And complaining right off the bat!

Hey I resemble that remark!

Welcome Paradox, don't mind all the cats, it's Dan B's fault (it's always his fault btw, or mine, whichever is more convenient at the time). 

-M

Well, it's about freakin' time!

Cei-U!
I summon my long-lost psychic twin!

Good to see you here Paradox!

I'm not sure we have a single Doc here, much less a pair of Docs.  

Ooooooohhhhhhhh -- we have a high roller here. I've only ever owned knock-offs.

Oh, wait, I forgot, my "hi" post got folded into here. I guess I should make a real introduction.

Steven Pott, hotel night auditor and general hermit slacker from Kalamazoo MI (exactly halfway between Detroit and Chicago).

My first exposure to comics was in 1964 when I was four. The first two I read were Adventure #323 and X-Men #6, both out of grandma's big box of "sit down and shut up" comics she had for the kids, a place I would frequently revisit and, twenty years later, inherit.



I was hooked. Soon I was scrounging for deposit bottles and refusing my sister's offer of a dime to run to the store for her, insisting on 12 cents! I didn't have any real preferences at that time, which was a treasure trove of diversity. I loved super-heroes and westerns and war and funny animals and Marvel and DC and Dell and Harvey. I loved STORIES! The months when I'd already bought what I really wanted off the racks, I'd occasionally get a romance book. What the heck, they were stories.

I bought as steadily as distribution in those days would let me and with the advent of comic shops in the '80s was buying everything I could get my hands on. Big fan of that era, the Bronze Age, the Indy Explosion, and the promise (however unfilled) of the more adult trends (the real ones, not bewbs and swears) that came with the "British Invasion".

Various factors, among them dissatisfaction with the stuff leading up to the "Dark Age" '90s turn, had me dropping out for almost a decade. Of all things what sucked me back in was seeing a copy of DC vs Marvel. And THEN I bought Heroes Reborn. All of it. All 13 issues of all four series. It is a shame I cannot live down.

Acquiring an internet connection in '97 changed everything for me. My whole life, I'd rarely had anyone to talk comics with, and here were TONS! I quickly ingratiated myself into CBR, where I met many people here, and at Alvaro's Midtown Message Boards (now comicboards.com). I ended up moderating several boards at each place along the way, eventually opening my own "place", The Island of Misfit Comic Message Boards (now Second-String Sanctuary), featuring characters and boards the other two places passed on hosting. I burned myself out on "running things", though, and a bit more than a year later ended up resigning and turning things over to others. I got sick of going to "work" on the internet, and made it fun again.

Various attitude and storyline turns at the Big Two along with financial problems had me give it all up cold turkey in 2006. I'm a comic junkie. I cannot go into a comic store. One is too many and a hundred aren't enough.

I have a life-long love of Avengers and the Legion of Super-Heroes and am most well-versed in Bronze Age stuff, particularly the late '70s to the mid-'80s. Once I quit, I got my super-hero ya-yas out in MMOs, first in the late, great City of Heroes, and now at Champions Online (see siggy).

Cei-U once quoted me in his signature "I am, however, a condescending ass sometimes, but I usually mean to be."