Throbbing Manhood

Thanks to the local public library and regular trips to The Beguiling in Toronto, I have managed to slowly revive my comics reading, which had flagged for the last couple of years due to being busy with work, uninspired by the titled carried at local stores, and so on. The only things I never stopped reading were a few webcomics, most notably John Allison’s Scary Go Round, which has since been transformed into the equally wonderful Bad Machinery.

Anyway, I have had the pleasure of reading a number of good titles lately, so here are a few thoughts on them:

Wednesday Comics (DC) – I don’t have all of this yet, but DC’s weekly summer project was a fantastic idea. They hired some of the business’ top talents to create tabloid-sized versions of their top-tier characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) as well as other fan favourites (Flash, Green Lantern, Teen Titans) and the relatively obscure (Kamandi, The Demon, Deadman). The writers had to deal with telling a story in a single page and the artists got to open up in a much lager space, resulting in some beautiful stuff by Paul Pope, Ryan Sook, Kyle Baker, Mike Allred, et al. Definitely the best idea for superhero comics that I have seen in ages- I wish that DC would publish these characters in only this format from now on.

Y: The Last Man – I’m a little late coming to this party, obviously, as I think the series is over, but I borrowed the first 4 volumes after loving writer Brian K. Vaughn’s work on Marvel’s Runaways. As the title implies, this is the story of Yorick, the last man on earth, who witnessed all other men suddenly felled by a mysterious virus. As an added wrinkle, Yorick is a sexually conflicted person who is determined to stay faithful to his girlfriend in Australia, to whom he was travelling in order to propose. Leaving aside the idea that any man would be able to keep his wits about him long enough to “stay faithful” after seeing half of the world’s population killed, this is a cleverly written book, albeit sometimes juvenile, with solid artwork by Pia Guerra. Like his friend Joss Whedon, Vaughn seems to have a good ear for writing female characters, and obviously that is important in a book like this.

30 Days of Night – I borrowed the first volume of this and put it down after a dozen pages or so. I don’t enjoy the artwork, some of the typeface choices are extremely hard to read, and it could be that I am just really tired of vampire stories.

Gotham Central: In The Line of Duty – I picked this up after hearing so many good things about it, and it is pretty good for what it is, but it is also frustrating to me as a fan of TV series like Homicide: Life on the Street, which is clearly the direct inspiration for Gotham Central, both thematically and visually. Homicide plus Batman villains. It works better than it sounds; but it also doesn’t work, in the sense that writers Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka are apparently constrained by working on what is still a Batman title, and so instead of using actual swear words in places where they would make sense- like finding a teenaged girl with her head bashed in, or having one’s partner gruesomely killed by (ugh) Mr. Freeze, they have to insert the old “!@#$%!” symbols. Grow some fucking balls, DC. No grandmother is going to wander into a comic shop and pick up Gotham Central as a random gift for her grandson. Anyway, if you’ve never seen Homicide, you’ll probably be really impressed with this, but if you have, you might be like me and find it kind of derivative.

Love as a Foreign Language – picked up a volume of J. Torres and Eric Kim’s manga series in the bargain bin. Torres as always had a good ear for relationships but this does not grab me, mainly because it does follow the romantic comedy conventions of a subset of manga that appeals primarily to teenaged girls.

Carnet de Voyage – loosely translated as “Travel Diary”, this is Craig Thompson’s journal of his book tour for the bestselling Blankets, which he used as an opportunity to visit Morocco and research his next book. Thompson managed to draw a page a day, combining personal doubts and worries (much like in Blankets) with observations about being a traveller and especially a travelling artist. He worries that it is not a worthwhile project, but in its way I enjoyed it just as much as Blankets, and he is able to show off his considerable skills as an illustrator. I admired this book very much and I hope people discover it.

Boxers and Saints – I picked up a mini-comic/ashcan preview of Gene Yang’s upcoming two volume graphic novel, a period piece set in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and it looks great. His book American Born Chinese was one of the best comics I have read in a long time and I was pleased to pick up a copy of The Eternal Smile, which he created with Derek Kirk Kim, another great talent. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Boxers and Saints when it is ready, and The Eternal Smile is next on my list.

