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My grandmother died in July, and I suppose I'm only now starting to come out of the grief of it. Note: "starting to," meaning I'm still grieving- it hasn't stopped yet. That's probably partly due to the fact my mom, aunt and I (but mostly my mom and aunt, due to my work schedule) have been sorting through multiple storage units of my grandmother's stuff, ever since. In among all that stuff, I knew there were some comics I had given grandma. I had been waiting for them to turn up, and they finally did so today. My mom handed them to me just a couple of hours ago, not long after I got home from work (yes, I'm old enough that my mother lives with me). I almost choked up a little.

Grandma liked Mandrake the Magician as a child, and has always liked Superman, thus the selections you see above. She also liked Flash Gordon, and I had several collected volumes of that for her, but her eyesight had gotten too bad to read the small print of them, before I was able to move back to my home state to give them to her (I couldn't bring myself to trust them to shipping).

Honestly, I had forgotten that I had given her the first issue of the Superman & Batman: Generations mini-series. Upon seeing it again though, I remember explaining the premise of an Elseworlds to her, and telling her that if she liked it, I could get the other issues for her, or a collected edition. I know she read them all, because I had put them in mylar sleeves for her, and they were put back on backwards and/or upside down lol...

God, I miss her...

So...I'm crying quite unexpectedly now, and I've run out of things to say, though I thought I had more. I just wanted to get this out there, I suppose...

In the long pauses indicated by those elipses, I just came to a realization: grandma is the only person in the family that ever really showed any kind of interest in my interest in comics. The rest just tolerated it and shook their heads at my collector fervor. Grandma would actually read some of them, and tell me about the ones she liked as a kid. I think she also liked The Phantom (I know that I did).

I think that might be why I took to old movie serials like I did- watching them made me feel a little closer to her, because I imagined how she might have watched them, when she was younger. I don't know if she did or not, really, but it's a nice thought. I know she watched the black-and-white Superman TV show, with George Reeves.

Liking comics was something that surprised me about grandma, because she was so no-nonsense about everything else. I mean, she absolutely despised The Three Stooges! (It's okay though- my dad loves them, so I did too as a kid, although their charm has worn off a little for me now.)

So now I get to read these trades (and the single issue of Generations [although I have the TPB somewhere, myself]) and while reading, I'll wonder how grandma liked them, and wonder how she reacted to them, and how many times she read them, or if it was only once each.

And oh. my. God. I am going to miss her.