I went to Bermuda and fell into the abyss within myself. Bermuda features breathtaking beaches, sands that turn pink with the sun’s kiss, and gentle tides that can cradle most weary souls – all of which fanned the flames of an introspective dread that burned my psyche to tinders.
It started with an elderly couple on the bus from the airport on their yearly pilgrimage to the island, lamenting how their son had fallen on hard times. I wondered if I’d ever learn the patience to raise a child.
I then saw a father in the lobby of the hotel holding an infant, wrangling a 5-year-old, and working to upgrade his room because his wife can’t see the ocean from the bathroom. Did I even want a family?
Then came a man in his 40s shouting on his phone. Successful, but alone. Enter a cadre brigadier generals in their 20s strategizing to approach an Australian Instagram model at the beach, relishing choices I never made. And what of those captains of industry in their 60s in a private section of beach? Did they make those choices?
I flew to Bermuda for solace from myself but found a pondering purgatory. Bermuda was Bermuda and all it implies, but for me, teetering on the edge of myself, it was a craven kaleidoscope. The beach used the men laid before me as reflective surfaces, angled them in accordance with the decisions that defined them, and interrogated them under a scorching sun to produce an infinite amount of distorted fractals of who I could be, in an infinite number of circumstances, on infinite versions of Bermuda, and hissed at me to “choose.”
So, as my skin burned and my mind flayed by the preponderance of my infinite realities, I did what I always do in a crisis. I pulled out some comics.
Courtesy of author.
I aimed for something grounded and relatable so I read about that time Doctor Strange went to space. Mark Waid’s Doctor Strange sees the good doctor properly humbled by a sudden, mysterious, and devastating loss of his powers, purpose, and sense of self. No longer was he The Sorcerer Supreme; he was just a crippled neurosurgeon living in an increasing Gen-Z infested Greenwich Village until he decides to become a doctor without borders and says, “F*** it. Space.”
The story then pivots from being a ruminating contemplation to an absurd adventure, even by Doctor Strange standards, as he ventures into space and, well, you know. Strange is immediately marooned and captured by an alien race, he meets a roguish love-interest that shows him the particular ways of the weird on the alien planet, and finds a magic artifact that, ever-so briefly, reignites his ability to wield magic. Strange at the end of the first arc is still lost and disoriented, figuratively and literally, but has a renewed sense of hope. He learns that his power doesn’t come from spells and the gibberish he spouts to invoke them — it comes from his constant thirst for knowledge and ability to change.
Strange’s story helped me realize the importance of continuing to grow and evolve despite my existential paralysis. Bermuda certainly isn’t space. It’s just off the coast of North Carolina, and yet I felt lost and marooned all the same with no idea how to redesign, rebuild, or reclaim what I once was, nor any idea of who I would become. Still, Strange’s story helped me to move forward regardless. His story preaches that even when lost in a fog of yourself, moving forward will help light a path out. Moving forward can mean changing your surroundings, learning new skills, or even simply making new friends but so long as you’re moving in a healthy direction you can find the means to grow.
But for as much as I had a resolve to march forward, I still wanted a direction, and my desperation for insight led me to a desperate part of my collection: the ’90s.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
I conjured Garth Ennis’ seminal run on Hellblazer to see if John Constantine could teach me how to manage my self-destructive tendencies. I watched him desperately rage against his own mortality and the Lords of Hell to escape a lung cancer that years of smoking brought him in Dangerous Habits. I shuddered when he lost the love of his beloved Kit due to his inability to forsake his fixation on the occult and toxicity it introduced to their relationship. And I finally came to see that his story was one of caution as Constantine’s constant fixation on the self brought blight to those around him and that he became nothing more than a “rake at the gates of hell.”
The Flash then came to me as a direct counterpoint to John Constantine. Wally West, running on a track penned by Mark Waid, was constantly unsure of his ability to live up to the legend of Barry Allen, to defend Keystone City, to mentor his sidekick, Bart Allen, and to retain the love of Linda Park. It’s the standard superhero dance but in the middle of his shuffle; Wally does a two-step that most others in the cape and cowl crew don’t. Wally runs towards his friends, not away from them. In Terminal Velocity, for example, Wally is burdened with premonitions of impending tragedy, but instead of going alone and rouge, he brings his friends together to form a family to see him through.
