Brothers of the Spear

I have an urge to read some old comics.  When I was a little kid I had a handful of randomly acquired comics.  One of them I won at a bingo game at a grade school carnival, another I got over at the flea market that was periodically held at the rec center in Mandan.  I’m not really sure where the few others came from.

One of these comics was an issue of Brothers of the Spear, a series published by Dell and then Gold Key.  It told the story of Natongo and Dan-El and their adventures in a fictional land in Africa.  Another was an issue of the Lone Ranger, a story rendered in dark and moody inks and involving a steamship.  There was  a comic about a family transported to some mythical prehistoric land in which dinosaurs and hominids coexisted.  A favorite and very mysterious one was a coverless copy of an issue from Secret Wars II.  It delved into some of Marvel’s pantheistic history in a way that created such mystery in a child who didn’t know much else about the Marvel universe.  And it asked some interesting philosophical questions.

In a way, the fact that these comics were all from different series and story-lines, and read out-of-joint, made them that much more intriguing and mysterious.  All the plots and points of departure were wide open, and my imagination could take them as a starting point from which to leap into the unknown.   The characters, situations, and motifs could populate new stories, while my imagination connected them together with elements picked up elsewhere…all of it weaving together into some sort of labyrinthine daydream.

Upon beginning this post, I was only going to mention Brothers of the Spear, because of this odd urge to read one, but now I find myself waxing poetic about the beautiful mysteries of imagination.  That's one of the coolest things about being a parent, I think...taking part in and witnessing your child's explorations of the imagination.  It is truly wonderful, and one of the beautiful joys of children.