We all need a hero sometimes. To be inspired, to remind us what's important.

For Ann Arbor writer Jeff Kass, the colorful heroes of Marvel Comics shaped his outlook, worldview, and identity as they swung or rocketed through his childhood.

True Believer, named for one of iconic creator Stan Lee's famous phrases, is Kass' latest collection of poetry, arriving from Michigan-based publisher Dzanc Books.

The lyric and narrative poems of True Believer cover a plethora of characters and themes from across the Marvel universe, from the quiet tragedy of the Thing to the bombastic Starlord. Kass also relates the characters and stories to his own life, and recounts significant comics-related events he's experienced, including reading key issues of Daredevil and Black Panther, and the joy, brotherhood, and cacophony of attending a Marvel Comics Convention in the '70s:

The floor buzzed
like a giant wasp, loud and chaotic, a thousand
glistening tables and ten times that many people.

Throughout the collection, Kass uses soaring, heroic language to bring his poetry into the four-color world of Silver Age comics.

Kass, who teaches at Pioneer High School. and I spoke by Zoom about True Believer, its secret origins, the influence of early hip-hop on his writing, and why hope and heroism are vital at this moment in history.

Q: I had a chance to read an early copy of True Believer. It was just very fun stuff, very interesting. As a comics guy myself, I'd be curious what made you want to write a book of poetry inspired by Marvel comics?
A: My last poetry collection was called Teacher/Pizza Guy. It detailed a year that I spent delivering pizzas for Cottage Inn while also teaching full-time. It's a depressing book. It's a book that talks about being exhausted and struggling financially and all of that. I wanted to write something that wouldn't feel as heavy, as down, as depressing, and just something that tried to explore more joy. I've been reading a lot of Ross Gay's work, like his Book of Delights, and things like that. I just thought, Well, what about trying to write a bunch of poems that are celebrating something?

What made me think of Marvel Comics is when Stan Lee passed away a few years ago, I wrote the first poem in the book called "Elegy for Stan Lee," just because I wanted to, from my own mind, document what he had meant to me in my life. I like that poem, and I like the idea of considering what Marvel Comics had meant not only to me but also to the broader culture. Then I read that poem a couple of places. People seem to like it, but I didn't necessarily think it was the start of a collection or anything like that.

Then I was teaching a workshop a few summers ago for people who are trying to deal with addictions. One of the writing exercises we were doing was responding to a song that you found interesting. I wrote the poem about Thor and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," and how it appears in the movie Thor Ragnarok, and what a great scene that was. I just really got that poem, and I read it for the workshop participants, and they really liked it. I was like, "Now I got two Marvel poems. I wonder if it's something here? It's a good start." Then I just started thinking about what it meant for me to grow up reading these comics all the time; how they ultimately influenced my personality and my outlook on the world. That led to me writing a bunch more poems and thinking, "OK, this looks like a manuscript."

Q: You got into this a little bit already then, but I guess what was it like to explore your life through comics with these poems?
A: I think part of the reason why the Teacher/Pizza Guy book is so hard for me is that, in general, I try to be optimistic most of the time about things in life, even if I don't like what happened in the presidential election, or I don't like some of the terrible wars that are happening in the world. I try to believe that there's always hope. I started to think about, "Well, where did this belief come from? How come, despite things being awful and a lot of my students being depressed and being on their phones all the time, how do I have this core sense that there's always hope and that things can get better?"

The two Marvel heroes who I read the most growing up were Daredevil and Captain America. Captain America always believes that there's a better way. There's always a path to righteousness and good. Then Daredevil comes from a darker place, but just the fact that this guy who's blind can become this man without fear who wants to do good things for the community around him. That had a serious effect and impact on me.

When I went to write more poems about Marvel, I tried to think about what is it about any of these heroes or villains or stories or events that have stayed with me and helped me to have some perspective, or think about challenges I might be facing in my own life? That's what I really was thinking about the most. Then there's the one poem in there: "Tales of Suspense #80, August 1966." That one was a key moment in the book, too, because as I started going back through Marvel comics and thinking about the stories I liked and the ones I read and exploring Marvel canon, it occurred to me, well, what was Marvel doing the month I was born? I started to look for, what was Marvel doing in August 1966? I read the story about the Cosmic Cube with the Red Skull and Captain America. I'd always wondered, watching Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, why is the Red Skull the guardian of the Soul Stone in the Infinity Stones?

