Reconnecting with my inner fanboy

Daily writing prompt

Do you have any collections?

When i was young, and even into my early adulthood, I collected comic books. I would get into baseball cards from time to time; but that hobby seemed too expensive to jump into.

Throughout my adolescence and into early adulthood, i was a comic book junkie! Like a lot of kids, I had a random Spider-Man or Batman comic as a kid. But it was the GI Joe comic (and the toy line that accompanied it) that introduced me to the idea of buying a comic on a monthly basis. I started purchasing them in my local 7-Eleven, but soon graduated to my local comic book store.

In 1988, I picked up a new 4-part storyline in Batman called “A Death in the Family”. This story received a lot mainstream publicity at the time of its publication. Part 2 of the story ended on a cliff-hanger where the second Robin (Jason Todd) was trapped by the Joker in an exploding building. Readers where then prompted to call a 1-900 number to vote whether the character should live or die. Keep in mind this was decades before social media. This issue came out in the months leading up bot the 50th anniversary of Batman as well as the 1989 Batman movie. I was hooked and kept buying for nearly 20 years.

By the time I got into college, I was doing the full on “starving college student” thing. Comic books continue to increase in price and I simply didn’t have the money to keep up with them as I did in years prior. even though I wasn’t buying comics like I used to, I tried to keep up with the story airlines of most of my favorite characters.

As much as I cheered for the DC and marvel comics space movies of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, it wasn’t until 2008 with the Marvel Studios release of Iron Man that gave birth to the comic book movie genre as we know it today. Since then, not only has it been socially acceptable to like comic books, it’s been considered cool. We are truly living in a real life Revenge of the Nerds.

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