This is not only my 1500th post on the site, but it is also a little look inside the mind and heart of one Kevin Hellions.  Its 1AM on Friday (kind of Thursday night as I have yet to go to bed) and I cant sleep.  Because the Avengers movie comes out today.

One of the first comic books I bought was an Avengers book.  I had an extra 75 cents and picked up Solo Avengers from the spinner rack at a WaldenBooks.  I didn’t know there was more than one company, nor that there were comic book stores.  I had no idea that this was an industry.  All I knew was that I had some money in my pocket and this cover, even though it featured unfamiliar characters, looked very cool.

A little later I went looking for more Solo Avengers.  There weren’t any on the rack but this character I liked, Doctor Pym, was having his life threatened.  By his teammates no less.  And here is where I discovered West Coast Avengers.

Every week I would walk down to this book store and hope for an Avengers comic book to appear on the spinner.  One week I took a different path home and saw a Spider-Man poster in the windows of a store.  Its possible I had walked past that store 100s of times in my life and never noticed.  When you’re a kid you just have no concept of a world around you. Only the things important to you in that moment are noticed.  I was now in a place where comic book characters were important.  And I noticed this poster.  Walking in I discovered something I had no idea existed before this point.  A comic book store.

I cant remember which issue was my first brand new one, but I know I started with Avengers #299.  The original Disassembled.  And I never looked back.  Changes in artists, writers, and characters.  Heroes Reborn, Heroes Return, the jacket era.  Avengers were the greatest books in the world to me.  Back when everyone was buying X-Men comics I was known as “the Avengers kid” at the comic shop.

It was the magic feeling that every hero matters.  From street level to gods, if you’re on this team you are needed and you matter.  Best of all, sometimes its not the biggest gun that wins the fight but instead the smartest mind.  When all are dead and there is no escape, its Hawkeye’s crafty mind that tricks a cosmic Elder and saves the day.

The Avengers fought aliens, monster, themselves, various super villains and all of it was my introduction into the Marvel Universe.  I was born too late to be a Monster Kid.  But Marvel comics in the 1980s (and even early 90s) opened my eyes to the possibilities of comics.  In Avengers 301-303 they get together with the Fantastic Four and Firelord to defeat the Super Nova.  I didn’t know ANY of these characters.  Not Nova, not the Fantastic Four, not Firelord.  But they were all awesome.  And you know what happened?  I started buying Fantastic Four.  I found an issue of Silver Surfer with Firelord on the cover and started to buy that.  I became a Marvel Zombie.  All because Hawkeye looked awesome on that cover and then was written and drawn so bad ass as leader of the West Coast Avengers.

Never in a million years did I think I would see Hawkeye in a movie.  Nor as a well known character.  The Avengers comes out today and EVERYONE will know who Hawkeye is.  The guy who went toe to toe with Captain America many times.  The guy who always felt second best, and constantly tried to prove himself better.  Leading the West Coast team, the Thunderbolts, even the Great Lakes Avengers.  If you doubt how much I love Hawkeye go to the back issue bin and pick up Hawkeye and Mockingbird #1.  Go right to the letter page.  That’s right.

People die, wars take place, the world becomes smaller and scarier every single day.  But I am about to go see Hawkeye, and the rest of the Avengers on a big screen in what 99% of people who have seen it are calling the greatest movie.  This means more than a movie.  This means that anything is possible in this world.  This blog post could go viral.  It could be retweeted by Joss or Joe Quesada or Bendis.  Hell, its a world in which maybe one day I’ll be writing the Avengers.

Today my childhood gets every wish, even the ones he never wished, granted.