Comics Will Break Your Heart

by Faith Erin Hicks

  “I haven’t seen Berg since he had that vegetable stand at the farmers’ market,” Raleigh said now, resting the side of her cheek against Jamie’s shoulder. Mir still remembered the day Raleigh told her she’d seen a new boy in her English class, a boy who was all edges, skinny, with dark hair and dark eyes. A boy who didn’t seem to pay attention, but always had the right answer when the teacher called on him. He’d said hello to Raleigh as he’d passed by her in the hall the next day, and Raleigh had breathlessly relayed the encounter to Miriam. Mir had listened, smiling but feeling slightly queasy. First it had been only her and Raleigh. Then they’d added Evan. Maybe adding a fourth would make things very different for Raleigh and Mir.

  Evan smoothed out his towel and lay down on it, reaching into his messenger bag. He pulled out a well-thumbed comic—New TomorrowMen #67—and flipped it open, bending the pages back at the spine. Miriam lay down beside him, looking up at the comic. She liked the artwork in this issue, superhero faces drawn with graceful black lines, fine details left to the imagination.

  “Who drew this, Evan?”

  “Stuart Samuel,” Evan said. “I like his art a lot. He drew a reboot of Daredevil for Marvel a few years ago, and after that he drew a TomorrowMen spin-off comic about Tristan Terrific. Now he’s drawing the main book.”

  “Which one is Tristan Terrific? Is he the one who can teleport through time?” Raleigh asked.

  “No,” said Evan patiently, “that’s the Mage of Ages.”

  “Comics are so weird.” Raleigh sighed.

  “Comics are incredibly weird,” said Evan. “That’s why they’re awesome.”

  “I liked the TomorrowMen animated show when I was a kid,” said Raleigh.

  “Which show? The TomorrowMen: Earth’s Mighty Defenders, TomorrowMen GO!, or TomorrowMen Through Time?”

  “Oh my god, Evan,” groaned Jamie. “I’d call you a nerd, but I know you like that.”

  “Nerds run the world,” Evan declared. “Because of nerds, we get five superhero movies a year. And there’s going to be a TomorrowMen movie next year.”

  Evan turned to Mir.

  “You’re going to see the movie, right?”

  Mir stared at her feet, wishing he hadn’t asked her that.

  “I’m not sure—”

  “But you have to!” Evan said, his face bright and earnest. Mir cringed, willing him to stop talking about the TomorrowMen movie. “You have history with those characters! Your grandfather literally created most of them!”

  “Wait, what?” said Jamie, his gaze darting toward Mir. Beside him, Raleigh sighed, pressing her face into the hollow of Jamie’s shoulder.

  “I’ve told you about this before, I swear I did,” Raleigh said. Jamie was frowning, still staring at Mir. She looked back at him, unnerved by the intensity of his gaze.

  “No. Or if you did, I don’t remember.”

  “Years and years ago, Mir’s grandfather drew the very first TomorrowMen comics,” said Raleigh, her voice nonchalant. “Mir told us back in, what? Sixth grade? You should’ve seen Evan’s face when he found out. I thought his head was going to explode.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Mir said.

  “It’s absolutely a big deal!” Evan roared. He was already climbing to his feet, arms spread wide, intent on telling the story. Mir watched him with growing horror.

  “Listen well, and hear the story of the TomorrowMen! How Joseph Warrick, writer of the TomorrowMen, was born in New York, the only son of immigrant parents from Poland. He grew up on the hardscrabble streets of New York, as the world rebuilt itself after World War Two.”

  “Why am I imagining the cast of Annie?” said Raleigh, grinning.

  “But when Joseph Warrick was ten, his family moved to none other than Sandford, Nova Scotia. There he met a young artist, Micah Kendrick, grandfather of our very own Miriam Kendrick! Little did these two men know that together they would create one of the most popular and long-running comic books in the world: The TomorrowMen!”

  Evan struck a classic superhero pose, fists on his hips, chest thrust out.

  “Skybound! Leader of the TomorrowMen! An ordinary American soldier experimented on by his own government, he defied the cruel organization that gave him superstrength and chose to use his superpowers for good.”

