think about myself and my temper in grad school, and I do not think Superman would have been at all impressed. My counselor told me I should journal these sorts of things, but I also think it's very important to talk about. I'm ashamed of how I was, and how I treated people close to me, and I'm in the process of installing what John Lilly would have called a new metaprogram. It basically boils down to doing something that I think I stopped doing in grad school: giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Saving the world, if Superman has anything to teach us, isn't always a Cosmic Battle of the Ages!!! Sometimes it's just taking a deep breath and looking square in the eyes of whatever ridiculous, fucked-up, weird, horrendous, unfair thing the Universe has manifested in your lap. And it's not letting that thing keep you from being you.

Now I love what I do. I get to teach, and I think I'm really pretty good at it. I always wanted a way to change the world, to do Good, and teaching provides that. Teaching has helped me to become a better human being. I think Superman would see this as a good start to becoming my best self, so perhaps his stories have started talking to me again. And if you think that sounds a little bit like the way people talk about religious stories, then you and I are on the same page.

Alright. Back to the comics stuff. Thanks for your attention.