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We live in an amazing time, you have to admit. A time where the number one sitcom on television is a show about a group of brilliant geeks, a time when a comic book convention is a hollywood entertainment trendsetter, and a time in which a comic book movie can gain Academy Award recognition. This is our time, we geeks have the world in the palm of our hands. Sure, it may seem as though “normal society” treats us with the same disregard and flippant attitude as it always has, but within popular culture, the culture in which we thrive, we are the task masters. Subcultures before us have been influential in their decades and have still been considered by the mundanes as nothing more than pointless, adolescent phases. But our way of life and our impact can be seen all over the media and entertainment. More to the point, it is a wonderful time to be us. And even more to the point, it’s a wonderful time to be me. My favorite superhero of all time, the Green Lantern, is finally getting the treatment and respect he’s always deserved with a blockbuster summer movie and planned trilogy on the way. Comic books have reached a height of storytelling and maturity never seen before. Though not new, movies themselves have become collectable items ever since DVDs broke into the mainstream, something VHS was never able to achieve. Geek directors, writers, and actors, all only five to ten years older than us are now paving the way, creating entertainment we only used to daydream about (and they probably did, too). I never thought, in a million years, as I watched the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation run for the third time as a kid, that I would be part of such a significant subculture as this one.

I never knew why, but I always knew I was different than other kids. I had always created such intricate stories with my GI Joes, my Jurassic Park figures, and my small nation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures. There was joy and heartache, pain and despair, loss and unbridled heroism. They were just toys, but I had an imagination I was proud of, and still am today. Another talent of mine as a child, going as far back as pre-school, was that I was the only kid that seemed to remember every characters’ names from my favorite cartoons. On the playground playing Ninja Turtles, I always had to constantly remind everyone which turtle was which, a “job” which always inwardly frustrated the hell out of me. How could you not remember their names?? A concept I could never understand (and I still don’t! Come ON, they’re color-coordinated for Crom’s sake!). To me, this always seemed to set me apart form the other kids, for some reason they just didn’t seem to care as much as I did about the specifics of the Ninja Turtles.

“Caring about the specifics” is something I think is ingrained in all geeks, hell, it may even be the first sign that your kid is a geek. I’ve never met another geek who wasn’t obsessed with the specifics of something. Whether it be Jedi fighting styles, D&D rules, line for line quotations of movies and tv shows, every geek has a memory for specifics. I can’t explain it, maybe we just all like to be right all the time. We like to be the smartest guy or girl in the room, our minds and our intelligence is what separates us from the rest of conventional society that, from a man’s point of view, values strength and physical prowess as signs of superiority. If we know more, no matter how much we’re made to feel inferior, we know that we will always be more intelligent than the jackass that made us feel weak. Then, we can pity their small dinosaur brains that will eventually lead them to make decisions like “trying to moon someone while driving at the same time” or “I’m gonna drink until I puke, pass out, and crap myself (not necessarily in that order).” In any case, we care about, and we love the details.

Though I was obsessed with the NInja Turtles, GI Joe, and watched Looney Tunes religiously, at that age it wasn’t exactly something I’d describe as out of the ordinary. That was pretty much every boy I knew, I don’t think there was a single kid I knew who didn’t have a pet turtle at some point named “Michelangelo.” It wasn’t until first grade that I got my first exposure to the world of geek. I had always liked show and tell, another trait I attribute to geekyness is that I always enjoyed showing off my toys. A trait that has evolved into my display-case of a room. Comics lining every shelf, boxed action figures hanging from the thumbtacks that hold up the various movie posters that adorn the walls. My dvd shelf in full view for all to see and admire. I like people to know that I like things…a lot of things. But on one fateful day my friend Rich brought in a bunch of toys I had never seen before. Toys so different, interesting, and jut plain awesome, I had to know what they were! As he showed and telled them one by one, he said they were a team, a team of people with super powers that called themselves the “X-Men.” I was sold. Then and there, I had to know more about these ex-men and why they weren’t already teaming up with my Turtles to take down the Technodrome. This was the catalyst that started my love affair with superheroes, with comics, and would have me creating and writing my own superheroes for the rest of my life. The X-Men were my gateway drug into the world of comic books, and it didn’t help that with any one of the original X-Men figures you received a free issue of X-Men #1 (you all know the one I’m talking about, probably the most iconic cover of our generation!). I will always remember that cover art, Jim Lee’s classic ’90’s X-Men costumes, and the feeling that I had no idea what was going on as I read it, but it didn’t matter because “that guy has metal claws coming out of his hands ohmygodthat’ssofreakingawesome!!” They had me. From there on I sporadically collected X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, anything with big damn “X” in it. All eventually leading me to Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Punisher, the list goes on. The early nineties is best known, comic book-wise, as a time of big guns, big muscles, and embarrassing sexism. I credit that all due the new “dark and edgy” tone created by DC Comics in the eighties. As insane I was into Marvel, I had little interest in DC, even though I was slowly becoming a huge fan of Batman thanks to the Animated Series and the Tim Burton film adaptations, it wasn’t until I discovered the Green Lantern that I truly became a “DC man.” But the most important aspect of collecting comics, and memories I still treasure, are the few that I made with my father.

