I have two things.....

....a little time and a room full comics from reading over the last 30-plus(almost 40) years.

My heroes growing up were the ones that were mostly on television the most in the early to mid-seventies: Batman, Superman, Superfriends, Tarzan, Spiderman, Fantastic Four and all the Filmation cartoons (with the Justice League of America, Aquaman, Teen Titans, Hawkman, Atom, and again Superman.) I knew no distinction between competing companies and there paritcular heroes. It never mattered.

My first exposure to comics was what I got for the car rides for vacation trips. They were just something given to me to keep quiet during a 17-hour car trip from Maryland to Disney Land. Needless to say this was a lot can happen to a comic on a 17- hour trip. I still have the comic but it doesn't look like this anymore. The coolest thing about this comic for a me is the particular hero behind the Flash, bottom left hand corner. Holy Smoke! Robin is all grown up. Almost like Batman but still his own hero. I loved that costume. I couldn't understand why there wasn't a comic just about him. I understood they were travelling to different earths but I knew nothing about their Earth-1, Earth-2 concepts, I was only five years old. I just wanted to see some punching out of the bad guys. It was probably over 25 years later before I got the conclusion to the story.

Other trips produced cool comics such as these-

and eventually other heroes from both companies. (You never knew whether it was going to rain on camping trips and my folks weren't taking chances.)

After that my comic collections grew from Sunday walks to the 7-11 with my Dad, sister, and our dog during football season to get the Washington Post. Yet it was never more than about reading that particular comic or comics and then setting them aside in a box or a corner of the room to be reread again at future dates. Even as I got older in my teens when I had more money and I bought more comics it was always just about the "Read" and not the "Collect".

To be continued.......