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Despite all my years in my role as IT Manager (my day job), I still find myself amused when a frustrated user phones and complains that “the Internet is down,” and asks if I would please look into it for him. I assure the caller I will and always smile as I hang up the phone. I generally resist the urge to say “Yes, I’ve taken the Internet down for a quick backup, it should be up in a few minutes,” or, “What? The Internet? Great Scott, I’m on it!” It’s a heady feeling, being given control over the entire Internet.

After a recent similar call, the little wheels and sprockets that make up my brain creaked to life, and I began to wonder: How often am I given power in the course of the day? And conversely, how often do I give power in the course of one day? If I take the commuter bus to work, I literally give the driver life and death power over me (and I pay $5.50 for the privilege). If I drive myself to work, I take some power for myself, but manage to drive only very slowly as the other 49,999 commuters on the roads are taking a little power for themselves as well. I unfortunately give my mother-in-law the power to drive me absolutely crazy. My daughter often gives a cup of apple juice the power to make her happy. This is a normal trade in social power. If I could control the amount of power I give and the amount of power I am given (I don’t want to give too much, nor do I want too much given to me), I would be powerful indeed.

An interesting thing happened when I launched ComicCritique.Com over a year ago: people started giving me power. Not quite the level of taking the Internet down for a backup, but power nevertheless. ComicCritique.Com is meant to be a publication where, among other things, readers can find thoughtful essays about comics as a storytelling medium, and literate reviews of the comics themselves. That’s it. Yet some ComicCritique.Com readers give us much more power. Here’s an email I recently received, unedited (name withheld because I’m a nice guy):

To: editors@comiccritique.com
From: [--------]
Subject: you’re an evil menace to society

YOU REALLY ARE EVIL!!!!!!
YOU HAVE NO IMAGINATION ON YOUR OWN YOU LOOOSER!!!!!!
DROP DEAD YOU LEECH AND SLEAZE

This reader clearly gave us the power to completely ruin his day, not to mention the power to cause him to use poor punctuation. Other notes have accused us of attempting to sway the entire comic-reading population and drive certain books from the shelves. That is a phenomenal amount of power, a level I hope (and expect) we’ll never achieve. Here’s my editor-ly advice: don’t give us that much power. Further, don’t give any writer, especially those of us who arrogate to be reviewers of any artistic medium, that much power.

All that said, as a writer I have to absolutely acknowledge the power of words. I find it one of the great conundrums: words have undeniable power, yet one must also be able to withstand that power and let words hold sway only with one’s permission. So on the one hand I insist that you don’t give any writer too much power yet with the other hand I begin waving a .32 caliber column. How can this be reconciled? The simple answer is to “read responsibly.” We as a culture have an unfortunate penchant to believe what we read, giving great power to any number of writers who manage to publish their words either in printed or digital form. Take a little power back. When you read, take into account the writer, the publication, and your own preconceptions and expectations. The most highly-educated people I know don’t read just one newspaper each day, they read six or seven printed newspapers, sometimes more. This level of responsible reading gives them the most complete picture of current events and even gives them a measure of power over the otherwise intractable daily news.

There’s room in this subject to discuss power in all its forms: physical power, political power, and of course superpower obtained via radioactive spider bites, but I’ll save those for later columns. For now, read responsibly, don’t give power too easily, and don’t take us or yourself or comic books too seriously. You’ll be happier, I promise.