The Comic Book Kid

I feel like I’m rediscovering all kinds of hidden gems as I go through my immediate family’s old photos. And now there’s this. I swear if I had remembered this picture existed three years ago, it would be somewhere on the cover of my book Deus ex Comica: The Rebirth of a Comic Book Fan! I had completely forgotten that my mom had made this for me. And, embarrassingly, I have no idea where it might be today. (Sorry, Mom.) But, man, how awesome is this?!

Christmas morning, 1984. I’m 14 years old and deep into comic reading and collecting. I didn’t ask for this, but I remember my mom doing a lot of this kind of chicken scratch embroidery. (We had a table runner made of the same brown gingham at the time.) Mom had left a loop at the top, and Dad got me a dowel rod to slip through to hang it in my room, where it resided for quite a few years after this.

When Tracy and I cleaned and purged in our basement last summer, this was not among my stuff. Think this might call for an excursion into my parents’ basement and my childhood closet to see if it can be located, and then I can properly pass the mantle of “The Comic Book Kid” on to my kiddo.