  Evan changed his pose, teetering on one leg, arms extended in front of him like he was flying.

  “Skylark! An alien queen who came to Earth to warn us of an impending threat. She fell in love with Skybound and abandoned her empire to stay with him. Superpowers: flight, the ability to harness energy into psionic bursts, looking really good in spandex.”

  “Sexist,” Raleigh snorted.

  Evan pressed two fingers to his temples, glowering down at Raleigh, Jamie, and Mir. Mir smirked despite herself. He looked ridiculous.

  “Tristan Terrific! A former villain with the power of pure persuasion. He can convince a person to do anything just by talking to them. He caused all sorts of trouble for Skybound and Skylark before changing his ways and joining their side.”

  “Wasn’t there also a teleporting wizard?” said Jamie.

  “I’m getting to him. The Mage of Ages! A New York businessman plucked from the modern day and whisked back to the era of King Arthur, he uses the magic of Excalibur to teleport through time.”

  “And I guess they’re called the TomorrowMEN because they’re pretty much all dudes,” Raleigh said.

  “There are other members of the team, some of them women, but they switch in and out,” admitted Evan. “Skybound, Skylark, Tristan Terrific, and the Mage of Ages are the core four.”

  “And your grandfather created them,” Jamie said, his eyes narrowed at Mir. His tone was light, but Mir thought she saw suspicion in his glance.

  “Co-created,” she said. “But, I mean, it’s not a big deal—”

  “It’s such a big deal,” Evan muttered defiantly, resuming his heroic pose, fists on his hips, staring out over the lake. “It is the biggest deal.”

  Mir sighed, looking downward at the sand underneath her feet.

  “I never got to meet my grandfather,” she said. “He died a few years before I was born. My mom’s told me a bit about him, though. He drew lots of comics, not just the TomorrowMen.”

  Mir remembered the first time she’d seen a photo of her grandfather in a book about the history of superhero comics. He looked shockingly young, smiling and standing next to an equally young Joseph Warrick. There was only one photo of her grandfather at home, a small framed family portrait of him, her grandmother, and a very young Stella held between them. Micah Kendrick looked so much older in that photo, as though something had been taken from him. A year ago Mir had searched for her grandfather’s name online, and discovered pages of links to a court case settled ten years earlier, when Micah Kendrick’s daughter, Stella, ended a twenty-year legal battle over the rights to the TomorrowMen with the TomorrowMen’s longtime publisher, Warrick Comics. Micah Kendrick had died eight years before that.

  “And now they’re making a movie out of these comics,” said Jamie, still looking at Mir with narrowed eyes. “I’ve been reading about it. Warrick Studios is worth millions, and when the TomorrowMen movie drops, they might be worth billions. The merchandising alone makes them a ton of cash. You’re not secretly a rich kid, are you? You haven’t been hiding that from us all these years?”

  All these years? Mir thought. You’ve been a part of this group for a year. Next to Raleigh and Evan, you don’t know me at all.

  “I’m not a rich kid,” said Mir. “My family doesn’t get anything from the TomorrowMen merchandise or the movie. There was a legal case over the rights to the characters years ago, but my mom settled with Warrick Studios after my grandfather died.”

  “Settled,” said Jamie. His face seemed sharper than usual, and Mir thought she caught a note of disgust in his voice. “Warrick Studios must’ve paid a lot of money to make your family go away.”

  Mir made a show of adjustin
g her sitting position, carefully folding her legs underneath her. Raleigh looked worried, glancing from her boyfriend to Mir. Mir knew Raleigh’s expression; she hated it when there was weirdness in the group. When it was just the three of us there was never any weirdness, Mir thought, picking at a blade of grass so she wouldn’t have to look at Jamie.

  “I don’t know—I don’t think it was that much money. I know my parents bought our house with what they got from the settlement, but…” Mir’s voice trailed off.

  Jamie chuckled, the sound like a knife scraping on pavement.

  “Your mom doesn’t even have to work. She does those paintings, which she sells for like zero dollars. I mean, both my parents work, and they don’t own their own house.”

