You know, if you think about it, another way to look at the phrase "secret identity," is that you do not always know how you become the person you are. It’s a secret, even to you. (I guess the other popular phrase, "secret origin," is an even better example of this.) How is it that you like the things you like, or know the things you know? Why do some things catch and stick in your brain pan, and others just slip into the fires of forgetfulness? Doesn’t it make you wonder sometimes?

You’ll notice my clever and recurring use of the first person singular there. It’s because I, of course, know the answers to all these questions because I, my good friend, am a fanboy. After a few days of careful self-scrutiny, I realized there is hardly a single thing about me I haven’t swiped from comic books. Mentally, I am little more than a patchwork man (see?), sewn together from the panels of disposable pop culture. And since I am a fanboy, I’m not the least ashamed. No, no. I am proud to live my life according to a credo thought up by a comic book writer half-crazed from Benzedrine, vodka gimlets, and a half-dozen encroaching deadlines. And so I give you Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned From Comics. [Not to be confused with Larry’s "Everything I Needed to Know About England I Learned From Hellblazer" from an earlier issue of CEO. Stolen from? Sure. Confused with? No. —Brian.]

***

Still Trying to Figure out What Sapiens Means: There’s some early issue of The Invaders, like issue three or four, written by Roy Thomas, where The Human Torch refers to Captain America as "regular ol’ homo sapiens." I asked my dad what this meant.

"It’s a technical term for human being." He told me. "Homo, in latin, means man."

"Huh. So Sapiens means shield-throwing?"

Dad looked pretty baffled. "What? No."

"Flag-Wearing?"

"Don’t be silly, Jeff. Of course not."

I thought for a moment. "Wing-headed?"

For whatever reason, the whole situation grew more and more tense; I guess because Dad was stymied as to what sapiens actually meant but was sure he could remember, given a minute to think about it. Unfortunately, a minute was the last thing I was going to give him, positive as I was that the reference would have been particular to Captain America for the Torch to have made it. "Serum-drinking? Non-flame-using, maybe?"

"For God’s sake, Jeff! No!"

Looking back on it, I’m sure if I had mentioned where I had learned the phrase, perhaps my dad would have been a little more understanding of my etymological fumblings. "Something having to do with buccaneer boots? Possessing a useless sidekick?" It was one of the few times my father actually walked off in disgust and frustration and I decided that maybe Roy had just thrown it in there to come off as learned. I did the same, using it in my third grade book report to great effect. My father and I, of course, never spoke of it again.

There are other terms I picked up from comics, although most of ‘em aren’t nearly as fancy. Upon seeing a cute woman on the street, years of Love & Rockets have actually trained me to say, under my breath, "Ootah." And I could swear there was some issue of Spider-Man where he says, "Wrong-o, Mary Lou," which, God help me, I have said several times. And, when I was very young, I had the annoying habit of concluding some awful half-assed self-concocted homily or sloppy example of all that was ironic or odd with the world by quietly, sincerely, adding "Nuff said." But nothing ever really matched the phrase Homo Sapiens, which got both an A+ and my dad’s goat in one fell swoop.

There is Such A Thing As Too Much of A Good Thing, Particularly When The Thing Under Consideration Is Not Actually That Good: My friend Chuck gave me his entire collection of Marvel Team-Up, the only comic title he collected, when he dropped out of college to move down to Los Angeles and get back together with the girlfriend who had stabbed him. At the time, I was sick, broke and going out of my mind in the tiny crackerjack box called my dorm room and decided to read the entire run, all 150 issues in one go (the series had just been cancelled with a noise that would made the proverbial whimper sound like the equally proverbial bang). I had a good chunk of the issues through 74 or so—I left somewhere around the time Claremont did—and I had remembered Team-Up as being a reasonably clever title, capable of squeezing a few new twists out of a standard gimmick.

