This is the prologue chapter to a much longer piece on my life in and out of comics. I worked on versions of this book for nearly two years before putting it aside to write more fiction and comic books. This was written and re-written in the summers of 2007 and 2008.

In the summer of that year we lived in our cottage that looked out across the river to the islands, from the week after school let out until the day after Labor Day. We left abrubtly in August when my mother’s illness worsened. It was just the three of us at the cottage most of the time, my father arriving late Friday night and leaving after lunch on Sunday afternoons.

My father had rented a towing hitch in order to bring my mother’s car up for the summer, she no longer able to make the long trip alone, and on the way up we all sat in my father’s car and I turned around several times to watch the empty car rolling some feet behind us.

She could drive short distances for necessary trips to the grocery store, laundromat, and ice cream parlor and sometimes I drove the boat to the town docks and we shopped at the smaller grocery store on Riverside Avenue until it closed down and a restaurant that primarily served senior citizens from four to six in the afternoon opened up in it’s place.

We were very happy that summer and I did not miss my friends as much as I had the previous year, and I did not want to leave early. The need to leave came on suddenly and there wasn’t time to rent another towing hitch so my uncle who lived in the tiny city south of the river where he and my mother were born, drove hercar back to our house downstate, had a glass of water, and got back into my father’s car for the return trip.

My sister and I spent the day swimming and playing board games with our cousins and my mother spent it in bed. My father and uncle arrived late that night and only Billy and I were still awake, playing Nintendo. We drove back to our house early the next morning, and didn’t come back for the rest of that summer.

* * *

Gene Roddenberry died sometime around Columbus Day. We had to make buttons that morning in shop class, and I was secretly relieved that we didn’t have to use the saws that lay dormant under the windows at the back of the room. My button was black with white text that read, Mourning a Legend: Gene Roddenberry, followed by the dates of his birth and death.

That was the front-page headline that morning in the newspaper, a local daily with typically only two pages of news from outside the Hudson Valley. I took their dedication as a sign that many across the region shared in my loss, and therefore it would make a good button. I was always a little melodramatic, especially so at age twelve.

The shop room was big enough to feel quiet, despite the murmur of a dozen conversations. I was sitting with my friends, Chris and Joe. Joe was lost in his work, cutting out square after square of a photocopied drawing of Wolverine he had done last period in English with a few magic markers. The drawing was good, and not just for a teenager. Between Wolverine’s middle claw extended alone like a middle finger and his shit-eating grin clamped around a half chewed cigar, it was inspired. Chris wasn’t making any buttons of his own design, just pressing Joe’s for him, which gave him time to stop and admire mine.

“You must really love Star Trek,” he said.

“The new ones are ok,” Joe said without looking up.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve seen all the new ones on TV, but the originals and the movies are my favorite.”

“I think they all look like a bunch of old people in pajamas,” Chris said.

“But they’re the first you know,” I said. “They’re special.”

When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t go outside for recess on the hotter days. My mother would pick me up and bring me home for lunch so that I wouldn’t have to sit inside an empty classroom with the teacher as my sole companion. I was allowed to leave class a few minutes early and wait for her on the sidewalk alongside the chain link fence that enclosed the concrete schoolyard.

It wasn’t much of a schoolyard. The only facilities were a jungle gym built over a dirt patch, and a basketball hoop with no net. Impromptu games of tag, note passing, and rumor spreading were the most common activities, while some brave kids played dodge ball against the brick wall of the school with no rules other than the standard no head-hunting.

The older kids that didn’t play kickball in the lower courtyard, sat along the brick wall at the back of the schoolyard with their arms around each other and maybe once or twice a year one of them would summon enough courage to kiss the other, or maybe that was just what we all heard had happened.

On the late Spring days when the thermometer topped eighty, the schoolyard was silent and I’d stand with my back to it and look up and down the empty street as far right as the Church and the Village Square where the sun bounced off of the windows of cars circling the roundabout by the Library, and as far left as the crest of the hill where the street dipped down suddenly to the neighborhood below. The houses in front of the school were still, some with discarded toys strewn about their postage stamp front lawns. Waiting for her car to come around the corner was at once thrilling and lonely.

