Being so far away from my comic book store, I only go and get my pulls every three to four weeks. Whenever I go in, I look around for anything new. I never know what’s coming out, unlsess I see someone mention it on Twitter or something, and I like it that way. Instead, I look around or ask someone if anything good just came out. That’s how I found out about Golden Rage and Love Everlasting a few months ago. Last week, I came across Szymon Kudranski’s Something Epic. I saw issue #1 with the Eminem Show variant cover on the back issues shelf, but what really caught my attention was the variant cover for issue #2 showing Danny as a G.I. Joe figure in a package. After talking with someone at the shop, I decided to pick up both issues and try them out. What really interests me about this series is the exploration of imagination and the ways we construct reality.

The series opens with Danny’s birth, and on the second page we see the doctor holding Danny in his arms as Danny asks, “Who am I?” He immediately answers this question by stating, “I’m different, just like you. And like everyone else, I hide it.” These lines serve as our introduction to Danny as he narrates his story, and they also serve to point highlight for us that we, like Danny, have the capabilities to see reality, whatever that reality may be. He says he’s different yet he is like us. He says he hides his difference just as everyone else does the same. When we feel different from those around us, we disguise ourselves, hiding who we truly are from others as well as ourselves.

Imagination exists as an important part of our beings. Any composition — sculpture, music, literature, scientific innovation, etc. — begins in the imagination. It originates within us and forms within our minds before it arrives in the “tangible” world of our senses. When I write, I formulate sentences, phrases, and more in my head before I even begin to write them on the page. Sometimes this takes place over a few days; the words slosh around inside my brain, forming then rearranging themselves in various constructions before they enter into the world where your eyes take them in a send them into your brain for deciphering.

Throughout the first issue, Danny describes what he see in the world around him, and he details how his mother worries about him, even taking his to a specialist to see if anything is wrong with him. The tests are inconclusive, and the doctors say he is “normal” and just has an “overactive imagination.” What Danny experiences through his senses exists, even if those experiences only exist to him. Does that mean that they are not real if no one else experiences them? No, they exist; therefore, they are reality, at least for Danny.

We see this when Danny talks about encountering the vampire Marcelus and Drill the cat. Danny acts as if he doesn’t know that Marcelus and Drill exist, and they, in turn, think that they can continue their existence unnoticed. Danny tells us that when he first encountered the pair he felt fear, and he got his mom to come up to the top floor with him to show her Marcelus and Drill. Danny’s mom shines the flashlight into the room, and we see Marcelus standing menacingly before her, arms outstretched ready to grab her, but Danny’s mom doesn’t see them. She says, “See? No one is here!” and she chalks up Danny’s fears to late-night horror movies.

However, Danny sees them. He feels them. He smells them. He stands behind his mom and tells us, “She couldn’t see them. But that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. They do. To me.” Here, Danny highlights that just because his mom doesn’t see the pair it doesn’t mean they don’t stand in front of her. As well, Danny switches tenses in this scene. He begins by using the past tense when discussing his mom’s perceptions, and he switches to present tense at the end saying “they do” exist. In this manner, Danny points out that, as he puts it on the next page, “Everything you’ve ever imagined is stored in your memory in the form of electrical energy. That means it’s real, tangible, measurable. It exists physically within our world.”

Our senses construct the reality we see, smell, touch, taste, and feel around us, but that is not the whole extent or reality. What do we call the thoughts that run through our minds? The electrical impulses that jump across the synapses? Are those reality too? Is the 162-game Major League Baseball season I played with the Atlanta Braves on MLB The Show a few years ago reality? I did it. I played it. Was it real? Were the dots above my bed that formed into the shape of a being and kept me from breathing a reality? They were/are real to me. At the time, I thought it was aliens. Now, I think it was sleep paralysis, but that doesn’t mean that the aliens didn’t exist for me.

Reality constitutes much more than what we see around us. Danny says, “Our eyes perceive only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum — in fact, in many ways, our eyes see nothing.” I always thought that my parents saw in black and white because they watched black and white television shows. At some moment, color switched on and they could see in color, just like television switched to color. That was reality to me.

Are the words on this screen real? Or, do we make them real to us when we read them and decode them? Does reality come from what we surround ourselves with? Near the end of issue one, Danny buys a Bible, and we see a head emanating from the cover. In his bedroom, Danny has other books with heads protruding from the covers. He tells us, as he goes to sleep, that he collected them, surrounding himself with them because they give him comfort. They construct Danny’s reality, his experiences.

I’m intrigued about where Something Epic will go, and I’m interested in other aspects of this series, specifically the fact that we don’t see the faces of adults for the most part. We see the face of a man in the doctor’s office, but only after Danny realizes that the man sees the same things he sees. I plan to write some more about this series in the future, so stay tuned. What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.