When I was younger, I shared a room with my older brother and my younger brother. They had received comics of all the X-men for a holiday of some sort. I’m sure it was Christmas and my uncle had brought my brother’s comic books while I got the stereotypical princess things.  My brothers had read them on the exceedingly rare occasion they were grounded but I spent a lot of my free time in between homework and sleeping, just reading these comics, and being invested in the lives of these fictional characters. I loved the art styles and how much I wanted to create comics because of this.

  After reading all these comic books in the house, I moved on to my brother’s Diary of a wimpy kid collection and finished the whole series in two months. I spent every waking moment just reading comics and other comics I found around my classrooms until a teacher told me about graphic novels existing and I felt like even more of this world opened for me and I read many books and comics and even branched out to different genres. I fell into books so hard it was like a full 180 from my life before. I had originally drawn occasionally, but after finding comics I had drawn constantly, on homework and classwork, it became more of an unconscious change and changed my life.

It inspired me to go to the library a couple blocks from my house and I often checked books on all kinds of topics, like Greek mythology and science fiction/ non-fiction, as well as history. I had dedicated so much time to reading that I learned anatomy through comics and even manga.

Comic books were my beginning, and I will never forget it. I draw constantly wanting to connect to someone like stan lee does in his works. Being able to bring a drawing to life and teach a younger generation what means to be strong despite fear

 My high school teachers often encouraged me to draw for most of my assignments to help me understand certain things better. I am able to recite many unknown facts about stan Lee’s characters and the history behind them. I am a nerd and I love how that fact made me who I am. I feel confident knowing my jump into reading started with something that held my interest compared to boring old chapter books.

Ps. The movies though they don’t follow the comics and aren’t the best adaptation of Marvel, I love and will die for these actors

[ the Marvel collectibles that I love to death and was given to by a teacher of mine]