A friend posted on Facebook

I intend to fill Facebook with comic book heroes to fight the saturation of negative images, videos, and just for fun! Give me a like and I'll assign you a character.

I liked the post and was assigned, The Tick. I don’t really know anything about The Tick, but I posted an image, and got lots of responses. “Spoon”. One person commented about The Tick being the first stupidhero. However, I believe that that title properly goes to Captain Klutz, which I enjoyed when I was young.

Another friend posted,

I intend to fill Facebook with Comic Book Heroes for childhood Cancer Awareness. Give me a like and I'll assign you a character.

I liked that post as well and was assigned Iron Man, another character I don’t know very well. I haven’t updated my profile to Iron Man yet.

Of course all of this raises interesting questions. Does images of The Tick or Iron Man really fight the saturation of negative images? How much does it raise awareness of childhood cancer? Does raising awareness translate into action? Reports of the breakthroughs in fighting ALS funded by money raised from the ice bucket challenge gives me some hope.

Perhaps this post will do a little bit as well. What fun images from comics do you remember? For me, it is less about the superheros. As a kid, I always read the comics in the North Adams Transcript, an afternoon paper I delivered when I was young. On Sunday afternoons, I would read the comics from the Springfield Republican. My father had grown up near Springfield and we got the Republican at McNichol’s store, on our way home from church on Sundays. If we were lucky we might get donuts as well.

The comics I remember are Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, Nancy and Sluggo, Blondie, Family Circus, and Pogo. Later, I would start reading Calvin and Hobbes, and Doonesbury.

On Saturday mornings, we would watch cartoons on television. We didn’t get a television until I was around 7. I remember the first show I saw on television. It was Underdog. On Saturday mornings we would watch Roadrunner, Tom and Jerry, The Pink Panther, and other shows that have slipped my mind.

I don’t watch much television anymore and I don’t get a paper anymore. I read my news online. McNichols is no more. After church, I stopped at a nursing home where I lead a Morning Prayer service from time to time. One of the women there was confused. She kept getting up, looking for her parents. I suspect she had Alzheimer’s. One man spoke about having Parkinson’s.

My grandfather died of Parkinson’s. I remember stories of him asking my uncle to help him escape. My aunt died of Parkinson’s. My cousin told me that it was a blissful Parkinson’s.

I hope to be blissful in my final days. I hope that sharing fun cartoon images will help counter the negative images we see so much of, and perhaps even help raise awareness of childhood cancer.

If I were to write a cartoon, I might go for some combination of the simple happy childhood cartoons I remember. I might mix it up with a little bit of the wit and wisdom of Calvin and Hobbes. Perhaps my superhero’s would be an old man in a wheelchair, struggling against Parkinson’s and his partner, a you child, also in a wheelchair, struggling against some sort of childhood cancer.