X is for X Men

X is for X-Men.

 

    I was a teen, and one of the rare girls to be found in a comic book store, back home.  So I remember taking a sort of pride in stepping through that old and dingy, poster covered front door to collect up that next addition of the X-Men.   

 

Although I no longer collect, I am still a diehard fan of stories involving superhero's, heroic underdogs, morality tales and impossible odds.   To me, the X-Men were just the same as anyone else who felt singled out, ridiculed and beaten down because of their differnces.  Differences they could not help, because it was who they were born to be.  And I think its the same insight shared by many of this brands following and a undeniable connection most beginning fans make to these characters.    

 

To this day, I keep the X-Men in my inspirational toolbox.  Those stories sit beside my love of the supernatural and abnormal, big adventure and perilous danger.  The comics also taught me the importance of getting as much emotion into a very small scene, to make the reader hungry for more.  Good comics use an economy of well placed dialogue and just the right pose of a image to get the emotion of a scene.  I try the same with my writing.  Show and not tell.

 

And then there's what I take away from my mutant muses.  My respect for flawed people doing the right thing, when the world keeps giving them excuses not to.  My affection for human kindness and the way in which we all connect to one another, one unique character to another.  All aspects of the human condition can be found in the pages of these stories about more human than human superhero's.  These X-Men.

 

See ya in the funnies, A to Zers!

 

 

 

X-Men in the beginning.



And as I remember them in the 90's.