A Steady Stream of Stars by Marcel Lamont Walker

A Steady Stream of Stars

by Marcel Lamont Walker

Is there a person alive who isn’t at least topically familiar with Superman’s story? Celestial child immigrant and cosmic orphan of a dead world who brought with him to Earth powers and abilities he didn’t even know he possessed. Raised by his adoptive family in the heartland of the country to stand for truth and justice, the character was trademarked and copyrighted by DC Comics right out of the hands of his young, Jewish creators. This co-opting of faith and dreams is, unfortunately, also part of the tapestry of our culture, the seedier part of The American Way. I was blissfully unaware of this in my childhood, and instead had the freedom to just love what I loved because it spoke to me…and Superman spoke to me.

It’s amazing Superman still existed when I first encountered him. In the mid-1970s, our country was still stinging from the social upheaval of the previous decade. An unending parade of protests and assassinations, the Vietnam War, and the political aftermath of Watergate had turned America deeply cynical. The nobility of spirit and stability of character Superman and his kind embodied were largely regarded as antiquated things by older, more fatigued audiences. But at that point, it’s exactly what I needed.

Why did I love Superman so much? There are the big, long-winded answers I sometimes give folks when the subject comes up, depending on their level of interest or captivity, but here are the much shorter reasons that cut to the chase: when I was little, the idea that someone with power beyond imagining would, of their own volition, devote all of that power to look out for others was mind-boggling. He wasn’t the only fictional character with such lofty goals but, because he had the most power to begin with, no one could make Superman be good, and yet he still chose to be. His spirit of nobility fascinated and inspired me. On a more personal and primal level, Superman always represented stability to me. He was and remains a constant that I’ve always needed.

My father, a talented artist in his own right, introduced me to comic books, and I wonder if this was merely a way to keep me occupied when he wasn’t around, which was more often than not. Superman’s father was the greatest scientist on Krypton who struggled in vain to convince his planet’s leaders that their world would explode. Meanwhile, back here on Earth, my father wasn’t anywhere near as motivated by civic or familial duties. He typically didn’t live with us, and if he knew our world was going to explode, he kept that info to himself.

My mother was far and away our primary caregiver, and living with her came with a sense of volatility that I wasn’t able to articulate until years later with words invented by psychologists. It was language that she’d rejected since before I was born. As such, she was defensively unmedicated, avoidant of any counsel, and raising three kids more-or-less by herself. The pressures must have been enormous, smoldering problems churning beneath the topsoil like a crystalline planet metastasizing into Kryptonite. I was small and powerless then, and my mother was my world, yet I instinctively knew that something wasn’t right with my world.

However, I’d still describe much of my childhood as a happy one. I played with my sisters and neighborhood kids, including that one boy who’s name I don’t remember, the boy who lost one of my G.I.Joe’s boots. (I’m still angry about that.) I even tried to get a job: in 1976, when the bicentennial was in full force and the presidential elections were underway, I made paper flags and paraded across my front porch announcing my candidacy to the neighborhood. (I ran as an independent.) I felt as qualified as anyone else I knew, and no one told me I couldn’t do it. I knew that Superman was pretend, but I wanted to be a real person whose job would be to help those in need. Why couldn’t I be the president? How hard a job could it have been?

For those of you who are not political scholars, I did not win the presidential election of 1976. I didn’t even do well at the primaries. It wasn’t the voters’ fault though; in retrospect, I hadn’t wanted it badly enough. Instead, I turned my attentions back toward my comic books. Things got rough in our house – the gas and electricity were shut off, and winter was right around the corner – but I had my mother, sisters, and super heroes, so there existed an odd sense of calm.

One November afternoon when I was six years old, I awoke from a nap to the sound and fury of my mother screaming at someone on the other side of the living room door. The argument went on for quite a while, and then an authoritative voice told her to step back. At that warning, an axe burst through the door. My younger sisters and I screamed in terror, certain we were going to die. Then a horde of police officers flooded the room, threw my tiny mother to the floor, got us three kids into a car and whisked us off to McIntyre Shelter, the compound just off of McKnight Road where the county housed its tempest-tossed children and youths. (If you’re trying to think of where it’s at, it’s long since been torn down. It now only exists, like these events, in memory and the aged paper of case records in forgotten storage boxes.)

To a child, the miles between East Liberty and the North Hills were equivalent to the light-years between Krypton and Earth. With no warning, we’d been slingshot to another galaxy, and would remain there for months. Many nights I would get out of bed to stare out of my bedroom window toward what I thought was McKnight Road. In the dark, the distant passing headlights and taillights resembled a steady stream of stars, and I prayed that one of those cars contained our parents, and would break away from the others and come to take us home.

In the here and now, whenever I see news reports of distant children covered in soot, looking out at a world that has failed them miserably, a semblance of their experience is tangible to me. News stories about families divided by war and conflict, or people with a deep desire for a more humane life on unseen shores likewise register deeply. The child inside of me often returns to his perch at the windowsill, watching cars in the distance, feeling the gulf between me and my loved ones, so I feel for the people who have traversed that gulf only to discover their journey is far from over. I feel for the people who want to be able to finally settle down, fit in, and start contributing to their new homes. I wouldn’t ever wish to relive the discord of my youth, but if it made me a more empathetic human being in this respect, I can celebrate that aspect of my struggles. I haven’t exactly walked a mile in their shoes, but I’ve been around their neighborhood.

