So I had my review today, it went well. I have a lot of positives, and some things to work on, but I should be getting a raise, how much? I don't know, they said they would let me know next week. I feel really good because I earned this raise by working hard and showing up to work and having a job.

In other news...netflix is awesome, and I am going to go to my grandma's house tomorrow for brunch.

A guy named Chris has apparently declared this First Comic Week, inviting people to tell about either their first comic book purchase, or at least some important ones. I hope I'm not too late.

I'm not sure exactly how old I was, but I must have been around eight. My uncle came to visit us from faraway Minnesota, and he brought me a comic book. I'm not sure why. I had never read a comic book before, and to my knowledge, had never expressed an interest in them. But he brought me one. It was Daredevil #190.

Fans will recognize this as a significant issue at the end of Frank Miller's groundbreaking run on the title. In it, Daredevil attempts to resurrect the recently deceased Elektra while fending off ninjas from The Hand. It also tells fills in some of Elektra's origin and how she once tried to join the group of good ninjas that Stick belongs to. It's a dark and confusing story for an eight-year-old, and I didn't get much of it. Some things stuck with me, though: the image of a woman climbing a mountain in a snowstorm; the Hand fighting Daredevil in an old cathedral; the large, menacing figure of the Kingpin. Most importantly, though, I was fascinated by the idea of a blind superhero. The comic book was eventually lost or thrown out by my mother, but these things were burned indelibly into my mind.

Several years later I began collecting comics with my two closest friends. We would spend what little allowance money we had on anything related to superheroes that we could get our hands on. I bought a lot of foil covers and first issues (yeah, I was a sucker), but I also kept coming back to this blind superhero, this Daredevil. The more I read, the more my fascination with him grew.

What drew me to him was his humanity. Instead of traditional superheroes, he has a handicap that he's managed to turn to his advantage. He has flaws and he makes mistakes, but he's ultimately a righteous person with a clear altruistic ethic. I really think that the Daredevil comics helped form my own sense of moral justice. He taught me to always stand up for the little guy, the people who can't stand up for themselves. He taught me that you should not compromise your values, and that you should always take the moral high road. A pivotal moment in his character, for me, was Daredevil #300, the finale to the Fall of the Kingpin storyline. Daredevil has defeated the Kingpin a number of times since, but #300 was really the first time and the best. Over the course of the story, Daredevil wages a battle to beat the Kingpin intellectually, emotionally, legally, and, in the climax, physically. In the moment of victory, Daredevil stands over the man who in the past had methodically destroyed his life, and was currently attempting to frame him for murder. In that moment of victory, Daredevil utters three words that still give me goosebumps:

"I forgive you." In those three words, Daredevil makes his victory complete. It's not merely an intellectual, or legal, or physical battle he's won. It's a moral one.

Through these stories, Daredevil helped form my values and my view of the world. As I grew older, though, I began to outgrow comics. I started to see the stories as more simple and childish than other literature, and I stopped reading them altogether when I moved to college. My absence didn't last long, though, for a year later I discovered and began reading "graphic novels," which were really just reprints of older comic books. I found that the ones reprinted in book format, though, were much more dense, complex, and intellectual. I began reading comics by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and, finally, Frank Miller.

Eventually, I tracked down the issue of Daredevil that my uncle had given me fifteen years earlier, and discovered that it was part of a groundbreaking story by Miller that reinvented the character and, in some ways, the medium itself. Instead of buying those stories in trade paperback form I found an auction on eBay through which I could buy the original comics themselves. It's an interesting experience now to read those timeless and influential stories, printed between ads for Atari and Lego Expert Builder. In a way, it's a reflection of the broad appeal of those comics. It's interesting to think that a story I enjoyed reading at eight can appeal to me on a completely different level as an adult. What was initially published as cheap, disposable entertainment has endured for decades, both in my reading habits and in the history of comics.