In his "Deus ex Comica" series of essays, Adam Besenyodi is taking a look at the impact of comic book pop culture on a personal level, from the Marvel titles' influence on his mid-'80s preteen and early teen years to the friendships formed around the books and characters, to what it's like rediscovering that world as an adult.

    Back in the summer of 2005, my good friend Ivan and I were sitting around talking about the comics I loved as a kid -- titles like The Avengers ("Earth's Mightiest Heroes"!) and X-Men (when "Uncanny" was the only flavor available).  So Ivan dug out and loaned me his trade paperback copy of The Ultimates.

    For someone who grew up a Marvel boy in the '80s and had drifted away over the last 20 years, it was a disorienting read.  The Marvel I knew was firmly rooted in Earth 616, and here was this new Marvel Universe: something altogether modern and overly slick.  This was a reboot, and what I needed was a reinstatement.  So I finished the book and politely moved on, figuring comic books were apparently something that had passed me by when I wasn't looking and maybe belonged in my past. 

    That past is neatly packaged in what I lovingly refer to now as the "Original Collection".  It totals more than 400 Marvel comics covering 1981 to 1987, with a smattering of a few dozen that date from 1964 to 1980.  They lay dormant and bagged in two long boxes in what was the closet of my childhood bedroom at my parents' house for 19 years.  Then, in 2006, when my wife and son and I moved to our new house, my parents somewhat ceremoniously delivered the comic collection to our new address, visibly thrilled to reclaim their closet space.  And I found myself flipping through the yellowing bags over the next few months, pulling out issues whose covers are indelibly tattooed in that portion of my brain still ruled by a twelve year-old boy.

    Around the same time I was revisiting the Original Collection, Ivan and I were discussing X3 and the various story arcs the script pulled from.  This time, he jumped up and unearthed his trade paperback of the X-Men's Dark Phoenix Saga.  Now this is the Marvel loved!  I knew the story from back in the day -- I have Uncanny X-Men #136 from 1980 and Phoenix: The Untold Story from 1983 (sort of a "director's cut" of Uncanny X-Men #137) -- but had not read it in well over 20 years.  Stunned by the writing and wormholed into my past by the art, I was immediately hooked all over again and quickly devoured Days of Future Past after that. 

    While I realize I will never retire on the value of my comic book collection (which I delusionally thought as a teenager), I didn't want to go digging through my long boxes and handling all those 25 year-old comics if I didn't have to, so I boarded and rebagged them, and I started picking up trades of my original collection.  It seemed a reasonable enough approach -- I had the means to buy them, they were presented in a way that just begged to be read and reread, and I could fill in storyline holes that had eluded me as a preteen.

    I decided I wanted to revisit the origins of Venom and Spidey's black symbiote costume before heading into the theaters for Spider-Man 3 in the summer of 2007, so I picked up the Secret Wars and Spider-Man: Birth of Venom trades.  These were followed in quick succession by titles like Alpha Flight Classic, various Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller and G.I. Joe volumes, and Vision and the Scarlet Witch. 

    Up to this point, I had been purchasing my trades at Borders and Barnes & Noble, but then my wife, a huge Joss Whedon fan, read about Buffy Season Eight being published by Dark Horse and hunted down a local comic book shop to get issue one.  While the discounts the mass market stores could offer were great, it seemed worth while to also throw some money to the independent comic shops around town too.  So during this time I sought out other comic book shops in the area and started splitting my money between them and the big box stores.

    I guess it was natural that while trade tales of X-Men stories past reinitiated me into the culture, it was my old friends the Avengers who would be my gateway drug back into the contemporary universe last summer.  I cautiously dipped my toe in to the uncharted waters of more current runs with Avengers Disassembled and was completely blown away -- the present-day sensibilities of The Ultimates, but in a setting and continuity that I was comfortable in.  That led me to the House of M and Civil War trades.  I was hooked all over again.  (How could I not be?) 

    Soon, I noticed I was looking not just at the trade paperbacks in the comic book shop but also at the current titles on the shelves while picking up my wife's monthly Buffy installments.  And Civil War led me straight to the current run death of Captain America in that title and the Fallen Son limited series that followed.  From these starting points I branched out to The New Avengers (first picking up all the trades to bring me up to speed, of course), caught The Mighty Avengers just as it was booting up, and continued to follow Captain America to see where that thread would lead.  Once I started to recognize the writers I liked, I found myself seeking out their other titles -- like The Immortal Iron Fist and Thor.  And titles that were just plain fun, like X-Men First Class and Fantastic Four.

    Now I find myself back in the thick of mainstream Marvel comics with a pull bag at my favorite local comic shop.  The weekly drive there transports me back into my youth, reminding me of the heyday of the Original Collection, when comics were arriving at my family's post office box by subscription as often as I was riding my bike to the corner Lawson's convenience store to see what was new on the comic rack.  And now, like then, I still feel the thrill of unknown treasures that might be uncovered with each visit.

The Deus Ex Comica Series continues:

Part 2 - Judging a Book by its Cover

Part 3 - Ignoring Personal History

Part 4 - "Sweet Christmas!"

Part 5: Bound for Greatness

Part 6: Marvel 1985

Part 7: A Real American Hero

Part 8: It's a Sickness

Adam Besenyodi loves to talk pop culture. He is a former editor and staff writer for PopMatters, a participant in the Pop Conference and a freelance writer.

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