Sweet stick-puppet Jesus, did I remember wrong. Marvel Team-Up is a stunningly formulaic book, even by the standards of Marvel at the time. For the first thirty issues, it goes something like this: Spider-Man meets other superhero who knows there’s a warrant out for Spidey’s arrest, so they fight. Or, Spider-Man doesn’t recognize the other superhero, so they fight. Or, super-villain deceives one superhero about the other, and so they fight. Or, there’s only one cinnamon roll left at the buffet table, so they fight. Then after realizing their mistake, they team up and beat the crap out of the bad guy, who turns out to have all the extra cinnamon rolls in his cape. Then, for the next forty or so issues comes the multi-part epic, wherein additional heroes end up in the mix. Here, all you have to do is end the previous issue with a cliffhanger (Spider-Man falling to his death seems to be the favorite) and have the new issue pick up with a random hero passing by, seeing Spider-Man and saving him. Then the new hero and Spider-Man go back to save the other hero from the villain and then they all beat the crap out of the bad guy. Or the bad guy has put the old hero under his control and Spider-Man and the new hero have to beat the old hero before they can beat the villain. Sometimes the villain then turns out to just be the pawn of the master-villain who announces himself on the last page, or else beats down everyone and then the readers find out his real identity on the last page. At this point, the team-up can then be rolled onto a third issue where either the hero from the first team-up or the second team-up is conveniently a member of a super-team and then the whole super-team is called in to provide one big colossal beat down. Or the original villain, pissed that he’s been betrayed, teams up with the heroes for the beat-down with a cover blurb describing it as "The Team-Up You Never Thought You’d See!" Then there are the Claremont issues, which are exactly the same as above but consist of him also tying up the threads of various issues that he’s had cancelled out from under him or using villains or heroes he, and only he, has some special fondness for (to this day, nothing makes me want to eat a bullet more than a Claremont story with D’Spayre as the villain—which, if you think about it, is kind of pleasingly ironic) and so inserts a certain amount of personal investment into the formula (that phrase would be the secret of Chris Claremont’scareer in a nutshell). And then there’s seventy-two or so issues of J.M. DeMatteis being cutesy and having Spider-Man team up in "The Unlikeliest Team-Up Ever!" with oddball characters, the nadir being Spider-Man teaming up with Howard Chaykin-created pulp-style adventurer Dominic Fortune to change diapers of the now aged Fortune.

When I put down that last issue, I had a feeling like I’ve never had before and pray to God I never will again. My attention span was shot, my brain felt like it had turned as flat and and dead and gray as a McDonald’s hamburger patty, and a tire fire of contempt and loathing filled my heart and lungs. At that moment, I remember thinking, "Jesus Christ, comic books really are crap." Because, as I said, I had remembered MTU fondly, so it made me view any previous enjoyment I had derived from comics with a deeply-felt suspicion. I honestly thought about dragging all my long boxes out to the front lawn of the dorm and burning them. In my fevered brain, I believe I half-thought that if I did so, Spider-Man, swinging by the neighborhood and drawn by the flames, might show up, then he and I would fight. Finally, I would get the chance to explain what had happened and then Spidey and I would team up, go find Gerry Conway, and beat the crap out of him. Then, afterwards, I would walk off across the dormitory lawn, head bowed under the weight of the morning sun, and Spidey could stand on a nearby roof and say, "You know, just when I thought yours truly had cornered the market on problems, along comes a guy like that to make me realize ol’ Peter Parker’s still got a thing or two to feel thankful for." (And, underneath Spidey, a panel with huge blurb: "Next Ish: Man-Wolf! Nuff said!!")

Oliver’s Army is Here To Stay: I grew up in Humboldt County, which means that almost all of my exposure to music was either (a) Reggae; (b) Led Zeppelin; or (c) Dread Zeppelin, which was a Reggae band that did Zep covers, all of which got pretty old pretty fast. So it’s sad but it’s true: if not for comic book writers name-dropping, I might never have developed any musical taste whatsoever. The best example of this is a Marvel Team-Up Annual that Frank Miller wrote, drawn by Herb Trimpe or somebody, where The Purple Man returns, only to forswear any interest in super-villainy or world domination. He just wants to relax and enjoy life, which, of course, none of the various heroes involved will let him do. So, early on, when Spider-Man tries to stop him, The Purple Man, with his abilities to control minds, says, "Why don’t you just hang there and sing for me?" and Spidey says, "Okay. Um, how about Elvis Costello?" The Purple Man says, "Sure, why not?" Spidey then launches into "Oliver’s Army." Because of this, I hunted down Armed Forces, which just knocked me out. Shame-facedly, I also admit to getting hooked on Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited after reading the lyrics of "Desolation Row" reprinted in Moore’s Watchmen, was referred to Eno’s Another Green World through Moore’s Swamp Thing and, of course, now worship The Replacements whose name I only had to see mentioned in seventy bajillion issues of Love & Rockets before I gave them a try.

