I first started reading comic books when I was old enough to read back in the dark ages of the sixties. My first recollection of owning my very first comic book was when my Dad took me to the paper shop on the corner near where we lived, can’t remember what for but I came back with an issue of the Flash. Mum and Dad had a heated conversation over the material I was supposed to read and I think Dad prevailed in this instance and I was allowed to keep the comic. Mum never thought comic books from America were appropriate for me, never knew why and it could have been purely a financial thing as even at that age I knew we struggled to make ends meet so maybe me having this comic was in her eyes an extravagance we could do without. Maybe, I’m not sure.

I devoured the comic and was blown away with the graphics and ideas inside, not understanding a great deal of what was going on I have to admit. How did that red costume fly out of that tiny little ring? was one of my questions as I recall.

After that I was hooked and I bought as many as my meagre pocket money would allow. I became a fan and would read all of them expanding my collection as and when I could get my hands on them. Back in those days having to wait a whole month for a new issue to come out was unheard of. In England comics were all in black and white with a splash of colour on the cover only and came out weekly.

Jump to high school years and I was forced to give up my collection because I was getting too old to read comics or so Mum said. So reluctantly I gave away all of them to a younger cousin who treated them like throwaway items, he read them, never took care of them and left them lying around to be trod on and ripped which broke my heart. I kept them safe and in order and were in pristine condition and I hated him for it.

Jump now to the eighties and I had a home of my own and started collecting again. I built up a collection until my family came along and I could no longer afford to spend as much as I was on items that were purely for enjoyment, the harsh reality of bringing up a small family on an income that was just barely above subsistence level came as a shock.

I never lost my enthusiasm for comics although with the new generations coming from the eighties and onward I have lost track of developments in the genre so when the cinematic universes actually got it right I was overjoyed. I was seeing all the characters on screen how I imagined them to be if they were real people. Some were more accurate than others and I suppose my vision of them is still tinted in the rose coloured glasses I wore when I first saw them. I remain true to that image as faulty as it may be, memory is a fragile thing and not as true as we all like to think.

Jump now to Infinity War and the impact that had on this sixty two year old comic book fan. I can’t remember ever watching a packed audience’s stunned reaction as I did when I first saw this film. We all remained in our seats for the obligatory end credit scene waiting patiently to see if what we had witnessed in the two and a half hour marathon of death and destruction would turn out to be a dream or not, hoping for some small sign that it wasn’t so. When it was all done and dusted and the lights came on fully, no one moved. There was silence as we all took in the ramifications from the story that had unfolded before our eyes. Characters we had followed for the past ten years as the films gained momentum were put into serious jeopardy and we quickly learned form those opening minutes on screen that no one was safe. All bets were off and this film was about to set the stakes as high as they could possibly go.

I don’t want to go into details here as I’m sure there will be a few people who have not yet seen this so I don’t want to spoil anything for them all I will say is that no film I ever watched before this left me so stunned that I was lost for words. It also gave me a new perspective as a writer because I came home and immediately wanted to write. I am working on a piece in my Col Sec series and I found dark thoughts invading my writing process. I wanted to take this book to another level. It was inevitable that this series would evolve seeing as how it was unfolding and the situations I had my characters thrust into were getting more serious as the series continued. Now I find myself not just concerned with the pacing of the story but the minutiae, the feeling of the characters and how they deal with what they had gone through and the political consequences of events played out in their world. In short it made me realise I was becoming a better writer because although I had been doing this as a natural process this was the first time I actually was proactive about it. Rather than have this as something that happened naturally in the lives of the characters I was putting their feelings at the forefront and using this to drive the narrative instead of the action.

I don’t know what other people’s reactions to this film were, I do know most have been of the ‘wow, well that happened then’ variety and it will be sometime before people actually sit down and look closely at the film in a critical sense because of the impact it has on first viewing it. This says a lot about the talent producing this product but that doesn’t mean it was perfect. It has flaws and again I won’t go into that here because it would require me to tread into spoiler territory, a place I am steering clear of for now at least.

I will close by saying it will be interesting to see just how some of the issues in this film will be resolved in the follow up film and to see where they take the franchise after that. Until then we as fans have a long time to wait and I’m sure an awful lot of speculations will be made which the film makers will vehemently deny for obvious reasons. I for one will be waiting with bated breath and be first in line to see it.

For now though back to my own writing, ‘now where did I leave those guys, oh yeah they were just about to…’