Construction!

One of my old professors gave a speech about deconstruction to one of my classes once. He explained that the point of deconstruction ought to be to remove the dross from the gold… but, in practice, it’s in creating an acid or fire so strong as to remove everything and then to be proud of the ability to turn all to soot and smudge and ash.

I admit: the first time I encountered Watchmen, my mind was *BLOWN* (I read part of it in the library and didn’t want to check it out because I didn’t want mom to stumble across it… I remembered how to find it again with the handy mnemonic of “what did the monkeyholic want? More Gibbons”… ironically enough, a few years later, after I had purchased it and left it lying around, mom asked me “who’s the old lady? What’s her story?” and I proceeded to tell her… sadly, I didn’t do a good enough job explaining as she wasn’t interested in reading the book herself afterwards). I went from Watchmen to Miracleman and in talking to the comic book guy, he pointed out that Garth Ennis, a young upstart, had recently released True Faith (“Hey! No Religion!” I’m not discussing it. I’m just pointing out the next major comic book deconstruction in my evolution. “And pointing out that you read him before he was cool?” Shut up.) From there, I hit the high notes… Garth Ennis’s run on anything, Frank Miller’s takes on Batman and Sin City, Mark Millar (half of his stuff, anyway), Grant Morrison, and, most recently, Mark Waid… but, at the end of the day, I still find myself going back to the good-old-straightforward stories about Superheroes doing Superhero things without so much of the focus on the gritty or the depressing or the hyper-realistic takes on what ability X would do to a person’s psyche after a decade or so.

The story about a God, Demi-God, or mere Mortal Hero going up against very poor odds to fight a bad guy, protect an innocent bystander, and maybe learn a lesson or two is the one that keeps me coming back again and again. The old series “Legends of the Dark Knight” is one from the recent past and Astro City is a great one from right now.

After too much deconstruction, it’s quite possible to forget that gold exists and to think that the point is the creation of soot and smudge and ash. It’s good to enjoy something that has been put together every now and again. That’s why I’ve come back to comic books.