Waterbug

On the other hand...

I don't know why people get so
worried about lumps.
Warts, polyps, squishy growths,
just the body's way of warily surrounding
some invasion. Imagine some army
under good command: Charge!
Maybe you've got to learn
to take your lumps.

Pam

Or take your lumps

Making the lumps go away --
sounds like a cure for cancer.
I associate cancer with aggravation.
One guy cured himself by learning to laugh.
Maybe it has to do with loving life:
Like it or lump it.

Dean

Fling far the lump

One of the other Little Lulu
comics I remember was
when Lulu had to stir
a potion for witch Hazel,
stirred and stirred until all lumps were gone
save one — and that (despite instructions)
Lulu flung into the grass. Later we discover Hazel used the potion
for some evil purpose. Lulu needs
a bit to break the spell. But none is left...
unless! —
Oh, wait, that lump upon the grass!
She saves the day, foils the witch.
And we learn . . . what? To fling the lump!
Oh, lump flung far, how provident you are!

Pam

wee wee wee all the way home

"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
What lousy grammar. It should be,
"We have met the enemy, and he is we."
No, really, it should be, it's in, I think,
the Ten Commandments, and there's
a version of it in my own religion:

"We have met the enemy
and he is wee."

Dean

The artist and wordsmith -- politics too!

Kelly was a bit steep to me
(I admit it) as a sheltered semi-
literate. I liked Pogo, though I suspect
as much for the art as for the concepts.
But oh, that Christmas carol:
"Deck us all with Boston Charlie..."
captured my funnybone and I
was sold, even without "a good-looking man
looks good in anything" or "we have met the enemy
and he is us."

So what has the artist done here?
Won our hearts and minds. Wonder when
the world will wake up to our subversion.

Pam

Dangerous Stuff

I loved comic books
until, when I was eleven,
a much older cousin gave me
a POGO comic -- so damned rich
and funny, it ruined the others for me.
Literature
is dangerous stuff
in the right hands.

Dean

And who was Little Lulu anyway?

The extraordinary thing was
our willingness to believe.
Little Lulu was, well,
Little Lulu. I particularly remember
the time it snowed and snowed
and little Lulu, stuck in her house,
with snow up above the windows,
digs her way out and wanders through
this white tunnel she made
to get to -- where? the store?
to buy milk? eggs?
And we never wondered (or I didn't)
where did she put the snow she was digging out?
The wonderful thing is,
it didn't matter. Snow in the way?
Get rid of it. Little girl? Well,
capable of anything, digging long tunnels
without strain. Superman in frilly
underwear!

Pam

Little Lulu No Where

Those comic books stirred up a lot of stuff:
In Little Lulu, for example: Why did this smart talking girl
always have her panties showing?
And why did I not learn the right lesson
when her pal, Tubby, dreamed he was imprisoned
in a cell made of ice cream and had to
eat his way out (Oh boy! he thinks), but
half way through the peppermint chocolate chip tunnel
can't take any more (OOOGH!) and never wants
to taste ice cream again -- and all I could think was,
yeah, but why doesn't someone please
surround me with ice cream. But what really
got me thinking was when Lulu went into
nowhere land (or whatever she called it), just
grayness everywhere (and a little girl wandering about
in it), endless grayness, no horizon, no ground, no ceiling,
no shadows. Lucky Little Lulu was in it,
to make it confrontable. It's like...it's like
going on line and having your computer go blank,
except it isn't your computer. It's you. But it can't be
that bad -- it was in Little Lulu.

Dean

Comics

I didn't know, really, how unique my life was,
those days of my youth (the fifties)
curled up with a comic book, reading
about Little Lulu, Casper the Friendly Ghost,
Superman, Spiderman. I don't even know
if I've got the time frame right. Does it matter?
Children in Armenia might be starving, but
what was that to me. Superman would
save the day! It hasn't been a hard life
up to now, so I have a lot to lose
if the bad guys make me "feel the pain."
And don't they want to. Don't they want to.
Some may claim that "terrorist" is just
a "freedom fighter" on the other side.
The Penguin may not exist, but there are plenty
of ghouls who wouldn't mind being him.
No wonder people find it difficult to believe
that men are basically good!

Pam

Marveling

When I was 5 or 6 or 7 years old
(or all of those years),
I had a Captain Marvel tee shirt.
Pudgy, scruffy kid (couldn't make
my hair lie down) with a caped
superhero on my concave excuse
for a chest (his red outfit
had a lightning bolt on the swollen chest).

I knew it wouldn't do me any good
to say SHAZAM, but still
I thought I was bigger, stronger -- something
like that -- when I wore my Captain Marvel shirt.
I liked Captain Marvel better than Superman.
For one thing, Superman always flew
with his legs in a running position. It looked odd,
a man running through the sky. Captain Marvel
just stretched out his arms and legs --
more aerodynamic, seemed more the way
I'd fly. Also, red was my favorite color,
not Superman's Blue. And Captain Marvel
didn't waste time with girls. And mainly,
I read the Marvel comics before I encountered
Superman, who seemed a poor copy --

I didn't know then that Superman came first,
or that his DC Comics sued Captain Marvel
out of existence. Odd that both superheroes
had day jobs as journalists (Clark Kent and
Billy Batson, boy newscaster), I guess
a good way to keep track of criminal doings,
but certainly a challenge to superhero idealism.

I vaguely recall someone (my Mom)
wanting to throw out that shirt, me
protesting. Silly,
yet little has changed. I still want to be
a hero. But it's not something I'd care
to wear on my chest.

Dean