Artwork – Amazing Fantasy #15, Marvel Comics, NY, NY, 1962
My Association with Comic Books
My association with comic books started when I was just a little boy. I can’t even remember exactly when I first started reading comics. According to my family, I first began by taking and looking at my older brother’s comics. Apparently I was a tremendous Batman fan.
Family legend has me escaping from my Aunt’s wrought iron fenced in back yard in Mexico and walked all the way to the local bus depot and made my way to the back of a bus about to depart to Acapulco. If not for a local street vendor that kept his eye on the comings and goings of the neighborhood and a last minute head count on the bus, my story may well have had an entirely different plot line. When asked (interrogated, really, by my mother) about the why and how I did manage to escape the locked yard, I wouldn’t say a word. It wasn’t until my grandfather told me that he knew that I was Batman and that it was alright to tell him because he was one of the good guys did I tell him how I managed my little escape attempt. I apparently felt that the world’s greatest escape artist could not be held by something as pedestrian as a fence. Since then I have thankfully taken a more realistic and practical view of my interpretation of what I read in the colorful pages of my favorite reading materials.
Since then, I’ve learned more than how to bust out of a back yard. Comics have taught me actual values. Good guys don’t kill. Good guys keep in shape. Good guys do the right thing. Women are at the very least the equal of men and often better. Good guys sometimes question authority, especially because sometimes the right thing to do involves not doing what authority tells you to do. Spider Man especially extols the virtues of something that those in positions of authority should always keep in mind: with great power comes great responsibility. There are, of course, some negative things that comics show. Violence is a viable option. Objectifying the male and female form is all right. Vigilantism is a reasonable pastime. Super suits are easy to make and even a straight, nerdy, high school boy can make an iconic suit and can make repairs as needed.
Comics have shaped virtually every aspect of my life. Even now, as a supposed adult (when did THAT happen?) I find that I want my profession to be part of the process that creates them. I started out reading them, then copying them, and now I draw them. Or at least I’m trying to draw them. I’ve got to practice a whole lot more and I’m sure that I’ll need to keep practicing for the rest of my life. I’ll never stop learning and never stop growing. Isn’t that what life, both real and graphic, is all about?
By Carlos Mendoza