Because he makes some allusion—"I have some experience with the Stone"—I didn't know what it was. Then I realized that this Cosmic Cube is actually the predecessor to the Infinity Stones. The idea that that issue, August 1966, where the Red Skull discovers the Cosmic Cube is actually the beginning of this whole saga that ends with Avengers Endgame made me believe like, wow, maybe I'm really destined to write this book. If I was born in that month and now after Avengers Endgame, this has been parallel to my existence on this planet, this saga has taken place. That was a moment where I was like, there's something deeper going on here.

Q: What do you hope that folks take away from this collection?
A: I guess one thing is just joy, being entertained, having fun, and just enjoying the sonic elements of the book. The other influence on me growing up—I grew up just outside of New York City in the '70s and '80s—was the beginning of hip-hop. When I started writing these poems that had a lot to do with my childhood and what influenced me, hip-hop started creeping into it a lot, too. There's a number of pieces that are hip-hop styles. Part of that is just, like, if I'm writing this piece about Starlord, and it feels like a hip-hop rhyme, It's just the joy of the story coming out sonically. Part of what I wanted to do was just have fun with the book and experience Marvel in a different medium. But then, of course, and this becomes more and more as we look at what's going on in the world right now, there are still the powers of darkness out there. Thanos, to me, is a symbol more than anything else. Thanos is an egotistical being who believes they can solve all the problems of the universe, regardless of what that means in terms of the wholesale slaughter of other beings.

I feel like as I near the end of my teaching career, that part of what I still want to do—even if I'm not in a classroom working with students on a daily basis—is just be a voice for fighting back against the forces of despair and darkness. Part of what I'm hoping is that people will take out of this book is what I take out of listening to a Bob Dylan song, or listening to a Bruce Springsteen song, which is just the sense that we all have some power within us. We all have a voice, and we can all fight whatever fight we think is important, whatever fight we think is planet-saving, however you think of what the size of that planet is. That might just be the planet of your family or the planet of your town. But there's this sense of, "Let's not just give up and give in to the darker influences. Let's believe."

That's part of the title, too. I'm calling it a True Believers not just as a Stan Lee reference but it's also the belief that, as Obama said quoting Martin Luther King, the arc of the universe bends toward justice, and that we can really believe that.

Right now, it seems like there's a movement toward believing that people are selfish and greedy and all of that, but we don't have to believe that. We can fight back. And in a joyful way, hopefully.

Q: You've mentioned the Avengers movies a couple of times. Do you still read Marvel comics or other comics?
A: Yes, I do. I would say I don't read too much outside of Marvel, but when I was growing up, I read a ton of Marvel, I read a ton of DC, I read Archie comics, I read all comics. I gravitated to Marvel mostly because I always felt the heroes were more complex and interesting. Other than Batman, who I venerate at DC, I feel like a lot of the DC heroes are pretty shallow in terms of their overall world outlook. And Marvel, they're always conflicted. Spider-Man is just laden with guilt. Captain America is this self-righteous guy, but everyone else calls him out on it. Then you have people like Black Widow and Hawkeye and things that they've done in the past. And Daredevil, too. They're conflicted. They don't always have the line like Superman: truth, justice, and the American way.

I'm mostly reading Daredevil now, some Captain America, some Spider-Man, Black Panther. But for the most part, my interaction with Marvel is through the movies. I'll watch any Marvel movie, and I'm not a hater of Madame Webb or Morbius. There are some I like better than others, but I think on some level, there's truth to the idea that as much as I love the comic books growing up, they can't necessarily compete with the movies. Avengers Infinity War and Endgame are just so epic. I love the movies, and so I go see them all the time whenever I can.

Q: Is there anything else you want to add?
A: I really enjoyed writing this book. I think it's a lot of fun to perform these pieces.

I'm taking some risks here in that I'm putting things like limericks in a poetry collection, which most people think of as not very sophisticated poetry, the province of hack poets. But on some level, I consider myself a hack poet, and I'm not ashamed of that. I feel like a poet that wants to be accessible to general audiences, that doesn't want to be the fount of wisdom—"And if you don't get what I'm trying to say, it's because you're not deep enough"—I don't want to ever be that part of it. So I also think that on some level, Marvel also fulfills that role in terms of literature. It's a saga. There's character development, plot. There's all kinds of crazy things that happen, but it's also accessible to everybody. And In some ways, it's like, I don't want to say an FU, but it's not afraid to stare down august literature.

Shaun Manning is a founder and former co-owner of Booksweet. He is also a writer of various things, mostly comics. 

Jeff Kass celebrates the release of "True Believer" in the Little Theater at Pioneer High School, 601 West Stadium Boulevard, Ann Arbor, on Thursday, April 3 at 7 pm. The event will also feature original poetry from Ann Arbor youth authors.