Even If it Kills Me by Donovan Blair

Author:Donovan Blair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: YMAA Publication Center

’CAUSE A GUY READS COMICS HE CAN’T START SOME SHIT?

I STILL want to be a superhero.

I’m a comic-book nerd of the first order, and I have been since I was five. This is my father’s doing. He loved comics and wanted to share them with my brother and me. Every night without fail he would read them to us before bed.

Some kids get bedtime tales of gnomes and fairies. Some get Bible lessons, God help them. Zach and I got stories of how Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered and why he turned into Batman. Or why the Master of Kung Fu’s father wanted to kill him.

In the world of comics, these origin stories describe how regular people turned into the characters we know and love. This stuff has always fascinated me. Take an orphan, toss him into a laboratory, knock over a Bunsen burner, and poof: a superhero is born.

A good ass-kicking is a prerequisite for a comic book, as is some kind of showdown between good and evil. Martial arts can help with both. As a kid, many of my favorite comic characters were martial artists: Shang Chi, Iron Fist, and the Karate Kid. Not that Karate Kid. This one was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes when Ralph Macchio was just a boy.

I had a head full of these tales by the time I was seven. Every night my pops would select whatever story fit his mood: Jonah Hex, Dr. Strange, Power Man and Iron Fist. Stan Lee and Marv Wolfman fit my definition of literary giants. I could still make a case for that.

At some point, though, Zach and I asked my dad to stop reading us comics. We thought we had outgrown it. The bedtime readings came to an end, and, although we didn’t admit it, we missed his stories. I’m sure he did too. Growing up complicates everything.

I still have crime fighters on the brain. Every kid dreams of saving the world, or at least the city, but most of them get over it by the time they’re in their forties. Since my return to martial arts, I feel that calling once again. My inner superhero is in the closet, and he needs to get into his tights, come out, and be fabulous and free.

Sorry.

How do you create a superhero? First I need a cool origin. OK, let’s see. I was born in a mystical faraway city called Sherman, Texas.

No. Start again.

I was just your average, mild-mannered bassist/barista. One night I was the last person at the coffee shop. I locked up and walked outside, and that was when I heard someone calling for help. I ran to the corner and looked down the alley. Two guys were attacking a woman. They had taken her purse and ripped her shirt, and it looked like they were about to do something much worse to her.

She saw me and screamed again for help. Time seemed to slow down. I looked down the street, but no one else was around.

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