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I used to read comic books when I was a kid, but I didn’t collect them like Mark and Ben. I could barely keep up with the story lines they talked about during our walks home from school. Ben was my best friend, Mark was competition.

 

Mark knew everything there was to know about comic books. He knew which panel, on which page, in which issue, Dr. Bruce Banner first received his life-altering burst of gamma rays. He knew how many times a certain villain of Iron Man’s appeared between issue number 1 and issue number 163; how many one-liners Spiderman hurled at the Rhino during their second encounter; with which hand Batman threw The bat-a-rang that brought down the Joker before he could give Robin a good kick in his green Speedos. Ben knew less about comics than Mark by a factor of 10. I had heard of Spiderman. I watched the cartoons.

 

So, every day after school, I got to be The Guy without HBO, at The Water Cooler of Life. And, every day after school, I fantasized about flying to an alien world where allowance fell from the sky. Oh what I would have done for allowance. I couldn’t even cheat on my milk money and squirrel enough away for a single issue of… anything. I didn’t get milk money and my lunch was always packed for me. I had no revenue stream.

 

But, speaking of lunch. I want you to picture a small Korean boy, 7 years old, shyly unpacking a cloth package in the midst of a grammar school cafeteria. The ornate cloth is made of silk and it is resplendent with embroidered lotus blossoms. All the round eyes in the room fix their collective gaze on the strange boy, as he unravels a two-tiered bento box fashioned from lacquered wood and brass hinges. 

 

Lips smack, Twinkies hover in mid-bite – what possible wonder could emerge from this magical box? The perfect burger? Fries from heaven? No, no, last night’s succulent meatloaf gently placed between gravy-soaked slices of crustless bread, a bag of potato chips and a can of grape soda. Had to be. Nothing else warranted – no, deserved – such an exotic and intricate lunch box.

 

I want you to put yourself in this boy’s place. This boy who was still struggling to understand the language of his peers, this unformed personality attempting to navigate the world without a compass. Put yourself in his place as he removes the cover and reveals to a baited audience of second graders … raw fish and pickled cabbage.

 

For you culturally enlightened generation of readers: It’s like showing up at a Biker rally in a homemade Klingon costume. And, when they follow you home, they find your entire family dressed in similar outfits.

 

You now have a rough idea of what it’s like to be more outside than the fat kid who eats paste and smells like feet. For this reason, more than any other, I was interested in comic books. Because, beyond the margin where the paste-eating kid lived, social oblivion waited.

 

Anyway, aside from the occasional found nickel in the street, I was broke. I relied on comics of opportunity. Coverless issues of Werewolf by Night and The Master of Kung-Fu blown across the playground; a random assortment of drugstore and duty-free rack copies of Dracula Lives! and The Atom presented by well-meaning but clueless aunts. 

 

I was woefully behind when it came to Superman, The Batman, and the other really cool heroes, but being forced to read the oddball titles no one else read gave me an edge. Suddenly, after an entire summer of reading issues not seen since the sacking of the Great Library of Alexandria, I became the nomad scholar, the aloof intellectual who listened to Tom Waits and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. I could make up whatever I wanted about the adventures of Shazam! or The Inhumans and come off like Quentin Tarantino guest-lecturing at The Royal Homeric Society about the epic nature of The Five Deadly Venoms. A single water-damaged issue is all I needed to become the resident expert on all things Ka-Zar.

 

Ben and Mark talked about the latest villain in the current issue of The Avengers, and I chimed in with DVD commentary about Chang Chi’s debt to Bruce Lee. I was in. I could contribute. I could compete with Mark.

 

At this point, it’s important that you understand this: I was born in South Korea. My world-view was built on a cultural foundation of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The country was still cleaning up after the ruin and devastation left behind by years of war. When I arrived in the US with my family in 1973, I had amassed about 4 hours of television – none of it in English. It’s important you know this so you can fully appreciate the events of a clear Saturday afternoon in Chicago, during the Summer of ’75. It went something like this:

 

“Superman can beat anybody,” said Mark.

