Yesterday, I went to see The Avengers with my brother, Sean.  I loved it… and it sent me on a trip down memory lane to this, the comic book that means the most to me:

This is not a comic book that will mean a lot to you — it’s just another comic book from the 70s with a sweet Jack Kirby cover… but it represents a lot to me.  There are memories tied to it…

When I was four or five years old, I had a LOT of comics and comic-related things.  A Spidey doll!  Shirts!  Blankets!  Toys!  Some of those comics had belonged to my dad and grandpa (and would’ve been worth a nice amount if they’d survived… but I digress.)  There was a lot of stuff there.

And it went up in a fire.  Gone.  History.  We moved in with my grandparents, who lived just a short hop away, across a field, as my dad, uncle, and grandpa remodeled the garage into a small house.  I found scraps of my possessions  – a piece of a sheet, a corner of a book – for months afterward, littered around the hill behind the place we lived.  It was depressing.

But there were still comics.  My grandpa had a stash, see, comics I would go over and read… there was Spidey and The Defenders and Batman and Cap… plenty of stuff to look at when I was visiting.  Now that we were living there, the books helped me cope.

And Avengers Annual #6 was, somehow, my favorite.  Maybe it was the cover.  Or the chaptered format… I knew Captain America, but Iron Man? The Beast?  The Vision? No.  It was fascinating to read.  And it was the first comic book given to me to keep.

As such, it always evokes strong memories – the loss of everything, the building/remodeling of a new home, and staying with my grandparents (I miss grampa terribly).  There was a lot to process for a little mind, and I was grateful that the Avengers were there to distract me.  I’ve kept that comic for thirty or so odd years.  Through moves upon moves — it’s tattered and beaten and no longer in one piece.  Most of the backup feature with the Vision is long gone.  This book, my first new possession, before I even got clothes to replace the ones that had gone up in flames, was a floppy little piece of hope.

It’s in a box somewhere, hiding.  But I still have it.  It’s still mine.

A few years ago, Marvel put out some nice reprints for sale at Target.  I flipped through one and found the Nuklo story that made up the feature of Avengers Annual #6.

I kinda choked up right there, in the store.  All of those long-gone memories came rushing back — and I was a small kid again and the story was in my hands.  Of course I bought it.  It may not be the original, but I still have an attachment to it.

Again, all of this pretty much came flooding to mind as the end credits rolled on Avengers, and hey, I can always use a new blog post, even if it’s sappy.

Thanks for dropping by!