I spent most of April posting about the early Marvel comics I was reading. These included Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Hulk. They were really ridiculous, and I enjoyed them primarily for how silly they managed to be while still telling (somewhat) serious stories. I gained a lot of appreciation for Stan Lee as a writer -- he's clearly consciously pushing the limits of comics storytelling, and even if there are a lot of growing pains, you can tell he has a lot of fun in the process.
I especially liked when he'd have his characters, these unbelievably super-powerful beings, get flummoxed by the most mundane of issues. Both Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four wind up feeling strapped for cash, and Stan Lee hilariously lets them complain about how other superheroes never seem to have money problems. That's the core of the Marvel relatability formula, and it's something the recent Marvel movies (though not the TV series) seem to struggle with.
Almost all of my posts from April were Marvel comics, but I'll limit myself to showing you this one.
I (wisely) spend a great deal of my time talking about my favorite foods and drinks, so that may friends know to get them for me if the opportunity ever arises. I was first exposed to see C. C. Lemon when I lived in Japan, and my love for it rapidly developed into a debilitation addiction that wears on me to this day. The stuff is incredible, delicious poison. The drink machines in Japan that dispense it have a big picture of Tommy Lee Jones scowling beneath the word BOSS, which tells you all you need to know about the insidious quality of Japanese marketing. How could I resist his authoritative visage?
When I was living there, I drank at least a bottle of this stuff every day, sometimes two. It advertises itself as having "40 lemons' worth of vitamin C in every bottle," and, fair enough, I didn't catch a cold while I was there. In the sweltering Kyoto summer heat, it was the most refreshing taste I'd ever known. I was never quite able to explain to anybody else why I loved it so much, which you may be noticing is a theme here.
After I came back, and was finishing my last year of school in D.C., I went to a small Japanese supermarket and asked the owner if she carried any. She said no, but she offered to order it for me if I promised to buy it. Of course I did, and within a month she had received an enormous shipment of the stuff, nearly a hundred bottles. Nobody else seemed to want it, so I bought a couple bottles a week because I felt guilty. But I soon became extremely busy, and ran out of time to shop at her store.
Even after I graduated and returned to Pennsylvania, I still managed to visit D.C. a couple times a year. Every time I went, I tried to stop in, and, sure enough, there was still a vast quantity of C.C. Lemon on offer. The owner had forgotten me by that point, but I bought a few bottles every visit anyway. Eventually, though, my friends started moving away, and little by little I ran out of reasons to visit D.C. Is the C. C. Lemon still waiting for me, on the floor of that little shop? It came all the way from Japan just for me, and I was only able to enjoy a small fraction of it. So it sits and gathers dust, and waits for the day it might be wanted.
How fickle my tastes are. I drank a lot of Fresca that day, to be sure. It wasn't the best idea, but it wasn't the worst. Fresca is not bad, but it's no C. C. Lemon.
Okay, I lied. This sort of absurd humor can be found scattered through Stan Lee's writing, and every square centimeter of these panels is so implausible that they all cancel out and leave you with a great big smile on your face. Look at the general's expression! He's not impressed with the Thing's strength, he's just horrified by what's been done to his telephone books. As bits of paper shoot out in every direction, and Mr. Fantastic tries to console the appalled officer, we realize that we are not so different, we different members of this thing called humanity. We all take ourselves so seriously. We are all so ridiculous. Don't judge.
Some of us are more ridiculous than others. At least we know how to have a good time.
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