ZAP! BAM! BOOM! goes the cliché! Comics have grown up! And I have grown up with comics! I see the world through four-color glasses (which is more like computer-painted glossy these days).

It is a good time to be a comic book fan. Who’s the biggest star in Hollywood these days? The superhero. While the paparazzo has its lascivious eye directed toward immature starlets and songbirds, comics and graphic novels have produced hit after hit.

I wish I could say I stayed loyal to my childhood love, and myself supporting it until it blossomed into what it is now, but I was weak and embarrassed about it for years.

I felt an adult should shake such trivial affections and assume the trappings of man, another manifestation of a strange dichotomy that has been ubiquitous in my life – the mixture of wallowing the juvenile and a drive for maturity that first surfaced to my recollection as I was entering middle school. I felt a moral obligation to steel myself in the ways of a noble citizen participating in the system. (Later on, I theorized this drive to self-definition might have been inspired by the training of Bruce Wayne to become The Batman. Of course, being much less strong-willed and devoid of natural talent and grand tragedy made me much less impressive).

I turned to politics, but in the strange, misdirected ways of a child. (Again, much like Bruce Wayne, whose inspiration for Batman reeks of an emotionally-challenged/scared boy).

I was drawn to bloviating radio talk show hosts and similar pundits. I saw righteousness in their ranting, real-life superheroes fighting the good fight using their linguistic powers.

The misperceptions of a child …

Thus seeking a righteous life, I concluding being engrossed in the drama of men of tights was not becoming of an adult.

However, I did not come to such a conclusion without a fight – I spewed a litany of ill-formed notions to justify my comic reading.

I’m collector – they are going to make me rich!

They are not comic books – they are “graphics novels.”

I don’t read juvenile trash like Superman – I read “alternative comics”

As I got older and my desire to appear as normal as possible grew, the further my passion for comics became my secret identity.  While I still bought books, much less than in youth but frequent nonetheless, I hid my books and never dared to pull them out and read them in public.

But the with rolling success of the comic book film and the corresponding ascendance of nerd culture, I became empowered.

I realized the more I embraced the importance of comics in my life, the more comfortable I became with myself in general. I swallowed my shame until it disappeared entirely.

Holy spiritual revelations, true believers!

By investigating the shallow fiction of comics, I found truth. In many ways, comics and journalism have a symbiotic relationship. One of the first recognized comic characters at the turn of the 20th century, “The Yellow Kid,” led its name to William Randolph Hearst’s tawdry publishing practices, yellow journalism.  The day job for secret identities Clark Kent and Peter Parker is at major metropolitan newspapers.

Metatextualism has a recurring presence in the history of comics, and the intersection of reality and fiction was there at the dawn of the medium’s modern era with The Yellow Kid. Putting the details of oneself into, even as the most stringent and accurate biography, is ultimately an evocation of a life; an illustration is a replication, albeit an exaggeration, of oneself. So by drawing oneself, they are entering fiction.

Unfortunately, I am incapable of drawing straight line let alone myself in a recognizable fashion. Thus, I will do my best to make myself look cartoonish with words. This column will be my communication of my life through the language of nerd/geek culture, particularly the comic book.

So from this day forth I swear an unwavering pursuit for:

NERDVANA AND GEEKTASY!