A Year of Marvel

Around Thanksgiving 2013, I started reading a few comics that friends recommended to me in passing. Then in late December/early January I started picking up more trade paperbacks. I began buying comics weekly in late January 2014. It has been so much fun to pick up new stories and adventures over the past year, to follow ongoing characters as they stretch and grow, as they become more than who they were in an ongoing continuity. I have always loved reading, and watching a group of characters over a long period of time is one of my favorite things about storytelling.

This morning I will be presenting at NACADA Region 8 on some relevant student development theories for Career and Academic Advising professionals. While preparing this presentation, I came across a couple of my favorite panels from comics that I have read in the last year.

The panels are from Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1. At the beginning of the story, we see Carol Danvers – the current Captain Marvel, presently in space with the Guardians – reflect (via video message home) on how much she misses Earth and her friends. She comments that she wishes she would have appreciated her time with the Avengers more, she wishes she had not spent that time missing her previous group. She is interrupted by the main plot of the story, but we come back to her video message at the end, and (spoiler) these are the last two panels.

These panels evoke such feeling, such emotion. The inbetween moments, where characters are experiencing life together are some of my favorite parts of these stories.

I included these panels on a slide about transition. One of the pieces of Schlossberg’s Transition Theory suggests considering what support an individual has in place during their transition. This can be instrumental in the way an individual makes it through a transition.

Support can come from unknown and unexpected places. In my move to Portland, I met dozens of incredible humans that offered their support, their advice and their extras. I moved into my apartment with about 15 boxes of stuff from my previous residence, a tiny IKEA chair, two IKEA folding chairs, a microwave, a dresser and a small rolling shelf. Some friends lent me an air mattress. The only things I owned before I moved to Portland were the 15 boxes. Yet somehow I have an apartment, a home, full of things.

This support was unexpected and unprecedented. Yet it happened.

It can be easy to be scared or uncertain going into a transition, and over the last year I have been learning to accept things for what they are, to be patient (not a natural reaction for me) and remember that everything works out the way it is supposed to.

Sometimes these lessons have been supported by comics.