So Be It!

I often think of Thor in times like these. It may seem silly to equate life to a comic book character, but I suppose you have to realize why I feel so strongly about Thor. It goes back to my childhood. I learned to read in pictures when I was three years old and discovered my big brothers comic book collection. The first one I picked up was Thor and the second was the Avengers. These super heroes would sacrifice anything, even themselves to save others and only fought when there was no other option. Their sense of compassion and humility seemed at odds with being powerful and admired, but still they never lost sight of their hearts.  
 
Thor is another story. Thor was an arrogant god that was changed from a god into a mortal man with a disabled leg. Odin made him a disabled doctor in order to teach him humility and to save lives instead of killing them for the glory of war.  
 
When I started school as a child, I wanted to learn how to read so I could read the stories in the comic books I had been looking at for nearly two years. I had a pretty good idea what was going on, but I knew there was more to the story. The words in those pages meant something and I was going to learn their secret.  
I don’t want to be one of the ones that tell people to shut up and hide their feelings. I want to encourage passion and poetry, to ease pain and make things right in the universe. There are times I get so angry, I wish I were God so I could bring on the end of days because mankind is unworthy of this world. But then I meet people who express such humanity and love, who commit acts of selflessness, who reach out to help others, who write poetry and chisel sculptures, who paint visions on canvass in expressions that show that we are artists all, that if there is a reason for life on Earth, it is to show that there is more to us than flesh and bone and blood. If we are not merely reflections of a god who made us in his image, we are gods of art and life. Our creativity should not be suppressed by those jealous of the inspirations we feel and our desire to make them into reality. Perhaps there is a God and perhaps the reason we all feel the need to be creative comes from his own passion for creation.  
 
Stan Lee is a man I admire as much as John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. He is more than a creator of comic book characters, he is a creator of character, an artist who expressed his vision of right and wrong and embossed it on my soul.  It may seem silly to some, but much of what I believe and the person I am is derived from those stories. I learned to read Thor before I learned to read the Bible, and I grew up a Catholic, went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic school where they drilled the Bible into our heads in religion class every day. And if it didn’t go into our heads fast enough, they paddled it into our asses with a varnished plank of wood.  
 
I had been hoping for the longest time that they would make a Thor movie, and when it finally came out, I was so happy. It truly was one of the happiest days of my life. I had wondered how much they would change it from the comic, because all of the Marvel movies have been altered, some considerably, from their origins. So I worried that Thor was going to get bastardized in the making of the film. While they did alter several aspects of the comic Thor, they kept the main themes. I was most concerned about how they would handle Odin’s lesson in humility to Thor for his arrogance. And while they changed it more drastically than I would have liked, it was the one moment in the movie when I cried. To see Thor ready to sacrifice himself to the Destroyer, under control of Loki, was the essence of what made comic book characters into heroes. The moment when Mjolnir soars into the air and speeds to Thor’s hand was almost more than I could bear. I had been waiting a lifetime to see that, even though it was not at all the way it happened in the comic, it was an artistic representation of the transformation of Thor. So I can admire the artistic license of the film-makers for finding a way to tell the story and stay within the boundaries of Thor’s dilemma.  
 
And now, so often I see villains where there should be none, even where there should instead be heroes. I see people who have some inner weakness and need some structure in their lives that they must then impose on others in order to maintain the integrity of their own morality, be it moral or not. And within that structure, those people must remain on top, as the hero of their own story, no matter the cost. So instead of helping others, they undermine the efforts of everyone who does not fit into their world. Prejudice and power becomes the rule of law within their minds and they will do whatever they must to maintain control. Rationalization over-powers rationality. If someone paints a picture they don’t like, they label it not art. If someone writes a poem that does not follow some preconceived form, that call it not poetry. And to further their own moral agenda, they put the person down, degrade and defame them in whatever rationalization of reality they can imagine in order to display their arrogant superiority. So if not God, then at least I would wish to be Odin, to teach lessons in humility, to make destroyers into healers and to impart kindness where only hatred resides. All I want is to make right what is wrong in the universe. Is that too much to ask for?  
 
JJ