I saw it at the library and remembered that
Great mythical overtones! It's like a modern-day King Arthur tale. When I was little I LOVED those kind of stories, Robin Hood and The Sword in the Stone and such. But this is in an urban setting and has different pop-cultural settings, like the Edsel.
It never occurred to me that any day, I could be called on to be a hero....and would I have the strength? the courage? Matchstick definitely does.
Could our lives be part of some greater purpose which we may never know of?
Is human existence an allegory? Wagner goes into this, as Kevin struggles to deal with the fact that his life is the main part of an allegory.
Duty. Being needed. Honor. Bravery. Heroism. ..........Such scary words.
But since so few people are actually involved in the allegory, does it really matter? If it doesn't affect people much then it's not an overarching plan for all humanity, since any overarching plan would have to affect many people.
The idea that any small thing in this world could really be part of some other context for existence, some other metaframework, but we don't realize it. Example: muscle tics. I get those in my right hip a lot; are they merely muscle tics or are they part of some allegorical fight between good and evil, between yin and yang?
Physics dictates that every action in the universe is part of the struggle between entropy and order. So there's an allegorical fight which took humanity a long time to figure out. May there be others yet undiscovered?
Still, the plot was a bit formulaic, which may or may not be a good thing - basic literary conventions of the hero's journey. Not entirely my cup of tea, but still more depth than a literary snob like me would expect in a graphic novel.
"Fate has certain games that it choose to play, Kevin - a hand for every player. But we all pick our final paths. Our roles and situations may seem haphazardly set, but it is our own decisions that turn the cogs." (341)
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