There’s A Whole World of Creamy Goodness Out There: Don’t get the wrong idea: Humboldt County wasn’t so backwards that we didn’t have Hostess products where I grew up. Sadly, though, my mom was thoroughly opposed to the eating of sugary foods for snacks. The closest we got were storebought oatmeal cookies—without frosting, for Christ’s sakes! My friends, after coming over several times to visit, not only never bothered to stop by again, they apparently filed something with Amnesty International. For three years running, My mom was neck and neck with the People’s Republic of China on AmInt’s list of child welfare hot-spots.

To make things worse, I read comics during the period where dozens of one-page ads showed my favorite heroes fighting crime by throwing fruit pies and other Hostess products at the criminals. Looking back on them now, I realize now the policy of allowing only the villains to be shown enjoying the treats can lead to the inference that Hostess eaters are a cowardly, superstitious (and poorly dressed) lot…but at the time I wouldn’t have cared even if I had. I would lie back and daydream about a day where I had access to all the comics I could read and all the Hostess products with which I could gorge myself. And so, every Friday when I slip away from the counter of Comix Experience and I stop next door to pick up some scary blackberry fruit pie, no more than a day or two from the printed expiration date, it’s as if that daydream has come true. Of course, I’m not married to Red Sonja and I don’t wield the Power Cosmic, so it hasn’t come fully true, but even I’m aware you can’t have everything.

Anyway, I’m sure you remember the ads: Hero comes across the poorly dressed villain and his poorly dressed minions causing havoc. Hero steps in but is either caught in a trap or is helpless against the villain’s particularly lame power and, through the twin miracles of quick-thinking and product placement, hurtles some delicious Hostess products, distracting the hungry villains and leading in very short order to their downfall. Nothing particularly complex there (put another superhero in place of the Hostess products and you have the first 150 issues of Marvel Team-Up). Since I was basically a country kid (even if it was cannabis country) and naïve to the ways of the world, it wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco and did some reading that I realized what was really going on in those ads. And I’m not just talking about the Mametesque misogyny inherent in strips like "That Dirty Beach!" and "Spider-Man Spoils A Snatch!" I’m talking about the heavily encoded world of illicit superhero passions: the type of Hostess product the hero tossed at the villain depended on the type of sex that the superhero was looking for. Analysis of the ads and interviews I’ve read with the ad’s creators have revealed at least this partial code:

Twinkies—oral sex

Cupcakes—"Greek" love

Fruit Pies, Cherry on Top, Apple on Bottom—Rough sex, with the thrower being the initiator (or "top").

Fruit Pies, Apple on Top, Cherry on Bottom—Rough sex, with the thrower being the recipient (or "bottom").

Ding-Dongs—Mutual Masturbation

Suzie Q’s—Sex with the henchmen watching

Tiger Tails—Sex with the henchmen participating

Chocodiles—Coprophilia and/or golden showers

Ho-Ho’s—Fisting

Snowballs—Felching

Cupcakes and Twinkies—Filking

Cupcakes by the box—"Hair-necking"

Now, a lot of you jaded native San Franciscans and big city types probably knew all that already, but it sure cast a new light on these ads for me. And the life-lesson it taught me was probably one of the most important life-lessons I ever picked up from comics—the world is an infinitely stranger and more delirious place than even the gaudiest comic book can bring itself to show. You have to realize that there are some things you’ll never be able to imagine without experiencing them, and you’ll probably just have to consign a lot of things to the realm of the unimaginable, the land of "nuff said." And hopefully knowing that there’s more to the world than you can ever know, no matter even if you own and have read every issue of every title, will bring you a certain amount of humility and maybe even inner peace.

Nuff said, everyone. Nuff said, indeed.