I ate my lunch downstairs in the TV room, where it was cooler. The entire room was appointed with cast-off furniture from my parents’ first apartment, and was dominated by family pictures that sat along a ledge in frames of varied size, shape, and style. I sat on the couch with the lights off, eating two sandwiches off of a TV tray with a woodland scene painted on it that had once belonged to my great-grandmother. My glass was black from the Coke inside and it would sweat and leave a pool of water on the tray that shone blue in the light from the TV. I’d watch the same two-dozen episodes that I had on tape, over and over again.

“When are you getting picked up?” Joe asked me. He was admiring the way the plastic film over his button caught the light off Wolverine’s silver adamantium claw.

“After fifth period,” I said, gathering up my pile of buttons that no one beside myself would ever want, stuffing them into my backpack.

“Did you get the new Wolverine?” Chris asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

“It’s awesome,” Joe said.

“Yeah, when he cuts down that door, and Sabretooth–”

“Don’t tell me!” I said.

“Sorry,” Chris said.

I zipped up my backpack and looked over at the clock.

“Maybe my dad will stop at the store on our way to the cottage,” I said as the bell rang. My bag already slung over my shoulder, I walked out while everyone else stopped what they were doing and began packing up.

* * *

I stood still at my locker as the hallway swelled, kids swept up against their own lockers and then pulled back into the classrooms as it emptied again. Standard Indian summer protocol was in full effect, the corridor was dark, and tall fans stood at the ends of the hallway like sentries. The only light spilled out from inside the classrooms, each with only a single row of their fluorescents glowing incandescently. I packed for my trip, emptying my bag of its schoolbooks so that only my buttons, some comic books, and my Game Boy remained. That fall, in my penultimate year of Junior High, I loved four things: comic books, my Super Nintendo, Star Trek, and Sarah Wilde. Three of them loved me back.

I peeked into the classrooms as I walked down the corridor, my less fortunate schoolmates stuck in hot rooms for the rest of a boring Friday afternoon. I was thinking about a letter I had sent Gene Roddenberry in the fifth grade. He didn’t write back, but then I didn’t expect him to, not really. But with his death came the sudden certainty that I would never receive a reply. I harbored a fantasy in which he received my letter, and moved by a young fan’s devotion to his creation, he’d invite me to the set of the next Star Trek movie, where, of course, he’d introduce me to William Shatner. Only Gene, with a little wink to Bill, would call him “Jim”, and I’d get to sit in the Captain’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. It would be the kind of story I’d still be proud of now, telling co-workers, with the necessary degree of self-deprecation, “Yeah, I met Bill Shatner once…”

I rounded the corner by the front offices of the school, where the adults worked silently behind large panes of glass. I passed the Nurse’s Office, and she looked up from her desk at me, but didn’t say hello. I wasn’t one of her favorites since I had more sick days than the other kids. She suspected that I faked a good deal of them, and she was right. I’d watch The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home back to back whenever I was home sick from school. The brown plastic cases from the video store would always be tucked into the grocery bags along with the cherry ice-pops and ginger ale that my mother always bought for me.

It was still overcast when I pushed open the front doors of the school, but I was surprised at how bright it was. I came out onto the wide concrete sidewalk that ran along the bus lane in front of the school and a blast of light and heat stung my eyes like it does when you come out of a movie theater in the middle of the afternoon. For a second I irrationally thought it was the last day of school. This moment of elation died as instantly as it came and I felt even worse than I had before. I could see my father’s van parked in the single row of spaces reserved for the teachers on the other side of the grass divider, and I trudged slowly across it.

My spirits needed lifting, and picking up the new issue of Wolverine would certainly have been a good start, however unlikely it was to get my father to diverge from our itinerary.

Some sun streaked through the clouds and my family were silhouettes behind the dull glare on the windshield. I climbed into the car and put on my seatbelt as we drove away.

“No,” he said, before I could finish asking. I reached for my backpack and took out a comic book I had put in there this morning.