I also finally picked up a copy of Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter, a hardboiled noir story that should be right in Cooke’s wheelhouse the way that Chandler was for Steranko. Cooke is a nice guy and a hell of a stylist and hasn’t drawn a bad looking page in his life as far as I can tell. Which reminds me, I need to catch up on his Spirit comics.

Finally, I have a goal between now and xmas: starting today, I am going to get off my ass and read the entire run of what many consider the best comics ever made, Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima: a volume a day from now until Xmas day. I already have them all, and have read the first 8 or so, but I am going to start again at the beginning and revel in the poignant storytelling and amazing artwork depicting a ronin (masterless samurai) on the run from his former employer, protecting his infant son. The influence of this series on comics around the world cannot be understated. I am looking forward to finally finishing it.

Life is interesting these days, and it was already interesting before. As you may recall from an earlier post, I was in a relationship earlier this year with a young woman named Nicole who moved away to Toronto for graduate school. We were very close and knew it would be difficult, but agreed early on that we didn’t want to be in a long distance relationship.

We are both pretty smart people; perhaps too smart. We let our brains make that decision and didn’t listen to our hearts, and as a result we were both very unhappy after she moved away. We would have been anyway for a while, of course, but as time passed and we stayed close through regular communication, we realized that we were in a relationship whether we wanted it intellectually or not.

Finally, after much fretting, we agreed that I should visit her at her new home in Toronto and see how we felt; no pressure, no particular goals, and at worst it would be two close friends having a visit. It had been a couple of years since I had gone to Toronto; another friend who lives there gave me a tip that the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has an express bus from Lester B. Pearson airport to the end of the subway line.

So, about a month and a half ago, I flew to Toronto, took the subway to Runnymede station, and walked up her street. She was approaching from the other direction to go to school. When we saw each other for the first time in nearly two months, on a tree-lined street one thousand miles away from “home”, I think we knew. We went through some brief polite motions of being just friends- very brief- and we talked very honestly, as always, and saw that we were on the same page, as always. We still loved each other, we still wanted to be together, we didn’t care how far apart we were.

In short, we decided to stop fighting it, and as a result we both feel much better. We know it’s not an ideal situation, we would rather be together all the time, but we also know it’s a temporary situation, and modern technology allows us to stay in close contact in ways that were not possible 5 or 10 years ago. Obviously, we don’t know the future; but we know what we want, and we are willing to work for it.

I have returned to Toronto twice since then, including this past weekend, and with each passing day our relationship feels more natural. Despite the distance, we have grown much closer than ever before and made serious commitments to each other, now that we no longer live in the self-imposed mindset of having an expiration date. I find myself wanting things for my future that I had previously decided were not possible or advisable.

After Nicole’s upcoming holiday visit, I plan to spend at least a week of each month in Toronto, since I have the means and mobility to do so. I need to stay here most of the time, of course, for my son; but he is old enough to handle the slight changes well and with any luck, I will be able to take him with me occasionally. In the meantime, I am looking at frequent flyer programs.

It’s not as simple as I make it sound, of course; there are a number of private considerations that are no one’s business but ours. But it is also extremely simple: we love and want and need each other. We’re happy and grateful for what we have. We consider ourselves to be partners with two homes: a three-bedroom apartment in Saint John and a one-bedroom basement in Toronto. Thanks to all of you who have been supportive while we figured this out.

After my recent breakup (and I will eventually stop going on about this, I promise), I felt the urge to watch a favourite film that I had not seen in some time: High Fidelity, starring John Cusack, based on the Nick Hornby novel of the same name. When I first devoured the book, I identified strongly with Rob, the record store owner who could not, for whatever reason, commit to a partner. In the novel and the film, he decides to revisit his past relationships to try to figure out if there is a common thread that leads to him being single.

I recently did a similar exercise; though not as dramatically as in the film, showing up on exes’ doorsteps and so on. I simply wrote down a list of the top 5 characteristics that I remembered from each of my major relationships. What attracted me to these women? What did I remember most about them? What kind of people were they?