 

“Not if they had Kryptonite,” retorted Ben.

 

“It doesn’t matter, he could just get all the Kryptonite, in like, a minute, and throw it away.”

 

“Yeah, but he can’t touch it, so how can he throw it? Besides, the Hulk could beat him. He’s all green like Kryptonite and he’s the strongest thing there is.”

 

“He’s not made of Kryptonite, though. He’s strong, but not as strong as Superman.”

 

“Nuh uh, when he’s really mad he gets really, really stronger.”

 

I blow a smoke ring into the air and look off into the horizon, “Black Bolt can level an entire mountain with the slightest whisper. Imagine if the guy burped? Or sneezed?”

 

“He still couldn’t beat Superman.”

 

“That’s not the point, Mark. A little too much dust in the halls of Attilan and there goes North America, is all I’m saying.”

 

“I know who can beat, Superman,” said Ben.

 

“Who?”

 

“Thor!”

 

“No way,” said Mark with a dismissive wave. “

 

“No way? He’s The God of Thunder!”

 

“Yeah, but he’s not God, God.”

 

“But he’s a god, and Superman is just an alien.”

 

Wait, what was this word they were using? Cod, did they say? Tod?

 

“So what? If he loses the hammer he just becomes human again.”

 

“OK, well, God could beat Superman then.”

 

“Well, yeah, God could beat everybody at once.”

 

“Yeah, he could just like crush all the Avengers in his hand at once.”

 

God? Who was this God? A superhero who could take on The Avengers with a single hand? Why hadn’t I heard of this God? Where the hell have I been? How could they keep this from me? Was my dilettantism of the core genre finally catching up to me? Was I being pushed out?

 

I felt the fat kid hovering over my shoulder, his pasty breath making me gag. I had to get back in, but I didn’t know anything about this new superhero.

 

Desperately, I listened to every word they said as they went on and on about great floods and pillars of fire. This superhero had been around for a while, I had a lot of catching up to do. Too much in fact. I needed another angle. I needed to play it cool. I needed to be cool.

 

“Oh, man, I hate God. He’s so boring,” I said casually.

 

“You hate God?” asked Ben.

 

“Yeah, man. He can take everybody, so what? It’s not like he’s real or anything.” I mused.

 

Silence. Long silence. 

 

Ben’s mouth was open, his eyes wide. Mark started to cry. We were growing up on the streets of Chicago, you didn’t just start crying, not without cradling a broken limb, or a skinned knee at the very least. Something was wrong. I could see it in their eyes, something was horribly wrong.

 

“You can go to Hell if you say things like that, Sang,” whispered Ben.  

 

Hell? I didn’t understand, but from his tone, I pictured a scary juvenile facility with viscous dogs and really mean guards. But as snot bubbles started forming around Mark’s nose, I began to understand the level of horror my friends (Ben, Polish Catholic and Mark, Jewish school student transplanted from Skokie) were experiencing.

 

“That’s really, evil, Sang.” warned Ben.

 

Evil. That was a word I understood. But Ben wasn’t talking about Lex Luthor evil, and Mark wasn’t sobbing from the darkness that is Electro. No, they were experiencing dread, the-abyss-beyond-the-dark-closet-dread, spider-eggs-in-the-bubble-gum-dread. But I still had to play it cool.

 

“What?” I asked. “What’s the big deal?”

 

Mark ran home. Ben, a kid wise beyond his years, invited me to dinner at his house. His mom sat me down and went through the story of Genesis. She even took me to mass with them the next day, patiently explaining why I couldn’t get in line for the cracker and punch.

 

That night, as I drifted off, I thought about all the things I had experienced in the short span of a weekend. I wondered why my parents had never told me about God and the Devil, about Adam and Eve and the apple tree snake. And I also wondered why God hadn’t stepped in and rescued me and the fat kid from the second grade.