* * *

We arrived in Clayton shortly after six. The sun was setting, already hung low and shining the last of its intensity on the river, painting the water white against the rocky shoreline. I caught a glimpse of it flowing under the bridge as we wound our way down the exit ramp from the interstate. Almost all of the local restaurants were seasonal, so whenever we came up on in the off-season, on either side of the summer, we’d eat at the truck stop cafeteria just on the outskirts of town.

This was something of a tradition in our family, and like all of our traditions, it went unacknowledged. We were a family that didn’t subscribe to the sentiment of traditions, but rather enjoyed both the familiarity and regularity of routine. For many years our family life seemed to run on rails as smoothly as a ride at Disneyworld, which incidentally we went to every year, always on a Wednesday, while on vacation in Florida during Easter Break.

The sky was burnt orange with striated bands of pink and purple bordering the darkening horizon when we parked the car at the edge of the lot. It had gotten windy and I shivered a bit and wished I had brought my windbreaker instead of the black denim jacket I had worn all day at school. As we walked through the parking lot, I looked across the highway at Rexall’s Pharmacy, the interior lights starting to penetrate a little further into the twilight.

Picking up a red tray from a tall stack, I began to slide it along the polished aluminum pathway, pausing every so often along the way to select a dish. Heaps of food on small paper plates sat under orange heat lamps slowly evaporating any moisture that might have once existed so many hours ago. My father had gathered his meatloaf and mashed potatoes and was at the cash register, paying for the four of us. There was no need to point us out since we were the only ones on line, but he did anyway.

I sat down across from him at the table he selected in the corner under the bay windows. The hard plastic tabletop, still moist from being wiped down, caught the last of the sunlight and bounced the rays back up at me. I squinted and shifted my body so that my father’s head blocked the glare.

My father poured salt onto his food and glanced up at me as I began to eat a dinner roll. He read my button. Apparently he hadn’t noticed it before. His face read a mixture of confusion and disappointment, but the look passed as quickly as it had arrived and I’m sure he thought I didn’t notice. He looked down at his plate and took hold of his fork, but then stopped without lifting it off the table. Then he smiled warmly at me and put his hand on my forearm, squeezing it gently. I looked up at him.

“He really created something special, didn’t he,” my father said, and I knew that he meant it.

“He did,” I said.

* * *

I couldn’t stop thinking about comic books.

Specifically I couldn’t stop thinking about the comic books across the street at Rexall’s. As usual I had finished eating first and I knew I had about fifteen minutes until they closed, so I pushed back my chair and stood up. My parents knew where I was going, but asked anyway. I was old enough to go to a store by myself, but not without a thorough interrogation first.

There weren’t many comic books to be found at the pharmacy. They didn’t even have a spinner-rack, just six or seven grouped together at the bottom of the magazine rack. And three of those were Archie’s. Though I had a soft spot for Archie and the Gang, those being the only comic books I could ever find during our aforementioned Florida vacations, but I didn’t want Archie today.

I was in the seventh grade, and I needed something that could feed both my influx of testosterone and newfound sense of drama. I still hold to this day that no one has a deeper appreciation of the finer points of comedy and tragedy than a middle-schooler.

Rexall’s did have the distinction of being one of the two retail establishments in all of Clayton that sold comic books. And anywhere I could find comic books, any comic books, held a certain kind of magic for me.

I feel I should say something about Clayton, the village where our cottage used to be. Clayton is a waterfront town on the main channel of the St. Lawrence River that is best described as quaint. Its grid of residential streets are lined with old Victorian and cape cod style houses and lasts only a few blocks from the water’s edge before hitting the river’s concrete twin, County Route 12. Along 12, as it winds north and then back south again lies the town’s only grocery store, the municipal recreation center, a laundromat, lumber and building supply, and a golf course. Clayton’s main street is on the riverfront and has several small shops that change names, themes, and owners with every season. There is a single summertime restaurant set next to the town docks where many small boats tie up, their owners dining on the outer deck all summer long. The riverfront is also home to a smaller laundromat, two ice cream shops, a hardware store, furniture store, and discount department store that sells flip-flops, pool floats, and sunscreen, while also operating a small hot dog cart on the sidewalk just outside their entrance. It is the slower, quieter, and I’ve always felt, more sincere of the summer towns in the Thousand Islands. If it were a pumpkin patch, the Great Pumpkin would vacation here. Not a premier destination for kids with short attention spans and a penchant for comic books and videogames. But I loved it anyway.

