Comics are always around and thank god for the comics because there isn’t much else. Little stacks of Uncle Scrooge and Archie Digest, which soon include superhero holiday specials, then the X-Men. Finally, the X-Men, whose 1992 cartoon is going strong, but it doesn’t mean much to a family with a TV that doesn’t get reception out in the middle of nowhere, whose electricity and water keep getting shut off, whose parents vanish for days at a time, whose clothes are dirty and whose cupboards are empty.
I watched an episode through static once, the image gone and the voices distorted, and I imagined what the heroes looked like, who was talking when, and how the fights played out. The next time I look, the signal is gone. I try and try, and I can’t get it to come back.
For us, there are the comics that we read so many times that they rip and tear, and dirt and grime become part of the page. And every X-Men story tells a story of mutants whose lives are impossible to navigate, complicated, and full of trauma, but still, X-Men find one another, nonetheless. They find one another because they are family; even as a kid, I know that is beautiful.
Spoiler alert to my younger self, you won’t ever feel this way. You will never find a complete community that makes you feel held. In any group, you will always feel like you were dropped in without context. Some things happen to you as a kid that you will not recover from. The X-Men will help you, they will guide you, they will show you things that are deeply felt and true, but they can’t teach you everything you need to know. They’re wrong sometimes and it won’t be acknowledged in the text, you’ll have to think it out on your own. People will let you down. The X-Men will let you down. You’ll have to rely on yourself.
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