I may be the Fantasy Editor of this magazine, but I am also one of the biggest comic geeks I know. So when I came up with the idea of writing this article and ran it by Rob, he agreed, knowing me as well as he does.

I must admit I'm fairly new in this though. The only comics I ever read as a little girl were the Archie comics. I remained mostly in the dark about other kinds of comics until the year 2000, a few months after I turned 23 years old. Before then, of course, I knew who Spider-Man was, and I knew who The Incredible Hulk was...but only from watching cartoons and other TV shows. When I was young, that live-action Hulk show was the best thing since the A-Team and MacGyver. Hmm...

Okay I won't get into how much I loved those shows. I promise.

It was then, in May of 2000, that I went to see the X-Men movie. Did I know who the X-Men were? Not a chance. I had vaguely heard of Wolverine before, but that was about it. As with Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, I had no idea that the characters were actually from comic books. But my obsession began that night and while it has waned a little bit, I still love them.

When I returned home from the movie that night, I went right to the internet. I had decided then and there that I had to know everything I could about these characters. I sat online for hours, researching the X-Men. Not just the characters in the movie either. I went to Marvel.com and looked up ever mutant known to man. I quickly confirmed that Wolverine kicked butt and perhaps even more quickly, I developed a love for Gambit. He wasn't even in the movie (and he wasn't in X2 either, darn them) but it didn't matter.

I tried really hard to keep my obsession wide-range. I tried to love all of the X-Men, I really did. I tried to learn everything I could about them, but I soon realized that in order to do that, you have to be crazily obsessed. I wasn't about to go there. So I've been told I'm not a "true-believer" by a few who claim to know every detail about every character ever. Uh-huh.

My obsession with the X-Men lead to a website, which I shut down last year, and some fanfiction, which didn't go too far. I lead me to the trading card game, which I have almost all of the cards for. It lead me to other collectors cards too. It also lead me to purchase an ungodly amount of comics, most of which I have never and will never read. I've got quite a few X-Men back issues, a bunch of Wolverine back issues, some X-Force, and a ton of odds and ends that don't really fit anywhere but that I picked up in sales and stuff. But then there's my real obsession. Gambit.

I own every Gambit comic ever printed. The entire regular series from start to finish. The two miniseries that took place before the regular series. The Xternals series. The Gambit/Wolverine: Victims series. The first comic in the Gambit/Nightman series (only the first one because I've never been able to find the other three). The Gambit/Bishop: Sons of the Atom series in full. I painstakingly spent a lot of time and even more money tracking down and buying all these comics.

I even have a 12" Gambit doll. Complete with removable duster/uniform and the fake plastic hair. Only thing he's missing is a bo-staff, which still disappoints me to this day.

Thanks to Gambit, I now have a love of all things Cajun. I have a dream of going to New Orleans just to say I was there. You'd think Anne Rice would give me that dream, since she's real and Gambit's just a made up character, but nope. But it's not just Gambit. See I don't make a habit of keeping my comics (especially my Gambit comics) sealed up in plastic. Most of my comics, I admit, are in binders in plastic folders. And that's where I keep most of the Gambit ones too. But my favorite ones are on my desk in a pile for easy access. And a couple of these have been read so many times that they're falling apart. But I don't care. Because it's not just Gambit. My muses live inside these books.

The Thieves and Assassins Guilds of New Orleans fascinated me from the first moment I laid eyes on them. From wise-cracking Emil to uber-dangerous Gris-Gris, every one of the six thieves and five assassins spoke to me from the moment I "met" them. So did other Guild characters, who have gone, no matter how small their appearance in the comics And if I can claim to be a true-believer...someone who knows everything about a certain group of comic characters...I am a true-believer when it comes to the Guilds. Marvel did not develop them enough for my taste, so I took it upon myself to take what they had done and expand and develop it until it suited the purpose the Guilds were giving me. Since late 2000/early 2001, I have written or started over sixty stories that star these minor, under-used Marvel characters. And there is essentially nothing I don't know about them, between what their creators did with them and what I've done with them since.

Am I obsessed with comic books and the comic book industry now? No. I haven't purchased a comic book in over a year. I still make a beeline to the comic rack at one of the local convenience stores whenever I go there, just to see what they've got, but I don't buy them anymore. I admit to being tempted to buy some after I saw the Spider-Man movie last year, and again just recently when Daredevil came out, but I resisted. I still go through the huge comics section of the used bookstore in the hopes of getting some older comics that catch my eye but I don't do it often.

The X-Men rock, Deadpool is hilarious, Nick Fury is incredible, Spider-Man and Daredevil kick serious butt and inside my mind live a group of dysfunctional criminals from Nawlins, but I am not obsessed. Not really. I am not crazy. Not really.

I'm just a writer of fiction that happens to be inspired by some very unique muses.

I'm just a geek who loves her comic books and doesn't believe in buying them and never reading them.

August 18, 2003