Art by Jim Miller: http://bigjimsucks.blogspot.com
4 Comments
Picking up where I had left off, when I first really started to outwardly reject the superstitions I once held true was in high school. It was a direct result of the church youth group my mom had made me participate in for a short time.
It was sincerely a moment of clarity. To be fair, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I immediately dismissed any irrational thoughts and rejected any uncritically examined claims. That was not the case. There were still some (although very small in number) superstitious and paranormal ideas that I held on to after this point. Basically, I still hopelessly clung to prayer and faith. Rather, this event was the spring board that launched me head long into skepticism and what made me examine most claims a little closer than I had previously. So what happened?
For starters a little about the church my mom attended and the youth group. The church was a non-denominational congregation made up primarily of wealthy, or relatively wealthy, families and the church itself was a burgeoning area megachurch. The pastor was a former candidate for U.S. Congress and, in addition, my uncle was one of the church deacons. At the time funds were still being gathered to erect their building and mass/sermons were held at an area high school in the auditorium and after mass Bible studies and youth groups were held in individual classrooms. These are mostly trivial matters for the story, but give you a little background on the church.
When I was 15 or so my mom started making me, my brother, and my sister and I attend church with her. I never wanted to attend the church or the youth group and resisted as much as I could, but lost that battle on most Sundays for about a year, maybe 18 months. My dad never went, which I quickly began to resent him for. Not because I looked down on his lack of commitment to God or some such nonsense. Not at all. I was envious. I was pissed that he got to stay home and relax—that’s what I wanted to do! Further, at the time, I was convinced that I got all the religion I needed from reading select passages of the Bible and watching Mysteries of The Bible on A&E, which was much more true than it was not.
Anyway, by the second or third Sunday my mom and aunt conspired to get me into the church’s teen youth group. I was pretty vocal about not wanting to attend, but eventually had little choice when I was introduced to the youth minister and had to face the prospect of telling him, to his face, that I was not interested. Sadly, I buckled to the pressure. I agreed to go.
Although I did agree to go and sit through these sessions, mostly quietly and keeping to myself (personality traits that friends will attest are not common for me), I snuck out or avoided going whenever I possibly could.
Several weeks into attending youth group, there was one Sunday that I decided to not attend one “class.” My mom was in Bible study, my sister was in the younger youth group, and my mom had the keys to the car. I was stuck. I certainly wasn’t going to go to youth group, but I had nowhere to go. So I decided to just wander around the otherwise empty high school, dodging the occupied classrooms and keeping an eye on the clock so I would know when to meet my mom and make it appear as though I had actually attended the youth session.
So there I am, wondering around, and I decide to take a break at a water fountain to get a drink. As I lifted my head up from the fountain a wave of slight terror swept over me. I was caught. My uncle, the church deacon, happened to be out in the halls as well and spotted me. Crap. He walked over to me and asked why I wasn’t where I was “supposed” to be. Trying to think quickly, I told him that they were watching a movie (which was true), I showed up late (not true) and that I didn’t want to interrupt the movie (also total B.S.). He said okay, clearly not believing me, and let it go from there. He could have made a big deal about it, but he didn’t, which I respected and still do. The downside was that I knew I had better be at that next meeting—getting caught again did not seem to be an option for me at that point.
Funnily enough, it was at that follow up meeting that I had my revelation. It was October and a week, maybe two, before Halloween. Perfect time for the hip youth pastor to rap with the kids about Satan, right? Never mind the fact that All Hallows’ Eve is a holiday steeped in religious tradition as it was intended to honor the Saints.
There I am in this classroom—I think it was a choir room—and there are somewhere around 30 other teenagers in this class, give or take, and we’re having Halloween dos and don’ts laid out for us, then it happened. He brought up Ouija Boards. Seriously. He brought up Ouija Boards and talked about the dangers of messing with spirits and conjuring the Devil. It took me a moment to realize that he was serious. What he obviously didn’t know is that I owned an Ouija Board and that I knew it was a trick and nothing more than a cheap piece of cardboard with an even cheaper piece of mass-produced plastic.
After giving a brief overview of what Ouija Boards are to the uninitiated, he first asked how many of us had ever seen one before. Of course, I raised my hand with many others. Then he asked how many people thought Ouija Boards were dangerous and not something to be trifled with. My hand shot down. He closed his initial round of questioning by asking if there was anyone who thought Ouija Boards were okay to use or play with. My hand shot back up. It was the only one.
