Becoming All-New, All-Different

I am 13. School is out. Eighth grade. I don’t like school. I weigh 230 pounds, have few friends, and have to pretend that everything the other kids say to me doesn’t hurt. But everything the other kids say to me hurts. And it is after school, and my mother is a teacher at this school and can’t leave for an hour, and she gives me $2 and tells me to get a snack or something. A K-Mart is nearby, close enough to walk to, and I walk to the K-Mart, but I do not buy anything in the K-Mart. Instead, I go into a small bookstore. I didn’t think I could buy much with my $2. Maybe a magazine.

I am looking at the magazines, and I am not looking at the magazines because I am looking at a comic book, Uncanny X-Men 273, and I am not looking at a comic book, Uncanny X-Men 273, but I am looking at one person on this comic book, a big-breasted redhead in a tight jumpsuit-costume, and her eyes are wide, and behind her are several men – they’re attractive too – and someone is urging these people to come with her to save someone named Professor X.

I have read comic books before, but I do not read comic books now, but this comic book, Uncanny X-Men 273, is unlike any comic book I’ve read before, and I buy this comic book – only $1.06, with tax – and I take home this comic book and I read this comic book and I read this comic book and I read this comic book and I have never read anything quite like this comic book before and I do not know these characters and I do not know their intricately plotted backstories and I want to know these characters and their intricately plotted backstories and I read this comic and I read this comic and I read this comic.

Jean Grey. She’s the big-breasted redhead in a tight jumpsuit-costume with the wide eyes. She has an on-again, off-again flirtation with death, and with a man, Scott Summers, and with another man, Logan, and she has been cloned and reincarnated and possessed and depowered and she is a big-breasted redhead in a tight jumpsuit-costume with wide eyes and I want to be the reason her eyes are wide, and I want to see what is under her jumpsuit-costume and I am in love.

Will Henderson as Cyclops

My collection slowly swells, as does my knowledge of this world in which Jean Grey lives. From Uncanny X-Men 273, I am led to X-Factor and to the New Mutants and to Excalibur (where I again fall in love with Kitty Pryde and her pet dragon, Lockheed; and then I fall in love with Rachel Summers, Phoenix, who is the daughter of an alternate-universe Jean Grey and Scott Summers, but I do not know this information when I fall in love with Rachel Summers, Phoenix) and to Wolverine (but I do not like his solo title, so I do not collect it).

These people – mutants – had powers the likes of which I coveted. I wanted to be a mutant. I felt like a mutant. There is a mutant who looks like I looked at the time. Blob, once known as The Blob. He’s typically been a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Wanda Maximoff, The Scarlet Witch, daughter of Magneto, sister to Quicksilver, Pietro Maximoff, whispered the words: No More Mutants, and Blob, once known as The Blob, lost what made him a mutant, his weight. But he was stuck with the skin in which he had lived. Poor Blob. But I understood. And because I understood, I did not like Blob, once known as The Blob.

Confession: I lost a lot of weight during my sophomore year of high school. 110 pounds. I lived inside miles of extra, stretched-out skin. And then I had several surgeries to cut away this skin, and shrink the home in which I inhabited. I have a scar. It’s big and red and raw and ugly, and I have to explain this scar to each man with whom I am naked, and I sometimes lie about the scar’s origins, and I sometimes tell the truth, and I am more than sometimes happy that the skin is gone, though I sacrificed ever building a six-pack.

Another confession: When I was seven, I had red and yellow underwear. I do not know why I had red and yellow underwear, or why I remember this specific underwear (maybe because it was red and yellow?), and I would wear this underwear under pants, and I would slide down slides, head first, arms outstretched, and I would hope that each time I would get to the bottom of the slide and I would somehow start flying. I thought the red-and-yellow underwear made me like Wonder Woman.

I only needed 26 more years before fully coming out.