  Mir stared at him, not sure what to say. A slick, awful feeling sloshed in her stomach. Jamie’s gaze seemed to pin her against the sky.

  “I’m not rich,” Mir said. Her words felt thin and ineffectual.

  Jamie continued to stare at her, then turned away, leaning his cheek against the top of Raleigh’s head.

  “I guess not,” he said. “If you were a rich kid, your parents probably wouldn’t still have dial-up internet. At least my parents have high speed.”

  Raleigh laughed, which Mir knew was her choosing to believe the moment of weirdness had passed. She wrapped her arms tighter around Jamie’s torso, and in the early evening light they seemed to fuse together. Mir forced the edges of her mouth up in a semblance of a smile. She glanced at Evan, who was staring at Jamie. Evan caught Mir’s eye, but didn’t smile.

  He can see how messed up things are too, Mir thought. She looked away, staring over the tops of the pine trees on the other side of the lake.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Weldon’s phone rang at 1:45 a.m. He jerked awake, startled, then lunged for the phone on the side table beside his bed. He stared at the phone, unable to read the call display, then put it to his ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, kiddo, it’s me,” Emma Sanders said. Weldon closed his eyes, cradling the phone by his ear. Of course it was his mom. She was the only person who would call without thinking about the four-hour time difference between Nova Scotia and California. He should’ve called her the day he’d landed in Sandford, but he’d been so angry about her refusing to let him spend the summer with her. He hated being angry with her.

  “Sorry I didn’t call earlier. I was having some problems with—anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s fine,” said Weldon. “I’m glad you called.”

  “You’re so forgiving of your forgetful mother,” Weldon’s mom chuckled. He could see her sitting at the table in her tiny kitchen in her tiny house in San Diego, her blond-going-ashy hair falling in a perfect cascade around her face. Weldon wondered if she’d changed anything in the house or if it still looked the same: faded patterned curtains hanging in the living room, cheap Formica toilet in the lone full bathroom.

  “How’re the Warricks?” Weldon’s mom said. “Have they started counting down to the movie yet?”

  “No,” said Weldon. “Well, Dad’s going kind of nuts. The trailer’s premiering at Comic-Con and he’s a little freaked out about it. Having a good initial trailer is really important, I guess.”

  “Gotta impress the nerds,” Emma said, and Weldon felt her smile reach through the phone. He could tell she was in a listening mood, and his heart pulsed with joy.

  “Certain nerds. Nerds with blogs. Important nerds.”

  “Remember when Comic-Con was just a room in a hotel, all these rickety little tables set up, vendors selling back issues for a nickel?”

  “I remember when the back issues were a dollar,” said Weldon.

  “Oh, right,” Emma laughed, and Weldon thrilled at the warmth in her voice. “I forget how young you are, kiddo. You’ve only known that massive convention center, choked full of cosplayers and people who don’t even read comics. All the fake nerds.”

  “Everyone’s a nerd nowadays,” said Weldon.

  “No, honey,” Emma said. “They aren’t nerds the way I was a nerd.”

  Emma Sanders was a science fiction movie queen, the star of dozens of low-budget movies from the eighties and nineties. Weldon remembered bits and pieces from his childhood, his mother gone for days, coming home to San Diego with smears of blue makeup in the creases behind her ears. “I’ve showered twice since I got off work and it still won’t all come off,” she would laugh, shaking her perfect cascade of blond hair. Emma Sanders was tall but delicate, like a much smaller person stretched out over an Amazon’s frame. Weldon remembered the way his dad reached for her when she came home, the way they affectionately folded into each other. He always felt left out, and would wind his way around their legs as they embraced, looking up at them anxiously. “I missed you,” his father would whisper to his mother. “Someday I’ll be in Los Angeles too. We’ll move all of Warrick Comics there. When we make the TomorrowMen movie, we’ll change the name and call it Warrick Studios.”

  In his aunt and uncle’s guest room in Sandford, Weldon squeezed his eyes shut, loneliness pressing him downward.