Shocked that I had disagreed with the idea he was presenting us with, that Ouija Boards were dangerous and spiritually harmful, he pointed me out and said something to the effect of, “Zack, you’re not worried about Ouija Boards? Why is that?” It was as gentle a question as he could possibly offer.
My response was simple, slightly sarcastic, and true. I confidently said, “Because I don’t believe that Parker Brothers is in league with the Devil.”
The youth pastor sat in stunned silence for a moment and then acted as though I had said nothing at all. In that same moment I noticed several of my classmates (?) looking at me aghast at what I had dared to say, but part of them had to know was true. Quickly the youth minister moved on and went back to his discussion on the dangers of the witching board and conjuring devils and spirits, completely ignoring my response.
I sat quietly and listened to him babble on about what I knew was nonsense, then a couple of other kids related second and third hand stories that they claimed to have heard about Ouija Boards doing mysterious things, like floating, spelling out words on their own, not allowing themselves to be destroyed and so on. Not one of their allegations even remotely credible. Yet, there we were, wasting a perfectly good Sunday morning while the youth pastor encouraged this circus. I suppose it’s possible that he didn’t believe any of their stories, or even the words that were coming out of his mouth, so long as he got the kids excited about Jesus. On the other hand, maybe he really did believe it all. Maybe he really thought that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could waltz into a Toys R’ Us buy what amounts to a devil conjuring tool and in less than an hour open a portal to hell. I have no idea. All I know is what I saw and the conversations I heard and it was in that moment that the light bulb went off.
I was appalled by the out right nonsense that was being shoveled to me and when I looked around the room at the concerned faces and nodding heads, it bothered me on a deep level. I was angry at the lone adult in the room for encouraging it all and I felt bad for my peers who were getting wrapped up in this nonsense. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right reward patently false stories about flying Ouija Boards. It wasn’t right to tell kids that if they played with a popular party toy that devil may come and claim their souls. It wasn’t right to make clearly impressionable kids believe that they would possibly faced hell for pretending to call on ghosts and scare each other in a manner not far removed from campfire stories.
It was the first time I can truthfully say that I saw the negative effects of superstition. Where I saw the emotional and cognitive harm that they can do. I felt no guilt about having owned an Ouija Board that day, but what about the kid who did? Peer pressure at that age is a hell of a thing. Imagine, you’re a 14-15 year old kid and some adult that you look up to, for whatever reason, and several of your friends start saying that a particular toy is evil and that if you play with it, there’s a good chance Satan’s going to come for your soul, and maybe you’ll even go to Hell. What does that kind of guilt do to a person? How does it affect how you at that age? How would that effect how you thought of others who didn’t know what you “knew?” How would that kind of logic affect your everyday thinking and decision making? And be honest with yourself when you answer that question. Now imagine that the fear of Hell genuinely means something to you, how does that affect your motivations and actions?
If that thought experiment doesn’t work for you, and you do have a fear of Hell or Satan, imagine something that you think will cause you to go to Hell. Now replace that thing or action with the action “owning a toy” or “playing with a toy.” Do you see the insanity here? Do you see why I found that discussion so despicable? To think that I, a child, could have been forced into Hell, a pit of fire and eternal suffering, for owning and/or playing with a toy? Worse, that some of my peers clearly believed that in that moment?
It was something that I could not abide and it was something that had profound impact on how I thought about the supernatural. Instead of giving it the occasional pass, I quickly abandoned most all of it, except for clinging to some bits of religiosity (like prayer).
I didn’t stop watching all of those paranormal based TV shows that I had always enjoyed. Rather, I began watching them with a more certainly modified point of view. A more critical and questioning one. I won’t say that I had all of the logical tools or that I could reasonably call myself a skeptic then or that I even had the ability to do the proper research when examining an extraordinary claim. But, what I did know was that something was up. Something wasn’t right with all of these claims. Maybe, some of them were true, but there were just too many inconsistencies and questions to be answered. And maybe there was some real damage being done to people by others who proclaimed some position of authority. By all means, at the time, I considered that youth pastor to be an authority on Christianity. Then I found out he was nuts. I began to wonder, what if some of these other beliefs that I had were wrong, too?
I told my mom about the nonsense that I had witnessed and what I was told. While I wouldn’t say she was as offended as I was, she did seem to agree that it was a rather ridiculous thing for me to have experienced. She also didn’t argue when I told her that I would no longer be attending that youth group. A small, but important, victory for me.
