I'm the youngest of four kids and grew up in the 90s and 00s. My oldest brother collected comics from the 80s and 90s so I basically learned to read on them. The first comics I remember reading were Psiforce #22 and D.P. 7 number 14. Of course I had no idea what was going on but that wasn't the point. These weren't like any other picture books I'd read. My brother didn't have an extensive collection but it got me in to reading and I idolized the heroes and their abilities. Most of my toys were of superheroes and I would obsess over the trading cards that Marvel and DC issued with their singles. The animated shows also hooked me in to loving superheroes. I watched all the cartoons every Saturday morning before hockey practices and dance class and that got me really in to the X-Men. X-Men Evolution was one of my favorite shows. I started reading a lot of manga around junior high/beginning of high school. Then I got a job at the local library in my Junior year around the same time as they started building a collection of graphic novels including Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Bone, Y: The Last Man, and Fables. The most influential book that got me to start buying my own comics was X-Men: Messiah Complex. I thought the art was amazing and I was deadset on buying all the X-Men comics I could. A bunch of my friends were really in to comics too, but we had no clue we all had this in common before we all started talking about what we read. Those people turned out to be my closest friends even today. Since then I've grown a pretty nice collection of Trades and singles. Comics have become a form of entertainment for me and an aspect of my life that I find important. Where else can you find that same kind of magic when you view great art and writing interchangeably?