My parents – my dad, mostly, who has collected sports cards and sports memorabilia since he was a child – bought me some of the more expensive issues of X-Men at holidays. One Easter, I got Uncanny X-Men 210 and 211, the first two issues of the Uncanny X-Men’s part in the Mutant Massacre crossover. I think the two comic books cost $30. Maybe a bit less. I treated these issues like they were gold. I read them once, barely opened the cover, and, after reading them, sealed them in polybags that also contained cardboard backers so that the comics would remain rigid.

I collected comic books until I graduated from high school. At the time, my collection began with Uncanny X-Men 150, and went forward, sweeping with it every mutant title and issue released since that specific issue. Finding the issues I was missing took time and effort. I’d troll different comic book shops, and look for the issues I kept on a mental list. I knew what I needed. I knew the holes to fill. My collection filled four longboxes. I knew the history of these characters, and their backstories, but I was going to college. I had neither the money nor the time to continue collecting.

I didn’t miss it. I thought about the characters, and, occasionally, while waiting in lines at grocery stories, I would flip through an issue and wonder who the new characters were and what had happened with Jean Grey.

After Holly – the mother of my children (I am trying not to use the phrase my-wife-who-will-one-day-be-my-ex-wife because I am tired of this phrase) – and I moved to Bremerton, Washington, and had “real jobs,” I returned to collecting. Now, collecting was easy. I could order what I needed from online retailers. Each month, I picked one title and bought the issues I had missed while I was in college. Holly didn’t understand why, but she didn’t mind. We had just started a joint checking account, but I rationalized that I made more, so I could spend a little more on things that were not necessary.

Buying the original issues of the Dark Phoenix Saga (Uncanny X-Men 129 to 138, basically) was a milestone, as was buying Giant-Size X-Men 1. That’s where I stopped. I have reprints of some of the original series, but I’m happy that my collection begins with Giant-Size X-Men 1 and sweeps forward. My collections fills 11 longboxes now, and includes every issue of a Marvel comic in which a mutant appears.

I’ve met several artists and writers who shephered the X-Men, including Chris Claremont and Jim Lee, the writer and artist responsible for Uncanny X-Men 273. They separately signed this comic book, that I bought for $1.06 after school one afternoon, and I told them that this comic book was my first comic book, and that you never forget your first time, and they were gracious (Lee more so than Claremont), and I’m sure they hear stories like mine all the time, but telling them the story of this comic book was like giving my 13-year-old self a much-needed hug. In comic-book speak, I was very much a fanboy.

I stopped buying new comic books last summer. My world was coming undone, I was coming undone, and I didn’t have the time to invest with these characters and I did not like not having the time to invest with these characters, and so I stopped buying comic books. I haven’t missed them, except when I miss them, and I often look inside the closet where I store my comic books and wonder if I will return to the X-Men and to Jean Grey – oh, she’s dead, again, and has been for some time; maybe she’ll never come back, but I expect she will, one day) and I think I will return to the X-Men and to Jean Grey because the world of the X-Men was a world I very much wanted to inhabit, and then I inhabited, and even when I abandoned it for a while, I was able to return, no questions asked.

I suppose you could say – or I suppose I will say – that these comic books helped shape my origin story, and I will return to the world from which I was spawned (Spawn, an Image title I collected for a while, then sold, when I needed some money), and I will be shown around, and asked to stay a while, have a drink, smoke a cigar with Logan (and I will say no thank you; cancer kills), and I will know that I am welcomed back because these characters will welcome me back.

Which is how I wish life was. Take a break. Remove yourself. Stop talking. Break apart. Go separate ways. Gain new powers. Lose powers. Switch teams (ha!). Return to the fold. Reconnect. Grow wings. Love. Don’t love. Get married. Honeymoon in an alternate future. Have a son, and a daughter, but in these alternate futures. Lose wings. Fly. Don’t fly. Read minds. Harvest the energy of the sun. Transform into werewolves and demon bears. Wield a magic sword. Care for a pet dragon. Teleport.

Be wonderstruck.

Be wonder.

Be uncanny.