When I had this moment, I didn’t consider the harm that Ouija Boards could, potentially, cause to people by encouraging a belief in spirits, ghosts, poltergeists, devils, and other nonsense. A harm and superstition that played directly into the hands of this youth minister who exploited it. I had only considered the board to be a toy that was not meant to be taken seriously, but rather something, like I said, akin to telling campfire stories.
I was well on my way to skepticism, without really understanding the word. I was less a skeptic and more of a doubter by then. Or, to use Sagan-esque terms, my baloney detection kit was still missing a few key components.
To be continued…
I proudly tout Mystery Solved! as a comic that is both inspired by and driven by skepticism. With that in mind, I thought that you, readers, may be interested in what brought me to skepticism and why it’s important enough to me to allocate the considerable amount of time and resources necessary to produce this comic and why I have asked my friends to offer their time and talents to it. If you are not interested, then no biggie–especially as this is certainly self-indulgent to some degree or another. I certainly have my beliefs about politics, philosophy, economics and so on but skepticism is the most important issue to me because its proper application is crucial to each of our everyday lives. It gives us the necessary tools to make good decisions for ourselves and reject those things that may be harmful to us.
That’s a pretty bold assertion—at least to those who do not consider themselves skeptics or have a different definition than I. So, for the sake of clarity, allow me to define “skepticism” as I consider it. This should help keep matters clear when I talk about my journey into skepticism and give a clear context to you as a reader. Ready? Here goes:
Skepticism is the practical application of critical thinking skills, the scientific method, logic, and reasoned inquiry. It most certainly is not cynicism, which implies pessimism and contempt. A skeptic is someone who applies skepticism and may be an evangelist for skepticism along with the subcategories of science, reason, and so on. To my mind a skeptic could also be described as one whose thinking is a by-product of the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Agree or disagree with that particular definition and context all you wish, what’s important is that is the context that I am using it in here.
Now that we’re done with the formalities I offer you my journey into skepticism.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated with matters of the paranormal and Biblical stories, though I don’t know that I would have ever considered myself particularly religious. This fascination first really manifested itself when I was in the second grade and the Robert Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries came on the air. Later I discovered shows like Mysteries of The Bible, Sightings, and re-runs of In Search Of…, and an embarrassingly long list of ghost, Nostradamus, and UFO “investigative” shows and specials. I never actually saw any of the Arthur C. Clark stuff or James Randi’s Psychic Investigator, though I did track them down as an adult.
As I was watching these shows, particularly Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings, I never actually outright believed any of the stories about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or ghosts, though I was fascinated by them. I did, however, totally buy into the stories about UFOs and was more than a little intrigued by the religious miracles and prophecy about the future. What can I say? I was a kid and those were things that I wanted to be true.
I wanted there to be alien visitors who could reveal the future to us and prove the religions of the world to be correct and their magic true.
For as much as that is what I really wanted, there was always something nagging me at the back of my head. My memory’s not good enough to tell you exactly what those persistent thoughts were, but suffice to say they were doubts. Doubts that sort of gradually began to eat away at most of my beliefs about the paranormal (except for the religious ones) and encouraged me to side with and be more interested by the bits of token skepticism and actual science that popped in all of those paranormally driven programs that I spent so much time watching.
But even as I began to grow and become a slightly more critical thinker in my early teens I still wanted to believe and held on tightly to trivial superstitions, like only using certain video game controllers or having a lucky this or that. I also held on to some very non-trivial superstitions, like those associated with religion.
As a brief aside, earlier I had noted that I never considered myself particularly religious. That is certainly true in that I never had a desire to be a part of any organized religion. I frequently, and openly, questioned its necessity as a child and resisted going to church at all costs—both because I would rather stay home and play and because I didn’t see the point of it all if one worshiped at home, or was strong enough in their faith. However, I did firmly believe in prayer and the power and truth of prophecy in the Bible—essentially those things that were hammered on over and over again in my beloved paranormal TV shows.
I make no apologies for this period in my youth, that’s simply how I thought then. It just so happens that I was incorrect and naïve in my thinking at the time.
It was when I was 15 (possibly 16) that I finally had a revelation, so to speak, and began applying all of those nagging questions that I had been passively pushing away and ignoring. Unironically enough, it happened on, and was the direct result of, an occasion where my mom had made me go to church and attend the church’s after mass youth group class.
To be continued…
Some of you may (but I’m sure most of you don’t) know that earlier this year I founded a comic book studio-type organization in my hometown, called Summit City Ink. Maybe you even clicked the link on the left side of the page?
Summit City Ink is designed to be an opportunity for comic book creators in the Fort Wayne, Indiana area to have a place to get together for studio time, share process tips, network, help each other shave costs on convention, be critical of each other’s work, and on and on.