  “Oh yeah?” Weldon said. “You want to nerd fight? Okay, name me the first appearance of Tristan Terrific.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Emma, “you are so foolish to tangle with me. Which Tristan Terrific? Because there’s the original Tristan Terrific, and then there’s Jordan Nash, who took over the mantle of Tristan Terrific after the original Tristan died fighting the planet-killing robot Ymir. Jordan Nash inherited Tristan Terrific’s power of pure persuasion when the original Tristan Terrific implanted his consciousness into an artificial brain.”

  Weldon rubbed the back of his wrist across his eyes and laughed.

  “Mom, you are an entirely different class of nerd.”

  “A better class of nerd,” Weldon’s mother said.

  Weldon pulled his wrist away from his eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was a shadow reaching along it, splintering across the cream expanse. Weldon remembered the lie Emma had told him three years ago, when she left Los Angeles and moved back to her tiny house in San Diego: “Your dad and I … we just need a little time apart.” There had been lines on his mother’s forehead as she’d told him she was leaving. She was no longer a towering, shining creature, a science fiction queen of the cinema. She was a woman with sorrow etched on her face, who wrapped her arms tightly around her only son. He remembered the feeling of her chest heaving as she swallowed a sob. And then she left LA, the movie industry, and him.

  “Psst, Charlie,” his mother said, her voice tilted away from the phone. “Stop that, Charlie. Leave the couch alone.” There was the sound of thumping in the background, followed by an irritated meow.

  “Jeez, that cat is still around?” Weldon said. Charlie was Emma’s overweight Persian, a yellow-eyed nightmare creature that communicated in a cascade of raspy meows. Charlie had been Emma’s pet for as long as Weldon could remember, and he suspected the beast would outlive them all. Charlie had barely tolerated Weldon and David when they lived together as a family. Weldon suspected the cat was thrilled when his parents broke up: no more husband and son vying for Emma’s affection.

  “Still kicking. Better than a watchdog, my Charlie. He’d make short work of anyone who tried to set foot in this house without permission.”

  “I can believe it,” Weldon said, thinking of Charlie’s malevolent stare.

  “Ah, kiddo, I miss you sometimes,” sighed Emma.

  “Miss you too,” said Weldon, choosing to ignore the “sometimes.” He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to think badly of her. She had to do what was right for her, he thought. She needed to leave LA, it’s as simple as that. It had nothing to do with me. But the words felt thin and hollow, and he didn’t think he believed them.

  “So, tell me about Sandford,” Emma said.

  Weldon sighed.

  “It’s boring.”

  “You need a little less excitement in your life, according to y
our father,” Emma said.

  Weldon cringed.

  “Did he … um, tell you?”

  “Yes, Weldon, he told me. We are still your parents, despite everything. I know you took a groundskeeper’s cart without permission and drove it in doughnuts around a football field. Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly. “I hated that school.”

  There was silence on Emma’s end of the phone. Weldon waited, holding his breath.

  “I wish I could’ve spent the summer with you.” It was the wrong thing to say. There was no sound on the other end of the phone, but he felt his mother fold up into herself, closing off her sympathy.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do that for you, kid,” she said. There was ice in her voice.

  “No, it’s not—”

  “Not my fault? Of course it is.”

  “Mom—”

  “Your father made it clear it was most definitely my fault. You only started up with this nonsense after I left, according to him.”

  Weldon kept staring at the ceiling and tried to think of a way to unravel her anger. David Warrick was hot and loud when he was angry. Emma Sanders froze people out. Weldon remembered the fights they had in the last few years of their marriage, Emma silent and cold, his father always yelling. You should have broken up a long time ago, Weldon thought. Then maybe you wouldn’t hate each other so much. It’s like you’re each other’s archnemeses.

  “I joined a running group yesterday,” Weldon said, hoping a change in subject would distract his mother.

  “Hm,” said Emma, not particularly distracted.

  “They do 5Ks and 10Ks in the big park by the river. I’m going to try to do a regular 10K this summer.”

  “That’d be good for you,” Emma said. The ice in her voice was starting to melt, replaced by weariness. Weldon suspected she knew he was trying to deflect.