I swept through the pharmacy’s automatic doors and made my way past the corkboard aisles of cosmetics, aspirins, and cold remedies. Aisles of suntan lotions, cheap plastic toys, and baseball cards. Aisles of lawn and garden tools and another of greeting cards, until I finally reached the long wooden shelves that lined back wall stuffed with paperback thrillers, harlequin romances, crossword puzzle digests, newspapers, magazines, and finally, at the bottom, buried like all treasure is, the comic books.

I crouched down on my haunches, nearly eye level with the bottom shelf and reached out my hand to the magazines racked there.

I saw it immediately.

The colorful edge and the big cartoonish “M” of the Marvel Comics logo obscured behind copies of the latest Sports Illustrated. It had to be the new issue of Wolverine. Fate had only delayed me. I pulled out the first copy from the top of the stack, only this wasn’t Wolverine. This was something far more interesting.

I pinched the corner of the third copy from the front of the stack. Then with my other hand I selected another copy, two from the back, and held both in front of me, scrutinizing them for imperfections. I put the first one back at the bottom of the stack. It had a slightly bent upper-right corner.

I held the comic book carefully in both hands, taking in the cover. Magneto! Standing victorious over a freshly crippled Professor X. His helmet off, gray hair blowing in the wind (of space?), with his shirt torn open from battle and the X-Men lying prone like dead clay sculptures at his feet.

X-Men #2. It was truly magnificent. It promised so much. Not the first issue. That would have been beyond my wildest dreams. Finding the first issue of a new series on a newsstand would have felt like discovering a lost continent tucked behind the latest issue of Newsweek. Had I seen one, I would have bought it without question, no matter the title or the cover.

It was precisely this line of thinking that would later lead me to excitedly pluck Nomad #1 off of another newsstand. In retrospect that incident was beneficial, if only to teach me that not all first issues are classics.

I stood up carefully and rubbed the leg that had gone numb, when my mother came up behind me.

“Did you find your book?” she asked.

I turned around, mint copy in hand.

“The one you wanted to get before. Did they have it here?” she continued.

“No, but this one is even better.”

She looked up at my button, still pinned to my jacket, and gave me a different sort of look than my father had.

“Nice button,” she said, beginning to smile.

“Thanks.”

Suddenly crestfallen, she looked harder at the button. She quickly composed herself, still looking serious, but now in an exaggerated, comical way. She mimed removing imaginary pointy tips from her ears, a gesture not unlike taking off an earring only pulling up instead of down. She removed first the left, and then the right. She held the imaginary prosthetics to her heart and smiled. I smiled back at her.

“Good one,” I said.

I paid for the comic book at the register, pulling a smooth dollar out of my electric-blue velcro wallet. We walked back across the dark highway together to find my father and sister waiting in the car. I never asked her what she was thinking about when she looked at my button. I suspect it was the dates, the beginning and ending of a life spelled out in such plain and brutally definitive terms.

I fastened my seat belt and braced for a mini-lecture about taking too long at the store, but instead my father turned so that he could see all of us, and smiled, a changed man with the long miles behind him and the destination just a stone’s throw away.

“You guys ready?” he asked.

Every fall we said goodbye to the cottage and with it to summer itself. One last weekend, punctuated with melancholy. But not this one.

We pulled up to the edge of the parking lot, the new comic book on my lap barely visible in the shallow pools of light thrown off from the roadside sign. There was something special about a #2. It was a challenge. It was a quest. Not only for #1, but also for #3, #4, #5, and onward. I felt like Indiana Jones at the mouth of an ancient temple; my mind overflowing with the possibilities of what I might find next.

My father put on the turn signal and we waited to turn onto the road that would take us to the one place I ever truly called home.