Chapter Two: Farewell California, Hello Heartbreak
While details on Marten's early years are sparse, much more information is readily available on his high school and college years and we can infer much based on this information.
After his divorce, it is likely that Henry moved out of the household, however he seems to have not left for Florida until after Marten's move to Massachusetts. Despite this Marten most likely saw very little of his father during his teenage years, considering his mother's custody. For a young man going through puberty, lack of a father can become frustrating. Though we can be assured that Veronica had no qualms with explaining to Marten anything he wanted to know, asking such personal questions of an opposite sex parent becomes increasingly embarrassing as time goes on. Thus while Marten may have initially been open to sexually natured questions with his mother, he most likely pulled away from this later in life. It can even be considered that, since Veronica was so open about such matters, that Marten took steps to specifically cloak these details from her. This hypothesis will later be used to explain why Marten tried to hide his porn interests, and became so enraged when his partner Dora, whom he had before been very open with, went against his wishes.
Pulling back to his teenage years, puberty or not Marten would have become much closer with his mother, while not having much time to spend with his father. While he has been seen to be on good terms with both his parents, Veronica no doubt played a much greater role in shaping the Marten we know today. After all a dominatrix mother, even in character only, is a force to be reckoned with. While perhaps not to the point of smothering, Marten was no doubt openly controlled by his mother. Growing up in such an environment most likely taught Marten to recognize “when he's lost”, which might give rise to his acceptance of many unfavorable events over the course of the comic. When mother says no, it means no, and so Marten learned to understand when he has lost his say. It would have been very easy then for Marten to settle into a life of doing what his mother told him to do. With minimal need to think beyond passing his classes, Marten's teenage years involved little critical decision making, the first of the two part theory we will construct on why the Marten we know today is so indecisive in nature. In fact even the smallest disruption in Marten's life, such as being bullied at school, gave rise to his need for a "worry hat" to protect himself. Shielded by his mother, Marten not only became indecisive, but perhaps even fragile. Without making decisions, and with little to do outside of listen to his music, Marten was most likely your typical slacker child. Though at some point he did learn to play the guitar (no doubt a gift from his mother, or even perhaps from his father, in an attempt of bonding) this still played on what seemed to be the only thing even remotely important to Marten: music. Years passed and Marten eventually went to college, where again his major reflected his only apparent interest: music. Majoring in Music History and Critical Theory, Marten could very well have been the poster boy for the hipster, slacker generation he professed to belonging to.
Then in the last semester of college, Marten was introduced to Vicky What seems to have been Marten's first love, it was also the first time his mentality regarding relationships was tested, after the divorce of his parents. When Vicky wanted to move, and began to mope around Marten, he was stated to have “chalked it up to happy relationship paranoia.” We can translate this as: “Not all relationships are like my parents.” A combination of optimism and naivete on Marten's part, that so long as he did not repeat his father's mistakes, his relationships would not fail like his. However no matter how perfect the boyfriend he was, the girlfriend has just as much power to drop the bomb that ends the relationship, as Marten sadly learned. When Vicky, the woman Marten loved, said that she would be moving all the way across the country, Marten had come face to face with something: a life choice. For the first time, Marten was up to the challenge of picking his destination at a crossroads of his life. With the help of a little scotch, Marten finally made his first great choice: to move along with Vicky to Massachusetts Veronica and Henry “freaked” in Marten's own words. As any world-weary parent would realize, this was a choice doomed to fail. Not to mention that Marten was no usurping the control, however light, Veronica held over him. Marten was dictating the terms of his own life, for better of for worse. Unfortunately, it would turn out for the worse. Vicky abandoned him soon after his move, and Marten was left heartbroken, thousands of miles from the comfort of home. The results of this move are the framework for the second – and most critical – part of our theory on Marten's indecisiveness. The first was that he grew up in an environment where he had to make little, if any major decisions. The second came from the fact that the first time he made a choice, it ended in disaster. From Marten's point of view not only was he terrible at making choices, but things seemed to go better for him when he let others – like his mother – make them.
Marten would eventually emerge from the wreckage of the disaster, but not unscathed. Marten's love was gone, but he was not going back to California. After all the only thing worse than our failures, is having them rubbed in our faces. Deciding to start a new life, Marten struck out on his own. We can assume that it would be around this point that Marten would have purchased Pintsize (perhaps with some financial help from his certainly worried parents) in the search for companionship. Over time Marten would find both employment and an apartment, as well as develop a small circle of friends (Steve and Jimbo). Leaving Vicky, and all his trauma behind him, Marten looked to be close to a fresh start. However he still carried the past with him, and it was guaranteed to affect him down the road.
Next time: From Office Bitch to Dora's Bitch: The Marten We Knew Then
Believe it or not this is actually quite a bit of fun for me.