12yr old Me and Stan Lee, John Romita, Jim Shooter and the bullpen

Just found these pics... Ok - so, when I was a kid my Dad worked for the company that owned Marvel Comics. Not only did I get just about every Marvel title free every single month - but, being a budding little artist, I got some other impossibly cool perks too.

I got to go into Manhattan and tour the offices. I was given a bunch of cool stuff - color separations for the cover of Spiderman (I think #199), some Avengers rushes, and some other stuff - but the coolest part was that I got to meet with real heroes.

Let me lay down the disclaimer - I was too much of a stupid kid to realize how fantastic this truly was, I was too concerned with not looking like a stupid kid and not concerned enough with learning everything I could. And - just as an aside - look how amazingly, impossibly, dorky I was at 12!

Anyway, the great part of this story was that it wasn't just a "Say Hello, take a picture, get out of here kid." Not at all.

Stan Lee spent at least 20 minutes with my Dad and I in his office, talking about art, about comics, telling stories about how he created various characters, giving advice.

John Romita Sr. spent at least the same amount of time at his drawing desk letting me watch him draw, talking about how he approached telling a story visually, etc. as my Dad went off and took care of some business.

Jim Shooter (who really is 4 thousand and 3 feet tall) was exceedingly nice, Mary Jo Duffy, a whole bunch of others - they all took the time out of their day to talk to me, to look at my drawings, to give me words of encouragement, to ask me what I thought of various titles and what I liked. They all told me to come back in a few years and apply for a job.

And what did I do? Nothing, I blew it. I went to college, went after the stuff other people told me I should be doing instead of doing what I knew I should be doing.

Thus proving my friend Frank's rule "Everyone is a dumbass."