The Super Amalgamated Chameleon

The debate used to rage over the educational value of reading comics or watching shows like Star Trek. Are they really teaching you anything?

In the 1950’s, the answer was no. Parents were whipped into a frenzy concerning the evils of comics and their ability to make children juvenile delinquents by Dr. Frederick Wertham. They actually held book burnings in some small towns, forcing the children to dump their comics into the flames.


Today, I think the answer is yes. The popular story is that to ask any teacher about the value of reading comics and you’ll get the answer that teachers are happy kids are reading anything at all. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that most kids don’t know where to even buy comics, much less show any interest in doing so.

In previous decades, comics were a bicycle ride away and very much a part of everyday culture. Of course we learned from them! Good… bad… or whatever. As we learned from books, television, movies, music, and as kids will learn from ANY source of input.

My problem, personally, was that comics didn’t come with a pronunciation guide.

I’ve been a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes since 1976. One of the members is named Chameleon Boy. And for the longest time, I did not pronounce it as you would expect, kuh-MEE-lee-uhn boy. But rather, as my seven year old mind had first stumbled through it, cham-e-LON boy. I never drew the connection.


It became one of those words you never questioned. I would come to know, speak, and spell the word chameleon with no problem. But put an issue of Legion in front of me and my eyes would trick me into my learned pronunciation of the word within that context. Cham-e-LON Boy.

I was in high school before this proved to be a problem. As I was discussing the Legion with a friend of mine, and I mentioned the Durlan shape-shifter’s name.

“Cham-e-LON Boy.” I stated.

“Who??” My friend was slightly taken aback.

“Cham-e-LON Boy.” I repeated.

“You mean Chameleon Boy?” My friend asked.

It was like a lightning bolt shooting right through my brain. “OOooooooh… Chameleon Boy. Because he changes shape… like a chameleon changes colors. That makes so much sense.”

“You’re a weird kid.” My friend was done.

To this day, looking at Chameleon Boy’s name in an issue of Legion still looks weird to me. It’s like it was always supposed to be an alien science fiction style word, not a pedestrian, English language born word meaning ‘lizard that changes colors’. So… normal.

Sigh.

My thirteen year old son had a similar experience, recently. He enjoys reading the old Doc Savage pulp novels I’ve talked about before. In those novels, one of the characters likes to yell out “well I’ll be super Amalgamated”. Knowing that it was a long word that not many people used, Ashton used it on one of his assessment tests last year that the schools use to gauge how well a school is doing. He thought it meant “a feeling of surprise”. He learned it didn’t, and moved on. But it’s a case of reading something out of context and learning something incorrectly, as I did with Chameleon Boy.

Learning things from comics has its drawbacks. But I prefer it to nothing. Currently I’m absorbing things from multiple sources. I’ve been using a ‘Today in History’ app on my iPad to learn interesting nuggets from the past. And if I find something I want more information on, I start with Wikipedia and work from there.

Constantly learning is one of Captain Kirk’s leadership techniques, as evidenced by this article.

I think ultimately, it’s the same with all things. You’ll get what you put into it. If you go into reading comics and watching Star Trek ready to learn and with a mind open for new things, then you’ll get something lasting out of it. If you fire up a video game with the express intent of proving what a waste of time it is, then you’ll find it to be a waste of time. The actual act of objective analysis is far more difficult an effort than most of us are ready to give.

Thanks,
DCD