It would be indiscreet of me to give details of my findings, but suffice to say that I discovered that all of the women from my past had at least a few characteristics in common, and a couple of those characteristics were issues that I myself also had. These issues were not necessarily deal-breakers, but they could definitely make things difficult.

We Western males live in a world where we are not particularly encouraged to grow up and get serious about anything. We can dress like teenagers well into our thirties and no one will bat an eye. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; there is a lot to be said for maintaining one’s youthful outlook no matter how old one gets.

The problem is when the youthful outlook rests on a bedrock of immaturity. We all have some kind of issue; a button that, when pressed, turns us from a rock-solid adult into a frightened child. No matter how well-dressed we are, no matter what car we drive, no matter how prestigious our job, no matter what totems of success we surround ourselves with, we can all have the emotional equivalent of an Achilles heel.

Maturity is the ability to step back and honestly assess oneself, identify those weaknesses, and take the steps required to heal. Sometimes we only go halfway; we identify the problem and then wear it around like a medical bracelet, without ever making an effort to fix it. We find partners who are in the same place and simply steer around the potholes.

Do yourself a favour and work on filling the potholes instead. The solutions will often be perfectly obvious; the hard part is changing your behaviours and knee-jerk reactions. Do you spend too much? Buy less. Are you insecure? Build your self-esteem. Are you unhealthy? Eat better and exercise.

It may require willpower, and support from friends and family, and you may have setbacks; keep at it, for your own sake and for the sake of those who are trying to love you.

If you watch How I Met Your Mother- and you should if you don’t – you may recall Ted and Marshall’s experiences with breakups and how they coped (badly). Having had my share of breakups over the last 5 years – each with its own degree of difficulty – I have had time to develop some strategies for staying sane and healthy during the healing process. Maybe this will be useful to some of you, so I figured I would share them here:

1)    Feel it when you need to feel it. In other words, don’t bottle up the pain. If you need to cry, cry. If you are angry about something, find a positive way to vent. Don’t take it out on your ex either way, or your friends. Don’t be self-indulgent or wallow; do what you need to do at the time and then do something else.

2)    Don’t sit around. Exercise your body and your mind. In my case, that means running every other day for my body and puzzles or games for my mind, including sudoku, crosswords, PlayStation, etc.

3)    Sit around. Don’t become a manic guy-on-the-go who can’t stand to be home on his own for an hour. In my case, I have a zen meditation practice that means I sit and face a blank wall for 20 minutes or more per day. It trains the mind to be still. Sometimes I also just make a point of kicking back on my couch and watching TV or reading for an hour or two and nothing else.

4)    Stay healthy. Watch your diet and cook your own meals. Get some sun and fresh air. Avoid drinking, drugs, ot sexual misadventures under the guise of “blowing off steam”; they’re probably not going to help, and will only make it harder to perform step 1.

5)    Reach out to friends. Catch up with any you didn’t see much when you were in a relationship. If they want to help you, let them; and find out how you can help them in return. If it was a bad breakup, don’t try to make them pick sides or use them to strike back at your ex.

6)    Respect the space that you and your ex have defined for yourselves. If the split was amicable, chances are you can stay in touch just to see how each other is making out. If it wasn’t, take the time you both need to cool off. Either way, keep it civil and positive. If the breakup was meant to be permanent by mutual agreement, do not try to change the deal.

7)    Don’t jump into another relationship right away. You might very well meet a new potential partner before you are completely over the last one. If so, just be honest with him or her; explain that you’re interested but need some time. Don’t jerk anyone around.

8)    Cultivate forgiveness. If you screw up, forgive yourself. Don’t add it to the pile of reasons to feel badly. Learn from what might have gone wrong in the relationship. Be gentle with yourself and those around you, and if applicable, forgive your ex too. Don’t hold on to hard feelings.

9)    Make goals. Define for yourself what you would like to be doing in a week, a month, three months, six months. Figure out what you need to do to get there and be honest about whether or not those goals are realistic. Use affirmations; if you have a goal, say it out loud to yourself on a regular basis.

10) Monitor your progress. Don’t let friends, family, or “common knowledge” tell you how long it should take to get over the breakup. It will take what it takes, and if you make a sincere effort, you will feel better sooner than you think.