On nightmares, mostly. And Steve Ditko comics characters. Also a little about High School, College, books, Shakespeare plays, etc
I.
I woke up the other day in the middle of the night, I was sweating like hell and I’d just come back from this awful dream, this recurring nightmare which happens say once every couple of months.
It starts out differently, every time but ends exactly in the same manner: Turns out I’ve missed concluding this subject or another in College and I haven’t really graduated, so I’ll just have to go back to school once again to finish it.
It’s been, I dunno, two years after I’ve gotten out of that hellhole and I’m still getting the bad dreams.
I’m never going back to College regardless of what people say, period. The nightmares alone are making me crazy.
II.
A few days later I was in the mood for something sweet, some dessert to fend off the vodka-and-OJ I’d had at dinner but I didn’t really have anything at home. Since I wasn’t in the mood to walk the two blocks down to the supermarket I had to make do with whatever it was I could find available to me then & there: Hence, two bananas and some low-fat yogurt.
I sliced the bananas and poured the yogurt over them, what a no-brainer, and as I did that I realized the patterns the yogurt formed over the bananas were very similar to the rather surreal, Roger Corman-esque etchings and decorations that 1960s comics artist Steve Ditko would draw in his Spider-Man and Dr. Strange stories.
Dr. Strange fought this Ditko-created supernatural bad guy in their first mutual appearance back in ’63— an evil dream king by the name of Nightmare— whom Ditko aptly portrayed as riding an eerie white mare with its eyes glowing red like fiery embers.
III.
Comics might have ruined my education and if you are to go along Dr. Fredrick Wertham’s babbling comics ended up ruining the education of the entire post-war planet Earth or something like that. One thing comics affected, for sure, was my perception of the plays of William Shakespeare.
Now, first of all I only got into Shakespeare because of comics: James Robinson & Tony Harris’s Starman got me into Oscar Wilde and I dunno, maybe Truman Capote as well, and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman got me into Shakespeare.
Thing is, though, that whenever I’m reading Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream I think of Puck not as some character out of Sandman, but looking very similar to Steve Ditko’s Nightmare villain from the old 1960s Dr. Strange series: You know, emaciated fellow clad in emerald leotards, pointy ears, impish complexion, etc.
IV.
If I’d stuck with the trash they told me to read in High School my knowledge of books… well, of the world in general… would pretty much amount to, Gee I wonder what crazy plot Dan Brown’s cooking up for his next bestseller!
I probably wasted High School away with either the Flash or Justice League tucked under my desk; those gave way to more sophisticated stuff like Starman or Preacher or Sandman, and then on to well, The Picture of Dorian Gray and etc.
Funny thing is, because of that College became such a nightmare to me a few years later, which goes to prove my hypothesis that only morons need formal education when it comes down to the sheer act of Reading.
People with at least half a brain will work just fine with mere pointers, else it’s all boiling down to the Da Vinci Code.
I woke up the other day in the middle of the night, I was sweating like hell and I’d just come back from this awful dream, this recurring nightmare which happens say once every couple of months.
It starts out differently, every time but ends exactly in the same manner: Turns out I’ve missed concluding this subject or another in College and I haven’t really graduated, so I’ll just have to go back to school once again to finish it.
It’s been, I dunno, two years after I’ve gotten out of that hellhole and I’m still getting the bad dreams.
I’m never going back to College regardless of what people say, period. The nightmares alone are making me crazy.
II.
A few days later I was in the mood for something sweet, some dessert to fend off the vodka-and-OJ I’d had at dinner but I didn’t really have anything at home. Since I wasn’t in the mood to walk the two blocks down to the supermarket I had to make do with whatever it was I could find available to me then & there: Hence, two bananas and some low-fat yogurt.
I sliced the bananas and poured the yogurt over them, what a no-brainer, and as I did that I realized the patterns the yogurt formed over the bananas were very similar to the rather surreal, Roger Corman-esque etchings and decorations that 1960s comics artist Steve Ditko would draw in his Spider-Man and Dr. Strange stories.
Dr. Strange fought this Ditko-created supernatural bad guy in their first mutual appearance back in ’63— an evil dream king by the name of Nightmare— whom Ditko aptly portrayed as riding an eerie white mare with its eyes glowing red like fiery embers.
III.
Comics might have ruined my education and if you are to go along Dr. Fredrick Wertham’s babbling comics ended up ruining the education of the entire post-war planet Earth or something like that. One thing comics affected, for sure, was my perception of the plays of William Shakespeare.
Now, first of all I only got into Shakespeare because of comics: James Robinson & Tony Harris’s Starman got me into Oscar Wilde and I dunno, maybe Truman Capote as well, and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman got me into Shakespeare.
Thing is, though, that whenever I’m reading Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream I think of Puck not as some character out of Sandman, but looking very similar to Steve Ditko’s Nightmare villain from the old 1960s Dr. Strange series: You know, emaciated fellow clad in emerald leotards, pointy ears, impish complexion, etc.
IV.
If I’d stuck with the trash they told me to read in High School my knowledge of books… well, of the world in general… would pretty much amount to, Gee I wonder what crazy plot Dan Brown’s cooking up for his next bestseller!
I probably wasted High School away with either the Flash or Justice League tucked under my desk; those gave way to more sophisticated stuff like Starman or Preacher or Sandman, and then on to well, The Picture of Dorian Gray and etc.
Funny thing is, because of that College became such a nightmare to me a few years later, which goes to prove my hypothesis that only morons need formal education when it comes down to the sheer act of Reading.
People with at least half a brain will work just fine with mere pointers, else it’s all boiling down to the Da Vinci Code.
posted by 186282mps at 8:27 AM
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