Horizons
One of the earliest dreams I can vividly remember is being in an arcade; not a dedicated one, the kind of perfunctory try at wheedling some extra pocket change out of pent-up little goober kids you’d see at a movie theatre or bowling alley. Tucked away in the back behind the pinball machines was a miniature stargate; somehow as rinky-dink and cheap-looking as everything surrounding it, stars swirling less like celestial bodies compressed and hurtled about by unthinkable cosmic power than a flimsy paper lightshow on a defunct old theme park ride. But it was still real. It even had a little walkway for maximum convenience as it took you wherever you pleased, the expanse of creation for a quarter.
As an adult when I find myself every now and again giving into “oh, if only I’d been born in…” fantasies I don’t imagine myself on the dance floors of any given era, or strolling dreamily down picturesque Parisian walkways before remembering I have to shit in holes now. I imagine myself on horseback or standing on the bow of a mighty ship departing for parts unknown, past the edge of the Earth towards new skies and new worlds beneath them. That daydream never lasts once I remember that at just about any time I chose to pick those quests would be first and foremost about expanding empires out to pave over whatever wonders were found, and also I’m a total wuss who gets headaches from travelling and despises extended exposure to nature in all its exhausting forms and would throw myself into the ocean the moment I realized I was never going to experience air conditioning again.
But in spite of that array of limitations, the dream where the desire circumvents reality can’t quite be stamped out of me: to be able to take a single step and see something new.
Zdzisław Beksiński
It might be that instinct that’s why I’ve always loved horizons. A nice sunset, a quality skyline shot or drawing, the one time I properly watched a sunrise while on a vacation. I’m half-convinced the real reason I love Secret Identity as much as I do is because it’s a book where fully half of the thing is Stuart Immonen drawing teeny-tiny Supermen floating in front of gorgeous landscapes tapering off into endless skylines. It’s a feeling I get with the likes of landing a new job, or moving, or realizing you have feelings for someone - the sense that the world is opening up in ways you can’t fully see the shape of yet but haven’t hardened into familiarity either. The rare moments where life does in fact feel like a story.
Life, however, rarely lining up quite like that - at least not without a lot of exhausting effort - it’s stories I generally turn to. Able to present a reality that’s been airbrushed and framed and curated to present a feeling of Significance on command, in ways beautiful or manipulative or often both.
By @ad_motsu, photographing locations in Harajuku matching up with images from the anime Love Live! Superstar!!
The last comic to give me that real, proper ‘new’ feeling was Tillie Walden’s On A Sunbeam: a vision of a lovely, quiet, personal universe driven by defining your future and offering others the same chance. It’s also something far off my usual path; there’s a particular sizzle to big-idea superhero comics at their best (or even far from their best) that usually demands most of my attention. But while I don’t know that that’ll ever entirely change, I think it’s increasingly time for me to look past that particular rush now and again to some alternatives.
I’m still going to be reading and writing about superheroes plenty - the first full-size piece I have planned following this is regarding them (though from a different angle than usual), and I have ideas for a regular Superman feature for this. A lot of this is gonna be me doing what I did with my blog, just a little tidied-up taken off the grind of having to churn out regular reactions. But the reason I’m starting with a piece like this is to commit upfront to trying different sorts of things and working out my thoughts on them productively, and seeing where that takes me. To try, in those perspectives and experiences, to find some horizons again. Because the alternative is a loss of faith in the new. Or even worse, prolonged periods of physical activity.
Bryn Jones