Dana Jennings

I was there when Peter Parker got bit by that rogue radioactive spider. I was there when the Avengers found Captain America frozen in a block of ice. I was there during the very first Kree-Skrull War.

For me, the Marvel Universe — born in 1961 with the publication of The Fantastic Four No. 1 — isn’t about the recently concluded 22-movie, multibillion-dollar cycle spun by Marvel Studios. Or the recent X-Men dud, “Dark Phoenix,” or the hit Spider-Man now web-slinging his way across movie screens. But it is totally about childhood solace and salvation — at just 12 cents per comic book.

When I was in fourth grade at Daniel J. Bakie Elementary School in very rural Kingston, New Hampshire, in 1966-67, my 26-year-old mother broke down. There wasn’t enough money. My father worked two, sometimes three jobs to try to make ends meet. And my mother, who had three children under 10 to care for, imploded. She constantly smoldered near tears. Abyssal sighs were her main parts of speech.

As the oldest child, only 9, it fell upon my skinny shoulders to take care of her. I was a tiny nail asked to hold our rickety home together, so my dad could go to work and not worry about what my mother might do. I missed about half of school that year — and I hated that. I loved school. It spoke to me of necessary escape from small-town New Hampshire, of fleeing to a world where brainpower mattered more than brawn.

And there were no questions, no concerns, from Bakie School. My teacher, Miss Gove — who tried to dress like Jackie Kennedy and drove a lipstick-red Corvette convertible — wrote just one comment on my report card that whole year: “Dana has missed a great deal of math instruction and this is reflected in his work.”

Cut off from friends — they didn’t live close — and deprived of school, books provided relief and freedom in my rural solitary: Chip Hilton sports novels, Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

But what spellbound me most, helped keep me sane, was my well-worn stack of Marvel Comics: Tales of Suspense (with Captain America and the Invincible Iron Man), Tales to Astonish (with the Incredible Hulk and the Sub-Mariner), The Amazing Spider-Man, The Mighty Thor and, yes, the now-famous Avengers.

So, I guess, this is my secret comic-book origin.

I read and reread and reread those Marvels, was transported to heroic realms, other, better worlds. Steve Ditko’s awkward but brilliant Peter Parker — aka the Neurotic Spider-Man — was the kind of sly and strong kid I imagined myself to be. He had his sickly Aunt May to look after, too. And I had my mother, as I learned that what your family asks of you can be much more dangerous than any threat posed by a cackling and semi-insane supervillain.

I understood deep down the tongue-tied rage of the Hulk and the invisibility of the Fantastic Four’s Susan Richards (she was called the Invisible Girl in those less-enlightened times). After all, I was furious at being denied the haven of school. And you become merely a phantom classmate — nobody’s real friend — when you show up just half the time.

So I burrowed into those bold, incandescent comics for hours on end, keeping a wary and bitter eye on Mom and my 2-year-old brother, Tim, as I tried to imagine a future as some kind of artist ... some kind of writer ... maybe, even, some kind of mutant.

I counted the number of panels in each comic book. I soothed myself to sleep each night, not worrying about my mother, but envisioning myself hanging out — family-free — with the Avengers or even the teenage X-Men.

Like many working-class kids I dreamed myself into being, had to invent an alter ego out of pencil, paper and books. But where the Fantastic Four had the futuristic Baxter Building, and Tony Stark (Iron Man) his ultra-top-secret labs to perform their experiments, I had the humble kitchen table — that all-purpose family altar — and the porch of summer.

That’s where I read, drew and wrote, obsessively, compulsively, trying to figure out how to create the self I sensed I was meant to be. I knew I couldn’t depend on some glowing spider to transform my life. I had to do it myself. So I shut my eyes and imagined conjuring the same kind of comfort and bliss that the creations of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee gave me.

Without knowing, my parents had imprisoned me in a bleak dungeon of family obligation. But my Marvel Comics — that young, ever-expanding universe — offered me escape in the moment and, ultimately, into a future where I would become a novelist, a memoirist and a newspaperman.

Our sleek Marvel movies are all well and good. But for me they can’t hold a candle to the seduction of a simple spinner rack wobbling and squealing under the weight of the latest Lee-Kirby phantasmagorias, waiting for me at some country store way back in 1966.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/arts/marvel-universe-comics.html" id="d08102a0-1880-3f0a-a005-c2a4d92cff71">The New York Times</a>.

Solace and Salvation in the Marvel Universe, at 12 Cents a Comic Book

The Marvel Universe and I grew up together.

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Dana Jennings

Articles written by the author

Solace and Salvation in the Marvel Universe, at 12 Cents a Comic Book