I’m also grateful for the many people who worked so diligently to provide refuge for my sisters and me throughout our formative years. The proverbial child-raising village that is so-often cited came together for us, time and again. Without it, we wouldn’t be here today.

The good news is that my siblings and I did eventually return home; the bad news is that we were eventually removed from our mother’s custody again, several times over. This was a pattern that had formed well before the Sword of Damocles came crashing through our living room, but never in such a traumatic way. Having spent so much time over the years living in homes that weren’t really mine instilled in me a perpetual sense of displacement, but it also taught me how to adapt to new surroundings. It can be hard, and honestly, depending on where your spaceship crashes you might not ever totally fit in…but that’s okay. Sometimes the world spins more smoothly when it’s wise enough to adapt to you.

But I digress.

I think of Clark Kent a lot too. Clark Kent is Superman’s way of trying to assimilate. In uniform, he’s always regarded as something other, sometimes a good other (like when he’s doing something for us or saving us from ourselves), and sometimes a bad other (like when he expects us to be accountable for our own behavior). These days, in print and on-screen, while in uniform he is often feared, which feels weird to me, almost like someone hating on Mister Rogers. Because of his outfit and heritage, Superman is always perceived as an other. But as Kent, he can be just another American wage slave with a domineering boss and romance problems. Just think of how desperately one must want to belong when they go out of their way to have the problems that everyone else has.

In the years following McIntyre Shelter, my unstable home life always made me feel weird in the world while growing up. Age has brought me perspective on this. If I could somehow visit my younger self, I’d assure him that those who most loudly purport to be normal (whatever normal is…) are usually way more messed up than we could imagine…until Channel Eleven broadcasts a report on their misdeeds. (They ain’t no Daily Planet, but they’re what we’ve got.) So, in actuality, I was doing alright.

Speaking of The Daily Planet, let’s talk about Superman’s other profession for a second: no one could dictate the terms of Clark Kent’s American assimilation, so what did he choose to become? A reporter! So, when evil billionaire Lex Luthor decided to pump his ill-gotten gains into an ego-infused campaign for the presidency, Clark Kent, intrepid reporter, was right there investigating him all the way, revealing what the billionaire tried to keep hidden, like back-room deals with Apokolips ushering in a Zero Hour for our planet. And when the truth brought that greedy, rich narcissist to justice, an immigrant was the one who ensured the people locked him up. Those are just the facts, nothing alternative about it.

Superman is a fiction, and Clark Kent is pretend, but I’d bet anything those two Jewish boys who co-created him, both sons of immigrants, fully understood the real-world weight behind their metaphor. The lesson of Clark Kent is once you know where you belong, keep your feet on the ground and work through the problems. “This looks like a job for Clark Kent!” easily translates to “Immigrants get the dirty work done!”

But I digress.

I’ve come to accept a certain amount of ridicule because of my devotion to Superman, but what’s unacceptable is ridicule of speaking truth to power and working towards justice for all. That’s The Neverending Battle that I choose to commit to. It’s often painted as unrealistic, simplistic, or naïve, and in my darker days – like in November of 1976 and November of 2016 – I have questioned if it’s all a fiction we’re deluding ourselves with. I’ve read the works of venerated writers who have debunked The Dream as an escapist lie, and decried Superman as mere wishful thinking. I get what they’re saying, but I think that they’re missing the point.

Dreams and heroes don’t exist to delude us into believing there are any quick fixes to societal problems; they exist to provide stability to mind and spirit. I was once a child who clutched comic books, stared at stars, and longed for home. Two young Jewish creators gave me a hero, and in doing so gave me some much-needed stability. Now I’m a professional comic-book creator and illustrator, and a large part of my work focuses on social improvement. I’m returning the favor of Siegel and Shuster by telling true stories of Jewish Holocaust survivors in comic books. Not too bad for an unsuccessful Presidential candidate from East Liberty. Who knows, one day I may even forgive that kid for losing my G.I. Joe’s boot.

Dreams and heroes won’t save us in-and-of themselves. Finding lasting peace and justice, which transcends and allows for law and order, isn’t like in comic books. Its long, hard, boring, and sometimes dangerous work. We have to wake up from dreams and put on our own capes to save the day, and there’s no way around that. But dreams and heroes are like stars, and we need them to guide us and help point our moral compasses true North.

Oscar Wilde famously wrote, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” I ask that we all not be afraid of those farther down in the gutter than us. And let’s remember how we individually embody the hopes and dreams of those with hopeful gazes. The gallantly streaming stars they are looking at – like car lights on a distant, darkened highway – are often you and me.

Let’s work to lift those in need up, up and away, and to provide stability when they land. Let’s teach them to use their powers for good. Once they get settled in, who knows how they might return the favor…It could be something really super.

Marcel Lamont (M.L.) Walker is an award-winning graphic-prose creator and expert in social applications for comic-book art. In 2017, he was voted Best Local Cartoonist by readers of The Pittsburgh City Paper in their annual Best of Pittsburgh poll. In 2018, he was awarded a BMe Community Genius Fellowship in recognition of his work in the arts and related community activity. He is the lead artist, book designer, and project coordinator for the acclaimed comic-book series CHUTZ-POW! SUPERHEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST, published by The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. He is also the president of the board of directors for the ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s nonprofit Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art.