The Red Moon Mystery (27/3/13)

It's the little things that matter.

It was our first Christmas together. 1986. We had met in July, started going out in August. 11th August to be precise. We were four months and two weeks into our relationship.

Early on in our time together I'd had to come clean on an embarrassing fact about myself; I was a geek. Not just a geek, a comic collector. It wasn't just a matter of liking a bit of sci-fi, reading some fantasy, whatever the 80s equivalent of Game of Thrones was. (I know exactly what it was, it was The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Unbeliever by Stephen Donaldson and it was bloody brilliant. Yes, you're laughing at me now but you'll all be watching Game of Thrones next Monday.) No, I actually read comics. Pictures. With word balloons. About people who can fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes and have claws in their hands and shit.

All this in an age before they invented geek chic. When irony hadn't been discovered. When it was too early to have any kind of retro. Before the cinema was invaded by the stories that you had been laughed at for reading when you were in school (mostly by kids who couldnt read, in fairness), before Sam Raimi made Spidey cool, before Chris Nolan showed the world that Batman wasn't that campy 'Holy mid sixties, Robin' bloke, before The Avengers became the biggest damn film on the planet.

Can you imagine the fear inherent in telling this girl that you really, really like that you read comics?

Take into account that when we met J thought I was unbelievably cool and mysterious. As opposed to shy and awkward, the reality of the situation.

She took it really well; "Fine, but don't expect me to be buying you any of that rubbish."

I have no idea what I bought J for Christmas that year. I don't remember most of what she bought me (although I do recall a black and white stripey shirt, one that you wore with the cuffs turned back under a suit jacket with similarly rolled back sleeves -it was the 80s) but I do remember the last gift she gave me that day. Flat, rectangular, oversized, fairly weighty. Well wrapped.

Inside the careful wrapping?

Volume 2 of The Collected Dan Dare. 'The Red Moon Mystery' & 'Marooned On Mars', glorious full size facsimiles of Frank Hampson's original pages from 'Eagle' comic. Two epic tales of Southport's own 'Pilot Of The Future'.

My girlfriend, not yet my wife to be but it wouldn't be long, had gone into a comic shop. On her own.  Walked into a foreign land filled with geeks and left with a gift for me. Something she thought I'd like. She was right, I loved it.

There have been plenty of gifts in the last twenty six years but that one? A gift that shows that the woman you love gets you? That's an important one.

It's the little things that you do that matter most.

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