When I was about five years old my brother and I were given the opportunity to get one comic each on an ongoing basis. Now I cannot remember why we chose our specific choices, but he chose the Beano and I chose Spider-Man. Of course at the ages of three and five we weren't to realise the intrinsic philosophies of the relative books; they were just exciting distractions; but the different nature of the books are now inherent in our different approaches to life. The more thoughtful, deeper messages woven in the pages of what could have turned out to be a throw-away medium, have stayed with me throughout my life; whereas the humorous, yet frivolous, nature of my brothers choice were forgotten soon after adolescence had deemed comics to be too childish. Something, I am ashamed to say, I was pressured into thinking at that age as well.
Skip forward a few years and now aged nineteen and at art college. Suddenly out of nowhere comic shops are springing up everywhere and comics are starting to be considered 'cool' in this country; finally. My interest piqued again, I travelled to my local comic emporium and find to my surprise, not the black and white reprints on low quality paper I was used to as a boy, but a wide variety of characters, all in colour and all on nice glossy paper. They looked 'cool'.
While still not mainstream; at this point the only comic to get movie publicity since the seventies was Batman; there was a small following for these 'funny' books in this country, and it was growing steadily. Riding the wave of this new cult status, I started buying comics again. A story arc here, a mini series there, and to my surprise found the characterization and subject matter to be a lot more adult than I remembered. This revelation intrigued me to the point I wrote my thesis on the literary validity of comicbooks as a medium.
During my research for this work, my dissection of these characters brought to my attention a factor that I had not anticipated; being a very visual person from an early age, I had always assumed it was the bizarre costumes and beautiful art that had caught my eye, when in fact it was the very nature of the characters and their penchant towards being the underdog that had kept me hooked. Still being something of an underdog, I found myself sucked right back in. Little did I know that this very motivation would eventually lead to my estrangement.
The problem that arose was that although my notion of the characters I had grown up with was still true to their original inception, the characters themselves had 'evolved' into bastardised versions of themselves.
Spider-Man, who had come to symbolize to so many a testament to the human spirits ability to overcome adversity, now married to a successful super model, living in a nice apartment and accepted by the society that used to shun him.
The X-Men, created to be an allegory for being an outcast and dealing with oppression, had become a space-faring, trendy cult group whose genetic diversity was now so widespread that 'normal' human beings were in danger of becoming the minority.
The Punisher, a messed up psychopath not able to reconcile his past and a metaphor of a countries disownment of a war that shouldn't have happened, was now fighting demons on a mission from God.
The Incredible Hulk, once a tortured, simple creature, hunted by a society that feared him and a metaphor of the dangers of mankind's obsession with using science to play god; now an intelligent and articulate hero, integrated comfortably into society.
And Captain America, the living embodiment of everything good that his country stood for, now a bit player, not deemed cool enough for a generation to whom truth and justice were as alien a concept as respect and compassion.
I tried to give the books the benefit of the doubt; I honestly wanted to believe that the joy and mystery would return, that I would finish a comic and think to myself 'see, good always finds a way'�; but alas in my blind attempts to find hope where none existed I made my second mistake. I became a collector.
My comic buying activity was now, not dictated by my desire to read the stories inside, but by the need to keep the 'run' going. My bills would get bigger and bigger, while at the same time the list of books I would look forward to would get smaller and smaller: It's a depressing thing to see fifty pounds worth of something you don't really want. Then the fateful day came, the day I realised what had happened. What had set me free as a child was now the thing that caged me.
Now don't get me wrong, there were, and still are, a lot of great books and a lot of great writers out there: Transmetropolitan, Preacher, Fables, Sandman, Planetary, Astro City, Hellblazer, and more; I even tried a couple; but by the time I got around to reading the ones I did read, it was too late, the passion had died.

But what about the rebirth I hear you all cry. The miracle in the title is the epilogue to the story; a story of hope diminishing and futile struggle to resurrect something that couldn't be resurrected, or at least not by comics.

Recently there has been a change in my life, something that started tentatively as an experiment, but has grown to be one of the defining parts of my life. You see, comics to me as a child, were a way to let my imagination carry me above the dreariness of life; but it wasn't the stories themselves but more the stories they inspired in my head. Comics couldn't give that back to me, partly due to the fact I didn't respect them anymore, and partly because I wasn't ready. My mind was closed. Now it's open again, thanks to you.
Writing for this site has given the stories and thoughts in my head a voice again. Like a bird that has rediscovered it's wings, I can see beyond the edge of the branch; the drop doesn't look as steep as it used to and I'm brave enough to jump. Sometimes I soar through the heavens, sometimes I crash, beak first, into the ground, but I don't care anymore; the cage door has been opened, your comments and feedback have enticed me into the daylight, and now I'm here, I never want to go back.

Thank you.

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