Why I still read comic books

My comic book reading began with The Amazing Spider-Man #4 - I'll always remember that four-panel sequence of Spidey approaching and getting handled by the Sandman. It jumped out of the bin and bit me when I was searching for vacation reading material in a long-gone IGA in Milton, Vermont, and I've been haunted by visions of radioactive spiders ever since.

Every so often I drop back in on Peter Parker and that other family I met that vacation, the Fantastic Four. (A couple of days after Spidey #4, we found Fantastic Four Annual #1 in Saint Albans - talk about an introduction!) As always the first thing I did was dream wistfully of 12-cent purchases, then I handed over $2.99 each for Amazing Spider-Man #530, Fantastic Four #535, and something called Four #28.

The concepts and storylines I found inside are interesting and fairly encouraging in terms of what the next generation of comic book readers is absorbing.

In FF #535, the latest Hulk vs. Thing slugfest is interrupted ever-so-briefly by a TV announcement that Reed and Sue Richards have decided to stop fighting the government's efforts to take custody of their children on grounds their superhero lifestyle provides too dangerous an environment for kids.

In Four #28, Sue deals with an employee's abusive husband while Reed spends the night with a friend who's dying of cancer. I haven't seen this comic before, but if it always concentrates on their lives in between super battles, I'm coming back to this one. But the point for now is that Sue takes handling the husband into her own hands because the husband is a prosecutor who knows all the ways he can manipulate the law to get away with treating his wife like a slave and a punching bag.

And Spidey #430 has the banner "The Road to Civil War" emblazoned over the logo. Inside, Peter has gone to work for Tony Stark, the billionaire inventor, who has begun to introduce some of his Iron Man technology into Spider-Man's uniform. More importantly, the two of them travel to Washington, where Stark testifies against the coming Superhuman Registration Act - it's a kind of gun control or Real I.D. for superheroes. Well, not just superheroes, but you know supervillains aren't going to line up for their ID cards.

Yes, I know it's long past time that comic books were just for kids anymore. But the faces I see at comic book shops are still mostly a lot younger than I, and I'm pleased to see them exposed to the idea that politicians and government agents are not their friends. This is not likely a concept they'll encounter in their government classrooms, and so I'm tickled to see they will find it in their extracurricular reading material. I hope it helps them grow into adults with a healthy skepticism about men and women who want to micromanage their lives - and I hope when they become adults, it's not too late for them to do anything about it.

It looks like Marvel Comics is about to stage a civil war where superheroes are forced to fight for their freedom. Let's hope this is one allegory that doesn't have to come true.