These stories of demons and lightning taught me to always tether myself to ties that bind whenever lost in a maelstrom of myself. Constantine and Wally are both haunted by their powers and forced to face impending doom in their aforementioned stories, and while they both eventually survive, it is only Wally who finds new strength. Constantine, yes, was able to walk through Hell to best the Devil and all his friends but, home is colder than Hell without Kit, innit? Wally, in contrast, clings to his loved ones to help him shoulder the coming crisis and, in the process, becomes a hero, a leader, a husband, and a father. The Flash’s story is one of a once wayward man who builds a home around himself and finds new, unimagined, depths of inner strength. So while I flew to an island to escape the stressors of my house, like Constantine, Wally’s story reminded me that I had to mend fences with my loved ones to build a stronger home.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
Growing weary of the island and tired of waiting to talk to the Instagram model, I returned to Hell’s Kitchen to seek the counsel of Matthew Murdock. Murdock, a blind, Catholic defense attorney who dresses as a devil to seek justice, is a patron saint of existentialism as his contradictory totality forces every facet of his psyche into an eternal shouting match. Murdock at the start of Charles Soule’s run on Daredevil has, strangely, found balance in his life. He is publicly known as Daredevil, works unencumbered as counselor and vigilante, and has built a life in San Francisco. Murdock had climbed out of his abyss and, I thought, could offer no insight on how to navigate mine but, he makes a startling decision to turn back into the hell of himself.
Murdock (via a grand deus ex machina) makes it so everyone forgets he is Daredevil and uses his new anonymity to begin again. He moves back to Hell’s Kitchen, takes a starting position as a public defender, and retraces his steps making relationships with his best friend Foggy and the superhero community. It was a bafflingly self-destructive decision on Murdock’s part to forsake all that he earned to sing the same song he has sung since 1964, but Murdock inspiringly sings the outro in a different pitch.
Inevitability is existentialism’s constant bedfellow and as such, Murdock’s faith in his society and his ability to be a guiding light as Daredevil are quickly tested when Wilson Fisk, his arch-nemesis, becomes the mayor of New York City and the city suffers an attack by The Hand. The sight of his city set aflame with its greatest devil at its highest pulpit is much for Murdock to bear, however, instead of seeking external sources as validation, he finds it within himself. At the story’s climax, Murdock is forced to assume the role of mayor and leads the charge against The Hand and as he rides on horseback toward city hall, he self-affirms his role as Daredevil.
Murdock realizes the beauty and power of his contradiction and realizes that he, all at once, can be a man of faith as a Catholic, a guiding light as mayor, and a guardian as a devil. He embraces that his life’s trials and absurdities will always shroud him in “Darkness. Forever.” but, instead of allowing that truth to bring him to ruin, he cruxes himself upon it. Triumphantly, he declares that since he “…cannot see the light…[he] must be the light,” and fights for a better world despite knowing he can never truly be a part of it.
Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
Daredevil embracing his hell to find a peace within himself gave me enough hope to shoot my shot with Helen of Melbourne. While his story cautioned me that not even a home built on success and also filled with love can take the place of self-actualization, it promised me that there is great power to be found in those who can hold true to themselves in the dark. And as I marched across the beach, through the cacophony of my infinite pasts and futures, I realized that Doctor Strange reminded me that life will always test us but we are defined by how we meet and grow from those challenges. Constantine warns us of the folly of forsaking your loved ones for the sake of your needs while The Flash reminds us that it is only with our loved ones that we can become our best selves.
Make no mistake, Helen deemed me an unfit suitor, and “The Crisis on Infinite Bermudas” left me at my status quo. I was still a man who flew to an island to read comics and write to strangers on the internet to cope with the fires raging in his life, but the comics gave me perspective. The stories reminded me that life is presenting me with these infinite pathways only because I have a sturdy personal infrastructure that allows me to traverse through infinity. They taught me that while there are an endless amount of choices that will usher me on a multitude of pathways and to an infinitude of outcomes, as long as I hold firm to cardinal truths I’ll find my way through. And beyond all of that, these stories promised that, while infinity will always bring fire to challenge me, those fires can be tempered to forge iron ad infinitum.
But now that I’ve tricked you all into workshopping my quarter-life crisis, I want you to realize something. I want you to see that I climbed out of the abyss of myself using a bunch of comics.
Comics in their grandest abstraction are many different things. They are the bastard child of prose and visual media that can accomplish far more than either of its parents in isolate. Many are used to craft long-form, escapist entertainment built off decades of dense cannon. Others are used to craft short stories aimed to distill complex concerns of the human condition to their simplest, most resonant components. Pencils and inks can calm you, simple sleights of paneling can move you, and potent dialogue will strike you. But when these three are used together, they can change you. In other words, comics can tell you infinite stories to help shape the infinite you.
People love comics for different reasons — but I love them because they help me find myself.
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