ABSTRACT
One of my earliest memories is of being a little girl of about three years old: lying on the fl oor on my stomach, with feet swinging rhythmically to a nonexistent beat, I’d fl ip excitedly through the pages of my superhero comic books (courtesy of my pop-culture-enlightened dad), looking up occasionally to allow my face to be bathed by the calming rays of the television screen. Many decades have passed, but not much has changedwell, perhaps now I tend to prefer wallowing in the latest adventures of my superheroes while propped up by pillows in the comfort of my bed. The thrill of eagerly turning each page remains as intense as it was when I was a young girl, but now I also have the advantage of being able to read and even understand the funny scribbles in the boxes and bubbles that are scattered across the pages. Since those early days, my tastes and interests shifted and developed, adjusting, especially since the 1980s, to the darker, more maladjusted hero types: the Preacher, the Invisibles, Hitman, the Punisher, Swamp Thing, John Constantine-they all occupy a special space on my ever-growing bookshelves, but my favorite has never wavered. It was Batman when I was three and it’s Batman today. I took him into my life and let his mysterious and dark brand of heroism cut deep into my being. The arrival of the television series in the 1960s further convinced me that this man in tights (not glaringly colored and tasteless spandex like those of Superman or Spiderman) really did exist out there somewhere. How could this complex, brooding being that affected me in such real ways not be real? (As a kid I repressed the extreme campiness of the TV show-hell, I thought camp was a place your parents sent you when they wanted you out of the house for a week!) Perhaps, like Fox Mulder, I still want to believe.
