Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Early Geek Memories: X-Men

I love thinking back on different things that have shaped me, especially geeky things because I think they've given me some character. 

I thought it might be fun to do a little feature on here every once in a while about the my geeky memories from when I was a little one.  I have a terrible memory when it comes to most things, but these things are the memories that stick with me.



My springboard into geekdom was a wonderful band of mutants known as the X-Men.  I remember waking up on Saturday mornings and watching the cartoon with my brother, or begging my parents to take us to Pizza Hut so we could get the VHS tapes with our meal. 

That show was one of my favorites, and that's where I met one of my favorite superheroes ever in Storm.  I absolutely loved her, and still do.  In fact, the 90's version of Storm is far and away my favorite version.  With her giant hair and her bat wing cape, she was just the most badass woman I'd ever seen.  On a small side note, I also thought her name was Oreo, and I liked Oreo's... so that might have had a little something to do with it.

I also really liked Phoenix, although I don't remember if they got into that in the cartoon or if that was a character I learned about when I stole random comic books from my brother.  Oddly enough, I didn't like Jean Gray at all, probably because I hated Cyclops, but Phoenix was my girl. 

I also remember getting really into the X-Men trading cards around 4th or 5th grade.  There was a guy in my class that collected them too, so we would trade.  I would sit down at my desk in my room and try to draw them and fail miserably.  The cards were so stylized and for someone with minimal drawing skills, it didn't work out well.  I enjoyed getting them though because I would learn all about different characters.  By the time I was getting these cards, my brother had stopped reading the comics and I didn't know a lot of the characters so I felt like this was an extension of the comics in a way.

The Sega Genesis X-Men game was one of my absolute favorite video games to play, even though I could never beat it.  I loved being Nightcrawler and would always wait until I absolutely had to be Cyclops (because he is the worst).  I remember going to the Putt Putt mini golf arcade and spending a lot of time playing the X-Men arcade game as well.  I think I was able to actually play as Storm and I loved that, whereas in the Sega game you could only use her sporadically. 

When my parents and I moved down to New Jersey from Buffalo, NY, it was a really difficult transition for me.  I was really excited to have the X-Men movie come out that summer, though.  It was nice to have something familiar to go to when I was in such an unfamiliar place.  I remember my mom taking me and I just loved it.  Now that I look back on the movie, I really only liked Hugh Jackman, but at the time it was what I needed.

Now I still count myself as an X-Men fan.  I'm enjoying reading the X-Men '92 comic and look forward to the reboot where Storm is in charge like she should be. 

Share with me some of your early geeky memories!  If you have a blog, write a post about it and share the link with me in the comments so I can read it.  If not, tell me all about it in the comments below.  It's fun to trace back when your wonderful geekiness began! Don't miss anything! 

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