Folded and Stapled Escape

A very rough first draft, something for my ongoing collection of childhood reminiscences of learning about magic. Currently it seems to me a mash-up of memories spanning 1986 - 1990...

Ottumwa High School's open-campus policy means that at lunch I can wander away from the school for nearly an hour, and I often spend this time walking a few blocks west of the hulking brick school, down the hill to Main Street to hang out in a few of my favorite shops. I first fell in love with Ottumwa's Main Street when I was seven, my parents bringing Kirk and me to the Capri and Capitol, two movie theatres standing side by side at the corner of South Green and Main. The theatres have merged now, and grown, and the new Capri V advertises five current films on its broad marquee, offering cool, dark respite from whatever reality the locals are living.

I find my own escape from the slow, quiet procession of days in the pages of comic books at Marge's. My friends and I never call this little shop by its real name--is it The Comics Collector?--but instead refer to it as nearly one and the same with its proprietor, the elderly, deeply tanned Marge, who crouches behind the shop's tall counter reading an endless stack of romance novels she pulls from the shelves at the back of the shop. We don't go back there, to the bodice-rippers, even though we dream they might provide a thorough and much-wanted education in the needs and desires of women. Instead we stick around up front, thumbing through the rack of this month's comic books, arranged along a broad rack with 40 or so slots. Marge has put a glass display case just inside the entrance, showing off pewter and lead figurines we can't afford. She sells role-playing games too, and these are strategically placed under the wide front window so they are visible only to those of us already inside. Marge is patient with us. She knows we don't have much money, yet we still have a desire to go to the worlds inside the comics, to know what else is out there, beyond the cornfields stretching to every horizon. So she lets us browse to our hearts' content. I usually buy something about once a week, after I'm paid for my work at the day-care center. I like Spider-Man and The Uncanny X-Men, and I have every issue so far of The Legion of Superheroes, which for a futuristic outer-space superhero book has precious little fighting and lots of intrigue and back story, along with obscure end-notes each issue which fire up my mind as I think of all the Legion of Superheroes lore that I don't yet know. The not-knowing thrills me somehow, helps me let go of the pressure of schoolwork, the mystery of girls, the uncertainty of the future. Maybe Marge knows this, maybe she was once me standing here, before she stepped behind the counter and assumed her seat, her role as guardian between the one world of superheroes and sorcery and the other world of real magic, packed wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling in the romance novels at the back of the shop.

I thumb through Blood, a short series by J. M. DeMatteis and Kent Williams purported (I'm not sure by something I read somewhere or by my own imagination) to be inked in the artist's own blood. Here too is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, aping so manically Daredevil and other comics my friends and I love. It is at Marge's that I discover the work of Jean Giraud -- Moebius -- in a mini-series published by Epic, Eric Shanower's artwork reinterpreting and, I will learn later, giving considerable solidity to the candy-colored, occasionally fluid-spattered world the Belgian Moebius has created. Some of the comics I read, others I just page back and forth through, soaking up the visuals and turns of phrase here and there. My favorite part of any comic is the material at the back, the letters page and any kind of explanatory notes or interviews with the artists. in Moebius' Elsewhere Prince his artwork is tucked away here in each issue, dessert at the end of the meal. I want to peer behind the curtain, I'm curious to see how it all works.

I scoop up the comics I must have each week, leaving others to remain unread, obscure. I grab sketchbook editions by Charles Vess and Michael Zulli, artists who have glimpsed past the mist separating our world from the land of the fairies and goblins, and these books bring new vitality -- death, sex, longing -- to the storybook worlds I somehow cannot leave behind.