Being a girl who read Marvel comics at that time was utterly embarrassing. I had always been a tomboy and liked to play with cars. Even when I got Barbies they always rather dated dinosaurs than that stupid looking Ken – and my Ken doll had at least real hair, not that rubber “hair” but he still couldn’t win Tyrannosaurus Rex or even that long-necked-one-what-it’s-name-dinosaur. In first grade I had pretty much nothing in common with other girls. I did collect those He-Man stickers every boy in my class did, but they wouldn’t trade them with me because I was a girl. :'( I also liked Kiss, which only boys listened to.
So there I was, buying all the Marvel comics I could get. That required some serious ninja/spy training. The comics were sold at “R-kioski” (local 7-11) and lucky for me I lived a bit further from all my classmates and used a different R-kioski from the others. But still, it was a military operation to get my mags without being seen by anyone. I’d go in, make sure no-one I knew or anyone from my age group was there, grabbed the magazines as fast as I could, held them so that no-one could see them (not even adults but without looking like I was shoplifting), paid for them and hid them under my jacket and ran back home hoping I’d run into no-one. It was like buying a porn mag and probably would have been even more embarrassing if someone had found out. :”D I was never caught.
At home I’d read the magazines through and get my guilty pleasure from them. I also used my comics to teach myself to draw humans. I’d learn where to put muscles, where to put shadows. Of couse I got really unrealistic ideas of how a woman should look (Barbies and Marvel women – no wonder I got a bit crazy about my body image in my teens).
Later in life I did get more self-confident and eventually came out of the closet and displayed my collection with pride and drew Marvel characters in public. (I was really good at it. The high point of my life was when I learned to draw humans better than Jim Lee. 8-D You might think otherwise and I must admit I’ve never been able to draw the same character twice so I could never become a comic artist like Jim Lee.)
Now I’m a proud geek, married to a man who says he can’t believe his luck finding a beautiful badass wife, who is even a bigger nerd than he is. :”D Happy to oblige.