OH WAIT, THERE WAS A FREAKING CHOICE IN THIS?

Most of you know by now that I grew up reading. I read from a wee child. Not namby pamby SEE SPOT RUN crap either. Real deal books. I was always a huge fan of comic books, voraciously reading everyone of them I could get my hands on. Stuff like this:

I mean look at that. That's freaking Conan. He would stick with me for YEARS. I never stopped loving the character. "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet..." Robert E. Howard The Phoenix On The Sword I would follow him into the books like this one.

And even to the movies. I also read comic books like this:

That is a red-ass T-rex my friend! This is what my young mind was consuming. Sword and sorcery mayhem along with lobster-skinned T-rex's with friends!

Then we get Edgar Rice Burroughs Hollow Earth stuff. Whoa! Mind blown! There is a civilization that lives on the inside of the crust of our earth? Crazy! And Wonderful! AND THEN MY OLD FRIENDS COMIC BOOKS CAME ALONG WITH MORE SWORD AND SORCERY KICK-ASSERY INSIDE HOLLOW EARTH! OMG!

I know my youth had a harder sci-fi/fantasy edge to it than what I write today, but this is where the seeds were planted. I grew up on a steady diet of this stuff and it was awesome.