[Adventure 247]

Hello!

As some of you can probably tell from my user name, the first comic book in which the Legion of Super-Heroes appeared, I am a big BIG BIG Legion fan.  Of course, the Legion began during the Silver Age, and this is a Golden Age board...  So why the monicker? I have always been a Legion fan who also read other comics instead of a comic fan who read the Legion, and I do many nerdy things involving the number 247 as if it were my lucky number...  My user name is accurate.

But...

I also love many Golden Age heroes whose adventures took place before I was born--especially the various members of the Marvel Family, Kid Eternity, and Crimebuster.

And Archie--any era.

A little more about me...  I was born in 1965, and my father introduced me to comics in 1973.  (He bought them for me so HE could read them...  Hee hee.)  His favorites were always the various Fawcett Marvels, Dr. Fate, The Spectre, and the golden age Flash.  Alas, he came home one day from college in the early 50s to discover that his mother had thrown away a stash that had included almost every issue of All Star Comics and many WW II Fawcetts.  A neat freak then as now, he had kept them in almost perfect condition, too.  "That would have been my retirement money," he says.

I never cared much for The Spectre or Dr. Fate, although I did like Jay Garrick/Flash.  However, Dad and I definitely agreed on the Marvels.  I have all the 40s Captain Marvel stories reprinted in the 70s plus some ratty old Fawcetts I picked up cheap on eBay and elsewhere.  I have also spent far more than I should have buying the Shazam!, Shazam! Family, and Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, among others.  Simply can't get enough...

I hope to get my own scanner in the next few months, and perhaps then I can write a list of what I have (and can scan).  At the moment, though, I am just a greedy downloader.

Just before the turn of the century I penned two long articles, one on Saturn Girl and one on the 60s JLA/JSA team-ups; Comic Book Marketplace published both.  I had plans to write about the Marvels, That Wilkin Boy, and a few other items, but suddenly the magazine was bought by someone else, and he did not want to deal with any of the 'old' writers.  This is ironic considering that I had only been around for six months or so and was hardly an 'old' CBM writer...  Oh, well.  

I had never enjoyed writing anything so much.  As an academic, I write texts that no one will ever read with much pleasure; in contrast, I put my heart into my comic book articles and received a lot of positive feedback.  I hope to write that sort of thing again one day.  

One nice story: The day I received a copy of the CBM in which the JLA/JSA story appeared, my Dad was in the hospital recovering from heart surgery.  I brought the magazine with me to show him, and he was so proud that his son was writing about his[/u] super-heroes that he showed everyone (even his surgeon).  I think it actually played a part in his recovery.

Finally, I am not one of those fans who thinks only the old stuff/pre-Crisis stuff/pre-Winick stuff or whatever is good.  You'll never convince me that the modern incarnations are better than the classic ones, but you will also never convince me that there are no good comics in the 21st century.

I hope to hear from you.

Take care,

Mark A.J.

[citaltras]

This is the best topic I have ever read.
What can i say?
Welcome. I also was born in 65.

[Adventure 247]

What a cool reply!  Thank you, citaltras. 

I assume that your avatar shows your picture...  I was originally going to use something Captain Marvelish in mine, but I'll put my mug there instead.  This way people will know who they're talking to.

The photo is from mid-2005, just before my digital camera, the only one I had ever owned, broke.  I have recently bought a new one, but I have yet to learn to use it.  Except for some photos of me in the classroom taken by my students, what you see in the avatar is the most recent digital photo I have.  The only change since then is my having grown long sideburns.

[citaltras]

Adventure:

Sorry but my avatar is just a picture of Bruce Campbell, the former Sam Raimi's  hero.
I choosed it from the several hosted in the forum. Instead  I use glasses and are an academic like you (although a physicist)

Citaltras

[Adventure 247]

One of the first things I always tell my students...

I you are good in math and science, I respect you.  I am not good in either.  (That usually breaks the ice with many of the math/science people terrified of English as a Second Language.)  Throughout the semester, I tell many jokes about my lack of ability in math--and sometimes it just comes out naturally (such as when I divide students into groups and miscount).  I never want them to be afraid of making mistakes, and for that reason I highlight mine.

