Rambling January Day 14

[moonlettuce]

mabiana wanted to know "When and how did you start reading comic books?"

Picture the scene, little me (I was about seven or eight) was home ill from school one day. (I can't remember what it was I had, but it was no doubt horrendous. I did epic illness when I was younger. For example, the time I got whooping cough and was off school for six weeks. Ooh, or the time I got rubella and started hallucinating so badly they nearly put me in hospital. I apparently had a two hour conversation with an alien who had landed in our front room. And got chased by giant wasps. And would float up to the ceiling and spin around every time I closed my eyes. Like I said, epic.)

Anyway, I was home from school and bored, so I went into our dining room. (Please note, the affectation of 'dining room' doesn't adequately cover what this room was like. We never actually used it for dining, although it did have a dining room table in there. But no chairs. The dining room table, though, was amazing. It was old, solid, dark oak, and about 5 foot square. I used to sit under there for hours, just doing stuff.

Now, at this point, my now cousin-in-law (he wasn't married to my cousin at time, they were just dating) was in the RAF and had asked if he could store a couple of boxes at our place. (His parents wanted his stuff out of the house, and he didn't have the room in barracks to take everything.) What he left was a couple of boxes of comics. "Feel free to read them," he said. "Okay," said I. And then didn't.

And then that fateful day arrived.

Cut to me, ill and bored and sitting on the epic dining room table of epicness, flicking through the comics M had left at our place. I was looking at the covers and, admittedly, not feeling very interested. And then it happens. I pick up this:



X-Men Annual #6, from 1982.

Now, I grew up watching Hammer Horror movies. I've had a vampire and werewolf fixation for pretty much as long as I can remember. One of my tattoos is a wolf's head in the form of the Gangrel clan logo from Vampire: the Masquerade (thereby covering both vampire and werewolf). One of the literary quotes I want to get inked is a quote from Dracula. (The quote is "Denn die Todten reiten schnell," which translates to "For the dead travel fast." It's what the coachman says to Jonathan Harker when he takes him to Castle Dracula and refuses to take him close to the castle when he drops him off.)

So, when I saw this one, with a vampire and someone who appeared to be Dracula on the front, I had to read it. And then I read another, and another, and another. And I fell in love.

I fell in love with a goddess who soars through the sky, and a sassy genius who walks through walks. I fell in love with a man so desperately trying to stop what he fears will happen from coming to pass, and with a short, gruff Canadian who calls people "Bub."

I pulled out every X-Men comic in those boxes and devoured them.

I got my mum to take me to Time Slip, which was the little comic shop in Newcastle. (For anyone who knows Newcastle, before Haymarket Bus Station was built behind Marks & Spencer, there used to be a little row of about six shops. One of them was Time Slip. The two guys who ran the shop later bought into the Forbidden Planet franchise and opened FP. Which is why I joke that, technically, I've shopped at Forbidden Planet since before it was even Forbidden Planet.)

I'd spend hours in this little shop and spend my pocket money on comics. And I don't know if Mum every thought it was a phase that I'd grow out of, but never once did she discourage me. Never once did she say that comics weren't for girls, or that they weren't something I should be reading, or spending my money on.

And it grew.

It grew to me being on first name terms with the staff of Forbidden Planet.

It grew to the very first thing I put on my mortgage paperwork as 'Essential Outgoings' being the comic order. (Even before bills and groceries, the comic order went on there as a non-negotiable outgoing.)

It grew to people I work with being able to walk into a shop and saying "I need to buy a present for Claire--" and FP going "Get her this..." (I have two teams at work, which meant I got involved in two Secret Santas last year. The lad who sits next to me managed to get me in the Secret Santa. When it was revealed who got who, his comment to me was that he thought it was insane that he could walk into a shop and say "I need something for {my full name}" and not only did they know who he was talking about, they just handed him something.

It grew to the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters logo tattoo'ed on my leg and the SHIELD logo at the top of my spine.

It grew to seeing The Avengers six times in two days at the cinema.

It grew to me standing in the middle of London Expo in 2010 with temaris asking me if I'm okay, and me bursting out in tears because I'd just met Chris Claremont. (For those who don't know who Claremont is, he's probably the seminal writer for the X-Men. He wrote X-Men Annual #6, that very first comic that I ever picked up. (It's actually the comic I got him to sign :) He is the reason I'm a comic geek. Which means all the money I've spent is also his fault. Damn it.)

It grew to being a part of me that I can't imagine not being there.

I look around this room and I've got Hawkeye on my calendar and Secret Avengers on my wall and a Magneto jacket on the bed and the Avengers on my duvet cover and a cardboard Iron Man mask leaning against the wall (don't ask). I open up a jewellery case and I've got an arc reactor necklace and SHIELD earrings and Clint Barton dog tags and a Wolverine pendant. I've got Hawkeye on the bathroom wall and Storm on one of the cupboard doors and two papier mâché Magneto helmets on top of the shoe rack (made from scratch, thank you very much).

It's part of me. Being a comic geek is such a quintessential part of who I am. And it all started with one little comic, out of one little box, in one little room, in the hands of one little girl who opened up pages and fell inside.

Comments

[rhade-rad.livejournal.com]

Wonderful. I think you should share this with Chris Claremont. Especially that final paragraph.

[mabiana.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :-)

[temaris.livejournal.com]

I still remember the whole thing with a sort of vicarious sense of utter joy :) From utterly serendipitously spotting Claremont's name on a London Expo email and forwarding it to you, what was it, like 10 days before? Some ridiculous short notice, I know that :) And you were just, 'right, done, I'm visiting, we're going'; to you hyperventilating when we located Claremont with just his liaison setting themselves up at a table, and no one else around, and explaining to Chris Claremont that his work more than anything had got you into comic reading, and you'd been reading since you were seven, and how very nice he was, and after, I genuinely wasn't sure if you were going to keel over from some sort of perfect storm of happiness and comic feels and omg Chris Claremont!!! :)

I'm so glad we're doing cons again :)