Old Hobbies

I visited a friend's blog and got into a slight wrangle with him over superheroines.  In one post, he said and I quote, how many super heroes do you know who are women, anyway?

Ya, earth-shaking issue, I can tell.

Anyway, he got me scooting down memory lane and metaphorically digging into old boxes.  Again.

I used to be so addicted to the Marvel and DC universes that I HAD to write the stories for myself because I couldn't wait for the next installment.  My friends used to shake their heads at the sight of me scribbling in a book.  I must've have filled up at least 20 exercise books!  I was crazy about the New Teen Titans then - Robin, Starfire, Wonder Girl, Changeling, Raven and Cyborg.

The X-Men?  Piffle.  They were old hat to me. I chewed my baby teeth on them...literally.  My grandpa and uncle brought comics home long before they were fashionable.  When my uncle left to study in the UK, he locked them up in a huge box with a don't-mess-with-me padlock.  So I took a crowbar to it.  When he came home, he must've been horrified.  But he must've loved me more than he loved his comics because he didn't take me apart.  Oh well, I was only about 7 or 8 then.

The NTT came into my life when I was around 11 years old.  I walked into a sundry shop and saw a green-skinned superhero character on a cover.  As far as I knew, the only green-skinned cutie I knew was Garfield Logan from the pages of the Doom Patrol!  And that began a long-term love affair with graphic literature...

I suppose comicbooks were so important to me because I could lose myself in such fantastic worlds and such amazing situations... don't all of us need an escape hatch?  For me, school was a pretty stressful place and more so the university.  I'd recommend comicbooks anytime to anyone.  Way better than drugs, IMHO.

For me,  the best example of graphic literature ever is the Witchblade.  Michael Turner time, that is.  If Turner ever collaborates on anything with Z, Wohl, D Tron and Smith again, I wanna know.