After the age of ten, my relationship with my father was all but non-existent. He was a closed off man emotionally, and a secret alcoholic. My parents stayed together to keep us living comfortably (and in a house), and so I was not part of a “normal” family growing up. I don’t know how, but I managed to come out incredibly well adjusted and emotionally intelligent for the house I grew up in. My parents didn’t speak, but there was no fighting, no violence, it was just kind of separate. I had a close relationship with my mother, we shared the same wry sense of humor, and we were both artistic. I was always sensitive and introspective for my age, I liked writing and drawing, TV and movies. I had no interest in sports of any kind, and I was never a stereotypical boy who liked cars, competition, or building stuff. As I grew older and older I was interested in those things even less so, just adding to the distance between my father and I until it was as big as the Grand Canyon. But what is strange is that ultimately, when it comes right to it, my geekyness is something I have always attributed to my dad. Every so often he took me to a comic book store and let me buy any few comics I wanted. He’d wait patiently and follow me around the comic book store as I scrolled through the back issue bins, of which I was endlessly enthralled with. I didn’t seem to know at the time that new issues were coming out every week, so the back issue bins were where my comic book education began, all on my own. It’s funny now, as I look back, and think about this little eight year-old standing on his tip-toes flipping through the back issues looking for part two of Maximum Carnage, or some issue of X-Force with a cover that captured my attention just right. But what’s really odd to me is that my dad was there the whole time, watching me rummage and squeeze between the adults. It’s a connection, or a caring I wish he hadn’t let go of as I got older. An involvement in my life and the things I loved that he would never attempt again in my teenage years. He seemed to encourage my comic love and I’m thankful that he did, that he took me to those comic book stores, because that was something completely out of character for him. My mom, my grandma, they would always be the ones to buy me an action figure, to take me to the movies, but my dad was never a part of that. Maybe he thought that my affections shouldn’t be bought with comic books and toys, but what meant most to me wasn’t that he got me these things, but that he was a part of it. A concept I don’t think he would ever understand.

My unlabeled geekyness continued to thrive as second digits creeped onto my age. The X-Men cartoon came on the air providing a more mature animated show I had never encountered before besides Bruce Timm’s Batman The Animated Series, which still never “killed” off one of its main characters in the very first episode like X-Men did! X-Men was pretty much my life and the best part was I didn’t have to get someone to buy me the comics to enjoy them. I had grown beyond action figures and now liked to act my stories out privately playing alone, having epic adventures in the backyard or in my room. I had fewer friends by this time, growing more different as I got older, and by extension less “cool.” No one quite shared the same imagination or enthrallment with movies and TV, my comic love would take a backseat until I became a regular weekly collector in my mid-teens. Then, as fate would have it, somewhere between ages 11 and 12 a defining moment of my short little life had come to pass. Once again my father would be there to offer me another badge to add to my growing geek credentials.

It was a day on the weekend, of that much I’m sure, it was closer to dusk than it was to the afternoon and my dad was watching a movie on TV. I had no idea what was going on, who these people were, but something about it was just…confusing as hell. A spaceship had just been hit by some kind of swirly ribbon thing. A man had gone to help save the ship, but when the ribbon hit the ship, he wasn’t responding to their calls. The other characters went to find him but all they found was a hole in the ship. And they were sad about it. Then, suddenly, we were on a boat, a ship, new characters wearing old 17th century uniforms and they were making some big guy with a weird nose and forehead walk a plank. But everyone was happy, and he didn’t seem to be in trouble. I remember being so confused as to why they were going to kill this man who seemed to be their friend. The plank then disappeared and the man fell into the water. At this point I was lost more than I was before, yet I was completely intrigued. Then it got even worse! Suddenly they also were on a spaceship! I had never been so confused in all my life. My dad tried to explain that they were in something called a “holodeck” which honestly, just confused me more. As the movie went on I had more and more questions. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”, “is he a robot?”, “who’s Captain Kirk?”. This was my introduction to the universe of Star Trek. Though, Star Trek: Generations is regarded as a failure and a subpar Trek movie, it will always have a special place in my heart as my first real, interested, taste of Star Trek. It’s how I first met the TNG crew, and even got a small introduction to the original series crew (namely Chekov, Scotty, and Kirk). After that, my life would never really be the same. I had to watch the show, of which I then taped every episode and would marathon constantly. I got the action figures, read the episode guides, alien guides, and any other Star Trek inspired guide that was out there. My dad really seemed to enjoy and bond with me over Star Trek. I felt like I had gotten some kind of approval in my dad’s eyes, that we were alike in some way that he had given up on years ago. By year’s end I was a full fledged trekkie (trekker, i really don’t care how you label it, I just love Star Trek to a scary degree alright?) and even better, Star Trek: First Contact was soon on its way to theaters. Going to see it on opening night, only my dad and I, would be the last time I went to the movies with him, and the last significant moment I would share with him until I was 14 when he would once again introduce me to another geek masterpiece, Babylon 5. Ultimately, it would be my last, really great memory of my dad and I together, as father and son. Staring up into the night’s clear, starry night sky as we drove home from the theater I was happy, and I knew he was happy too.

[Editor's Note:  The image used for this Feature can be found on a product from Shirt.Woot.com.]