What ever happened to the simpler times, when werewolves licked at window panes and could only be brought to heel with the sacrifice of younger brothers? These were the nightly concerns of The Incompletes - before kin, before sin – lost in a jungle of delicious turmoil, armed only with blunt weapons of peeling silver, disposable siblings . . . and ducks. It’s no wonder they retired to quieter things.

Any child, no matter how fragile, can withstand the harmless paf of a Styrofoam Nerf arrow - a common assault in our young marshmallow states. I don’t want to spark bloodlust or reintroduce the old ways of sexist chivalry, but these days it seems we are raised to become anything but intrepid. What happened to sending children into the forest to turn blue with cold and mad with hunger until the wind and leaves twisted into animals that spoke?  Or slapping a splintered sword in young palms and setting them against one another in a pit of dust?  Or tying them to the back of a horse before striking the mare’s thigh, sending them galloping toward a cliffside and off a one-hundred foot drop into squid-squirming waters . . . I don’t remember which culture practiced that last one, but I’m sure it was a thing.

Fortunately for those made of soft stuff, siblings and older kids of every ilk have stepped in. When I was young, I was ready to shatter at the merest touch or whiff of insult.  My fragility was constantly tested by my babysitters who dropped me from balconies, torched beloved stuffed animals, and shoved me under couch cushions (breathless with the weight of a teenager on my frail, bird-chest), forcing me to watch movies where dolls murdered the innocent kids who bought them. I remember riding on the back of Ben’s bike to a nearby grove where a drainage pipe belched water into a black lake. Ben put his hand on my face, shoved me off the back seat onto the concrete and said, “Good luck with the Turtle Men.”  These were cloaked figures of his own creation that slunk through my nightmares, baring small skeletal hands that did not know how to let go.  I learned how to ride a bike after that.

Anyway, I’m grateful for these moments: the times when I was enveloped by fear and instead of spluttering, learned how to drink it in.  That’s probably why I don’t have any remorse for the things we did to Andrew when he was young. We took Mark’s worm of a little brother and created a man cut from arrows and sais, with a ridiculous pain tolerance, and a heartbeat that cries vengeance . . .  If we were smart, we would be training things other than our comic skills.

-C

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.