Physics!  Wow!  I still remember trying to studying for the required physics class all of us liberal arts types had to take in college...  That is why I know terror well. 

My sister will never let me forget my reponse on a biology test when I was 14 or 15; I share this with my students as well.

Question: What are the four chemical bases found in DNA?

My answer: hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen

[Aratak]

Gotta love the Legion of  Super Heroes. I've spent a substantial amount of time and effort organizing both my paper Legion collection and my scans of the Legion. I'm lucky enough to own most of the Adventure appearances (yeah, I'm a tad older than you are, Mark - born in 1957), but what an amazing pain it's been keeping track of volume numbers as I've filled in the various sets over the years. Having the reprint/baxter paper series skipping about at the same time, not to mention the various Superboy re-namings to contend with has made collection LSH only slightly less difficult than keeping track of old Classics Illustrated (what with all their reprintings).

I'm also an English teacher, by the way. What level kids are you a'learnin'? (I am down South, after all! ) I teach English IV, AP Lit, and Intensive Reading for senior kids.

Incidentally, Citraltas - I just wanna know if you gave Mark a +1 Karma since he thought you were the handsome Bruce Campbell? Just checkin'! 

[citaltras]

Incidentally, Citraltas - I just wanna know if you gave Mark a +1 Karma since he thought you were the handsome Bruce Campbell? Just checkin'! 

Aratak: quite right... you got it! 
But who knows really?  Bruce could still be around here right now...


Citaltras

[Adventure 247]

Hey!

Thanks for the Karma, although I am afraid I have yet to look up how that works.  Heck, I have not even checked how to start downloading from here.

Sorry, but I don't know Bruce Campbell at all.  I looked him up on Wikipedia, and the only Campbell films I have ever seen are Spider-Man 1 and 2, neither of which casts him in a memorable role.

Legion...

Legion downloads!!!???!!!???!!!???!!!  Where me get???

The first time I read a Legion comic, I hated it.  (It was one of the few bad early Superboy/Legions...  The one that startes with Superboy and Timber Wolf playing chess.)  About a year later I read a really good Superboy/Legion at a friend's house and was hooked.  There is just no other comic like it, in my opinion.

I have all of their appearances from 1958 through the early 90s, something that took many years for me to assemble.  From the mid-60s on, all the books are in fine or better condition.  Before that...  Well, they are what I could afford.  Adventure 247 is only in fair condition and is missing the first page, but I bought a cheap reprint and removed its first page so my copy would be 'complete' (in a manner of speaking).  I have every issue of the Legion mother books from the early 90s to 2004, but not all guest appearances.  In 2004 I stopped reading the Legion, as I had not been enjoying it for a while.

Teaching...

Although I started my life as a New York City public junior high school teacher and lived to tell about it...   I have taught university-level ESL (English as a Second Language) since 1994.  Because I include creativity and as much student participation/as many learning games as possible, I am allowed to teach graduate courses (ESL students in many disciplines who already speak English well but need to bring up their level quickly) and speech (grad and undergrad) in addition to standard ESL undergrad courses. 

This semester I created a creative writing class for intermediate-level undergrads, something that is supposed to be impossible because of their level.  We're having a fun time with poetry, short fiction, short autobiographical pieces, and short expository pieces--no thesis statements or topic sentences allowed.  There are fourteen students in this class: one Taiwanese, two Japanese, one Spaniard, one Italian, and nine Koreans.  Most are in the typical undergraduate age range, but there are also two students in their late twenties/early thirties and one senior citizen who is himself a retired professor of photography.  It took a while for them to get used to the idea of photocopying their work for the class, sitting in a circle, listening to an author read his or her work aloud, and then commenting on it without prompts from me; all that goes against many of my students' cultural training.  (Don't even get me started on getting them to call me by my first name...)  Now, however, they look forward to classes when we form a circle instead of reading, say, Maya Angelou or Amy Tan.

[Adventure 247]

Hey, citaltras!

I have tried to return you private message twice, but for some reason it will not work.

I thus say here: Many, many thanks!