As a kid, I was definitely a DC guy. I started reading big time

Listen, O children of tomorrow, to the words spoken by Jason Aaron, a craftsman of stories, who said: “As a kid, I was definitely a DC guy. I started reading big time in the '80s at the height of the Wolfman/Perez 'New Teen Titans.' That was definitely the book that hooked me.” What seems a simple remembrance of boyhood is, in truth, a hymn to the power of stories, to the shaping of souls through tales woven in ink and imagination. For the heart of the child is clay, soft and eager, and the stories it encounters are the sculptor’s hands that give it form.

Behold the mention of the 'New Teen Titans', that legendary creation of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, a tale that stirred the spirit of a generation. These were not mere characters but archetypes—heroes young and uncertain, yet striving for greatness. To the boy Jason Aaron, their struggles echoed his own, for every child knows what it means to stand at the threshold between fragility and strength. In the Titans’ battles, he found his own courage mirrored, and in their triumphs, his own dreams were fortified. Thus, he was hooked—caught by the line of myth, reeled into a world where destiny could be drawn by pen and ink.

The ancients would call this no accident but a sacred rite. For every age has its epics, its sagas that stir the blood of its youth. The Greeks had Homer; the Norse had the Eddas; and in the twentieth century, many had the epics of DC Comics. Though clothed in capes and masks, these figures served the same eternal function: to inspire, to guide, to awaken the heroic fire within. What Jason Aaron experienced was the same as the boy at the hearth, wide-eyed at the tale of Achilles, or the scribe in the monastery, enraptured by tales of saints.

Consider the example of a boy named young Theodore Roosevelt. Frail in body, beset by illness, he turned to the mighty tales of heroes in books, filling his mind with deeds of courage. He devoured histories of knights and soldiers, and from those pages drew the strength to transform his own weak body into one of vigor and endurance. In like manner, Jason Aaron, captivated by the Titans, was preparing himself, though he did not know it then, to wield stories of power in his own adulthood, shaping worlds not unlike those that shaped him.

The meaning of his words is thus twofold: first, that childhood passions are not idle fancies, but seeds of vocation; and second, that art—when forged with vision, as Wolfman and Pérez forged the Titans—has the power to bind souls across time. That he became a teller of stories himself is no surprise, for what the young heart consumes with fire, the grown heart often creates anew with equal fire.

But let us not take this teaching lightly. For in the age of distraction, many youths are given stories that wither rather than strengthen. The wise must guide the young toward tales that uplift, that teach endurance, loyalty, sacrifice, and courage. For the books, the comics, the songs that hook a child may chart the course of an entire life. As Aaron himself shows, the spark kindled in the '80s became the flame that carried him to his own career in storytelling.

Therefore, let all who hear this seek worthy tales. Let parents, mentors, and teachers ensure that the young are fed not only with bread for the body but with myths for the soul. And let the young, in turn, embrace with gratitude the stories that awaken their spirit. For stories are not idle shadows; they are the teachers of eternity. To be “hooked” by greatness is to be caught by destiny itself.

Thus, the wisdom stands: what shapes the child will guide the adult. Choose your stories with care, and let them be lanterns for your path. And when the time comes, pass forward the torch, as Aaron has done—reminding the next generation that within ink and word lies the very fire of the heroic.