I watched the Avengers all the way through for only the second time, including its cinema debut the summer of 2012, where we went opening day in Horton Plaza, a reliable ways from our first shawarma experience later that afternoon over on Fourth Avenue. Me being my best friend and band mate, Anji Bug. I love how that one post-credit scene, of any of them, does no more previewing than simply showing they socialize. Now, I’m recalling the first of my Marvel Super Heroes. When I’m three, there’s already Spider-Man, and soon after, the Incredible Hulk, who I probably started watching in his first season. I already could read the TV Guide well enough. G-Force is already my favorite superhero team when I’m four, and I love Goldar from The Space Giants, and will meet the Superfriends just before Ultra Man and Spectre Man. Avengers is so great because at its core, it’s got the four of the first five Marvel heroes I found: Hulk, then Iron Man, Cap, and Thor. I’m less sure about Thor, b...

Want to read the first couple of pages, to get the flavor? It's Drawn Into Adventure , by Cecil L. Disharoon Bethany Within her backyard, Bethany could concentrate, with no one else watching. All alone, her solitude was cozy. Bethany wasn’t lonely. She did miss her friends, Monday and Sun Jay-in. They used to ride bicycles after school together. She remembered their laughter beneath the summer tree limbs of her neighborhood. Today, this made her feel connected, even in this new city. Bethany hunched down to see if the moss held a small frog. When there was no rush, she could always sit, fascinated, by Nature. What kinds of plants would she find? What animals lived in her backyard? She wondered how long her afternoons would remain her own- free of lessons. She loved to learn, but heard so much homework was coming, years of it! “Would this be all the playtime I’ll ever have?,” thought Bethany. It was a pretty heavy concept. She sprinted. This lightened her he...

Imagine a time when you first learned what a star was. When you didn’t know what a war was. It could've been one summer or fall day, in 1977, when I had my own image from Star Wars, with Leia, Luke, and I do believe, Threepio, courtesy of a cereal box. You can literally say the images are iconic. I am this little boy, looking at everyone, dressed like no one I'd seen, with some vague intimation of mystic energy, nowhere found in my mundane life. I didn't know anything else about the story of this man and woman, or this robot (I only recall the humans, clearly, there could've been Chewie, too). I felt awe. They were alien to my experience. I think they scared me just a bit. They hinted at a Force beyond my frame of reference. Their clothes weren't like anything I knew, until I'd seen a proper bathrobe, maybe. Some of my earliest sexual memory is me trying to understand the discomforting entertwining of the male and female figures. The icons of Star...