I never actually read super hero comics when I was a young kid– I was too busy reading stuff like Scrooge McDuck comics, or Calvin & Hobbes compilation books. I did watch the early Superman and Batman movies quite a bit, though, and I enjoyed them as most kids probably did, buuuut my first real comic-characters-fangirling can be attributed to my friends in, oh, 8th/9th grade or so, who introduced me to X-Men.

The movie was coming out right about this time and there was a Saturday morning X-Men cartoon that I started watching and all in all it was a great time to get into it. Beast was my favorite. I mean, seriously, a big blue fuzzy guy quoting Shakespeare. You can’t NOT love him. Then I got into Wolvie and Nightcrawler and finally, the ever-so-drool-worthy Gambit.

(As an aside, I just found “Steampunk Gambit” on Google Images, and the Fangirl Senses are off the chart. Anyways, moving on:)

There was one thing that was possibly cuter than Gambit, and that was Gambit/Rogue…

…because I’m a hopeless romantic and I was a 15 year old girl who liked to daydream about guys in trenchcoats. (Hmm, some things never change, do they… *cough*)

Gambit/Rogue is still one of my OTPs by the way, up there with Locke/Celes, Cloud/Aeris, House/Cameron (shut up), and ahhh, err… uh… Khadgar/Medivh. >_> Aaaaaanyways…

Then I got to about the end of high school and suddenly I fell in love with Spider-Man.

Spidey was appealing on a multitude of levels. First of all, he was a giant geek. Like me. Secondly, he was socially awkward. Like me. Lastly, the movie reboot made him exactly my age. In the movie, he was graduating high school the same year I was. I know it’s just a silly little detail, but it really sort of helped me to identify with him.

This picture says it all, really. Courtesy Kizer180 @ DeviantArt.

The Spider-Man myth was plausible to me in a way that other super heroes thus far hadn’t been (well, if you can get past the whole radioactive spider thing.) Peter Parker was just a normal kid with normal kid problems, who happened to become a web-slinging manifestation of awesome. I ate it up. He was my fave super hero for a while.

Then…

…

…then came the “cool exec with a heart of steel”:

IRON MAN.

So, let’s talk about Tony Stark for a minute. Let’s see here:

• Brilliant
• Handsome
• Rich
• Builds robots and robot suits in his basement

Yeah, um, what’s not to love?

The “brilliant” bit is the most important part, though. In a modern world where science and technology are built on the backs of huge teams of people, Tony Stark built something awesome “IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!” and that’s just hot. He, with his suit, represents the lone inventor changing the world– the one person making a difference– the individual guy inside the technology. I could probably write an essay on it, really, and get all philosophical, but ultimately it just comes down to Sheer Awesomeness.

Also, last night I had a dream that I went to Stark Industries and Tony Stark was showing me around and WHO ME, FANGIRL?

…man. I just wanna shake Stan Lee’s hand. Don’t you?