Continued from part 1...

Part Two

From Omega to Alpha

-"Morning in America" arrived, but some did not notice

Then Ronald Reagan, the sunny politician from sunny California, arrived on the national scene, lifted our spirits, and it was morning in America. Sure, we still had troubles, but Reagan reminded us that we were still a great people and we believed him. He was the first president for which I was eligible to vote. I did so with relish.

The left then began its game of the politics of personal destruction because for the first time since WWII they were losing favor with the American people. It is the same game in which we are still so hopelessly mired.

Surprisingly, high school in my new home state was going well as the 70s ended and the 80s began. I became a little more out going and made friends well enough not to feel as utterly isolated as I had feared that I would. After graduating high school in 1980, I had decided to be an artist, turning down the Marines after taking a placement test, the USMC promising I was a candidate for officer's training right away. As it occurred to me, I just couldn't be part of Jimmy Carter's military, Reagan not yet having much of a chance to make his mark. A few weeks later I threw away a recruitment letter that came in the mail to me from the CIA reminding me helpfully at the top that they were an "equal opportunity employer."

I chose to attend a college for art in Chicago. Looking back, I wonder if it was the right choice, though it seemed right at the time. But my uncle in Cincinnati was a regionally known fine artist and I had grown up looking at his work and having him give me art supplies. Art was a major part of my life ever since I could hold one of those fat crayons in my pudgy little fist. I was always told how well I could draw and I grew to believe them. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake, as well. Still, everything is for a reason, right?

In the mean time, I had read the best sci fi novels. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Bradbury and Blish paved the way to my escape. (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit had amazed me back in 1977, though, the fantasy genera didn't cut it for me. After Tolkein the others seemed a pale imitation) Finally, by the 1980s comics began to really hit with me. Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America, the Avengers. These guys knew how to spot evil and end its reign of terror. I was not a big fan of DC comics at first, though, because their Super Heroes seemed like kiddy fare to me as I got into my late teens and early 20s. Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman? Come on. Silly stuff, eh?

But comics also began to turn darker soon into the 80s which then suited my somewhat older perspective. By the mid to late 1980s, comics started reaching out into more adult fare, leaving the kiddy set behind. Warren magazines had already given us Vampirella, a barely clothed, buxom dream of a female vampire that made every teenage boy stand up and take notice starting in 1969. I had every single issue between number one and number 112 when the series went defunct years later. I even had two letters to the editor printed in her pages. I sold them all on ebay decades later to a guy in Canada for $800. A little later, in 1977, Heavy Metal magazine had given European artist Moebius to America with his other worldly story lines and stylized depictions of the future. But these were not average comics, not your normal super-hero fare -- if normal is an apropos word to use. In any case, I had already been getting both Vampy and Heavy Metal for years.

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