If you hop on over to the SCI blog you’ll see sample work from several of the guys as well as links back to their own blogs and home pages. In coming months you’ll actually see the work of at least three Summit City Ink members in the pages of Mystery Solved!, you’ll see work from Andy Jewett, Ben Tiede, and Matt Gross.
So please do take a moment or two to check out the blog page and find out about these talented guys. Later this year we plan to be at Mid-Ohio con in the fall and will be participating in 24 Hour Comic Day and will be printing an anthology of our 24-hour comics.
As new news about SCI pops up, you can be sure that the SCI blog will be updated and I will have the pertinent info here as well.
your pal,
zack
Harvey Pekar died yesterday. I don’t much cotton to the idea of eulogizing someone who I didn’t know or ever have the chance to meet in person. But there are some people who’s work has had a significant impact on me and I feel it’s appropriate to share my thoughts about that person’s work and what it meant to me. Harvey Pekar was one of those people.
After hearing the sad news about Pekar, I mentioned my sadness and was prepared to just keep it to myself beyond acknowledging his passing. Then, in my travels around the Twitterverse on Monday, I saw a Tweet from Phil Hester. What he had to say totally hit the nail on the head. It both encapsulated my feelings about Pekar and made think it was necessary to write this blog post. If you want to take some time out to honor Pekar, this is the way to do it.
Phil’s Tweet read as follows: Cartoonists, honor Harvey Pekar today by spending some time working on comics that belong to you, not a corporation.
To me, that statement perfectly encapsulates what makes Pekar not just important, but great.
It’s possible that Phil may disagree but, to my reading, the bit about corporations is less an anti-capitalist jab (especially as Pekar’s American Splendor and The Quitter were published by DC/Vertigo in recent years) and more of a reinforcement of the artistic ideal of creating something new that belongs to you; and the integrity that Pekar maintained throughout his career.
He made the comics he wanted to make and he made them his way, without regard or fear of what the mainstream had to say about it. Tacitly, I think that was Pekar’s message to comic creators across the board. Do what you want and do it your way.
To some, maybe doing what you want and what makes you happy means working on Spider-Man or Superman. To others maybe that means Xeroxing your next mini-comic. To others still it means something different or something in between those two extremes. It doesn’t mean don’t take a paying gig when you can, and it doesn’t mean that you have to live your life in a hovel if you really want to be an Artist, and it’s not indie versus mainstream goading. What it means is, maintain your integrity. Whatever kind of comics you make, be sure that you spend time making the ones that mean something to you.
There were many specific instances where reading the works of a particular artist, or reading a particular book, had a significant impact on me personally and/or how I perceived comics. Pekar’s American Splendor was one of those books.
American Splendor is a book that is unique both in its vision and its execution. I was impressed and influenced by its execution, but it’s vision and its subtle beauty are what really captured me.
Pekar has a way of making hum-drum, day-to-day happenings fascinating. Are the actions necessarily dramatic? Not always. But they offer a vision of everyday life that reminds us of the subtle complexity of each of our existences. It explores the minutia of what makes up much of our time and exposes the simple pleasures and reveals the minor pains that we all experience. In that way, his work is beautiful and even vulnerable.
It’s something that made a powerful impression on me as a writer and as a comic fan. If you have not taken the time to sit down with Pekar’s work, I urge you to do so. Maybe you’ll love it, maybe you’ll hate it or be otherwise unmoved. But it means something to me and it’s work that, in my mind, has earned the right to be seen at least by virtue of it’s uncompromising, yet simple feel.
On this sad day, please, take Phil Hester’s advice. If Harvey Pekar’s work meant something to you, take some time to honor him by working on your own creations and telling the stories that are important to you.
your pal,
zack
Yay! Mystery Solved! is finally here! I am so, SO excited. I’m even more excited that you’re here reading this week’s page. Thank you to everyone who has supported this book along the way, and an extra special thanks to all of the artists who have contributed their incredible talents and valuable time to making these stories realities.
We’ve got a lot of fun ahead of us in the coming weeks and months and I hope that you’ll stick with us for as long as this comic is being made. Today begins with a strip drawn by my very good friend Jim Miller. Jim is an extraordinary cartoonist and you would know his work from Cartoon Network’s hit series Ed, Edd, and Eddie.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for supporting this comic. It means a great deal to me.
I’ll see you around the internet, at conventions, at finer local drinking establishments, and anywhere that comics can be found.
Long live comics!
your pal,
zack