Reading as Friendship
Peter: Comic books are my little escape.
Interviewer: Escape from what?
Peter: I spent a long time with some severe depression. I’d lost my job, my place to live, my fiancee dumped me. You know, a lot of things had gone bad for me and then, at that time I wasn’t really collecting comics, but I started to once I got a new job and place to live, I started getting back into comics. And it kind of helped. I didn’t have that many friends or friends I wanted to associate with any more. I wanted to get out of that world of homelessness and drugs that I had fallen into. This was kind of, you know, I could remember I used to collect comic books when Cartier Replica Watches I was younger and it made me feel good. The characters are still there. I can still go. I can still get an X-Men comic. I can still go and get Batman. You know, they are old friends and they’re still there. It’s not that I think that they’re my friends or anything, but they’re a constant, you know, knowing I’m, that I have to go to work every morning, Tuesday, knowing that it’s just one of those things.
Escape has been a recurrent feature in the descriptions of why people engage in reading (Nell, 1988; Radway, 1991). Escapism has been a negative term associated with solipsism, but as Nell (1988) observed, escaping through reading could also be a reflective act that affected social behaviors and attitudes. Peter’s description of escapism contained features of both oblivion and reflection.
Peter’s description of reading seemed therapeutic in the same vein that some adolescent readers find genre fiction (Reeves, 2004). Reading comic books was an escape from present grim realities into a fantasy realm, and in his case pleasant sensations from the past. Comic books helped him cope when he was reeling from major life events. The pattern of comic book publication also created a regularity that helped give his life structure. Just as Tuesdays were regular days of work for him, he could say that Wednesdays, the days that new comic books were put on the stands, were part of his routines. Comic books were dependable, like good friends who were there for him when he needed help or to relax. Even though Peter was sure to note that he was not totally divorcing himself from reality, that he knew comic books were not really friends, he did note that comic books functioned like friends did for him. They provided him with support and also relief from thinking about his troubles.
As constants, comic books contributed to how Peter was restructuring his life, but they did not simply serve as a reliving of the past: They allowed for some reflection, rehearsal, and vicarious experience. Peter’s use of comic-book reading acted in part as an “organizing fantasy” (Jones, 2002) for him, giving him some material to make sense of and navigate his social world. Peter noted that “comic books Breitling Replica Watches have grown up with me. You know, Peter Parker started out as a teenager, then he went to college, he got married. He was progressing along with his readers.” The continuous narrative of the comic book ran parallel to his life, providing Peter with a fictional account of what growing up and going through life changes was like. This affinity came into play when he chose his pseudonym, a reference to Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker. Spider-Man, for him, was a type of fictional friend, someone with whom he could identify.
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