A couple of days ago, a friend of mine sent out a group e-mail announcing a recent milestone in her life. At this stage in our lives, whenever I get an e-mail attachment from one of the people in this group of friends I’m sort of resigned to it being an ultrasound photo with the subject line “See you in 18-20 years,” but this time I was pleasantly surprised. Attached to the e-mail were photos of a recent Smackdown event taken from the WWE web site; distantly, my friend can be seen woo-hooing in the crowd.

There’s nothing quite like seeing new facets of people I’ve known for a decade. I was completely blindsided by my friends unabashed love of rasslin’ because she is a woman, because she is a lawyer, and because in all the time I’ve known her it has never come up. In my limited experience, the kind of people who really like pro wrestling are generally the kind of people who announce that to you without it even being relevant to your conversation.

“It’s going to be June soon; your neighbors really need to take down their Christmas decorations.”

“Just like Junkyard Dog is gonna take down Big Boss Man in the steel cage this Sunday! Wooo!”

“Yes. Very much like that.”

Like I said, limited experience. You can tell from the way I name-checked Junkyard Dog and Big Boss Man, both of whom probably last wrestled in 1987. B.C.

Little wonder, though, that my friend’s love of the squared circle had come up so rarely in the past; as soon as her wrestlemania was diagnosed, somebody came around poking fun. Gentle fun. Good-natured, affectionate fun. But poking fun at someone’s enthusiasm nonetheless.

No, it wasn’t me. F****r.

The e-conversation that spun out of the funpoking couldn’t have come at a more apt time. I have been thinking for a couple of weeks about my growing perception that people are more hesitant than ever to share their interests or beliefs or even which TV shows they enjoy; I can’t figure out whether it’s a general phenomenon (people are putting up walls around themselves because we live in an attack dog culture where the Bill O’Reillys and VoteForTheWorst.coms have conditioned everyone to treat every diverging opinion like a heated partisan issue) or whether it’s just localized to me (people aren’t shy about their interests, they just don’t bring them up around me because I’m overcritical and harsh and they don’t want to risk getting cut down for liking Scary Movie).

No matter which it is, I have definitely become harsher because the world feels harsher. I am extremely vocal about my criticisms while being absolutely private about my praise, leaving my yin yangless and making me come across like Andy Rooney’s drunk nephew. I don’t like it. I don’t mean to suggest that we should stop poking fun or being critical– my God, turn in my gun and badge?– I’m simply hoping to make it safe to open things up a little more. Build bridges, not walls, my brothers and sisters.

For example, it occurred to me recently that I have started buying more comic books than I did when I was twelve years old. I am only nominally following the TV shows I “watch,” and the movies that are slated to come out this year aren’t even nudging the needle on my emotional scales, but I have been looking forward to Marvel’s Civil War all year long. Looking forward to it exactly like I used to anticipate movies, actually, from the “how many days till it comes out?” thrill to the “man, I hope they don’t screw this up” dread.

Civil War is the kind of gigantic crossover that only comic books with their shared universes are capable of doing well. (Imagine the president passing a law on West Wing that had to be carried out by the people on Alias and 24 resulting in a trip to the ER and you’ll have a pretty good understanding of my adolescent reading material.)

What has me so jazzed about it is that it’s explicitly political while still being fantastic. It drives me buggy that we’re at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq right now and the editors at Marvel Comics have Captain America hunting down Soviet cyborgs. Soviet cyborgs? Contemporary stories polarize, and polarity doesn’t sell action figures or movie deals. When I think of what I would be doing if I owned the rights to Captain America right now…!

Civil War looks like it’s going to go in through a side door, like all fiction at its allegorical best. The premise is this: the public are growing increasingly wary of superheroes, these guys who have the ability to level a building with their bare hands but wear masks concealing their identities, making them accountable to no one for their actions. As Congress is discussing this issue in committee (sounds exciting already, doesn’t it?) a team of B-list superheroes/reality show stars have a battle that accidentally results in the destruction of Stamford, Connecticut, killing hundreds and causing Congress to hastily pass the Superhuman Registration Act. The SRA requires all superheroes (Persons of Mass Destruction) to unmask, register with the United States government, and be trained as licensed law enforcement agents responsible for any “malpractice.” Some heroes react by complying in the name of national safety and patriotism; some heroes– including Captain America– respond by openly defying the law in the name of civil liberties and personal freedoms. Hero against hero, bif pow bam.

If you know anything about me at all, you can already tell that this is like giving me a heroin I.V. (Including the expense; these colorful pamphlets ain’t $.75 anymore, true believer.) The whole point of superheroes is that they do the things that the authorities can’t do!… But what gives these yahoos the right to punch a guy through my wall just because they can tie a bandana around their faces?… But if their identities aren’t secret, what’s to stop Doctor Octopus from killing their kids? It’s not like the villains are going to sign up…. And which side will Spider-Man take? Will he be written true to his character for the first time in years, or will he continue to be the sellout b**** they’ve been making him since I started reading again? (Not that I’ve formed my opinion already.)

How do you like that? As I write these words, this very series is being discussed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, of all places. Maybe I can be comfortable geeking out publicly about this stuff after all. Maybe.

-”The Battle Outside Raging, Superheroes Dive In“, New York Times.