The Marvel Saga<\/em>.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/onceuponageek.com\/images\/marvel_saga.jpg\" "\\"The")
<\/p>\n
When I was 13 years old my mother sometimes picked me up after school and took me to her office until quitting time.\u00a0 The rule was that I had to be quiet and stay out of her fellow co-workers way.\u00a0 So she’d give me a few dollars and I’d walk down to the local convenience store.\u00a0 I’d immediately make a beeline for the Slush Puppie machine.\u00a0 Now don’t be confused, there is a tremendous difference between a Slush Puppie and an Icee or Slurpee.\u00a0 If you don’t know what a Slush Puppie is, then you’ve never lived.\u00a0 It’s that simple.\u00a0 An Icee and\/or Slurpee machine simply dispenses a frozen foamy drink, whereas a Slush Puppie requires action on your part to create the heavenly concoction.<\/p>\n
When approaching a Slush Puppie machine you are immediately confronted with the difficult decision of choosing which flavor you want (usually there are about a dozen bottles of flavoring to choose from).\u00a0 Once you’ve decided on your flavoring, you grab an empty cup and dispense the flavoring from a pump bottle.\u00a0 You are supposed to pump out three squirts per cup, however, I usually went for six or seven squirts.\u00a0 Talk about lemon-lime tart overload!\u00a0 Then you fill the remainder of the cup from the spigot.\u00a0 This pumps out glorious sweet-infused icy water into the cup and mixes the entire drink.\u00a0 The sweet icy water isn’t foam-based like an Icee, this has zillions of ice pellets.\u00a0 Little tiny ice pellets perfect for crunching.\u00a0 It’s a religious experience!<\/p>\n
Anyway, I would mix my super-sweet\/sour lemon-lime Slush Puppie and then peruse the comic book rack.\u00a0 I didn’t go to my mother’s office very often, so there were always new comics to check out.\u00a0 It was during a visit like this I picked up my first issue of The Marvel Saga<\/em> which happened to be issue #2.\u00a0 It seemed like everytime I went to my mother’s office, I bought a new issue of The Marvel Saga<\/em>. If you’ve never read the series it was intended to follow Marvel’s continuity as closely as possible starting with the inception of the Marvel Universe and then continuing forward in chronological order (also incorporating retcons).\u00a0 The interior was a mixture of comic panels and large text pieces (sort of like Marvel Universe<\/em> or Who’s Who<\/em>).\u00a0 It took me hours to read an issue cover to cover.\u00a0 It’s was like hitting the lottery for a kid just getting into Marvel back then.\u00a0 First of all, my $1 would buy hours of entertainment, unlike other comics that could be read in 15 minutes.\u00a0 Second, it provided all the background on my favorite characters at a time when I didn’t know the Marvel Universe inside-and-out.\u00a0 This comic provided hours of wonder and joy as my curiosity about the history of these characters was slaked.\u00a0 A copy of The Marvel Saga <\/em>in one hand, a lemon-lime Slush Puppie in the other.\u00a0 That’s happiness.<\/p>\nSense memory is a funny thing.\u00a0 Nowadays if I taste something with a really tart lemon-lime flavor, I’m immediately overwhelmed with an inexplicable sense of wonder and curiosity.\u00a0 That’s what comes first.\u00a0 It’s later that the memory materializes of Slush Puppies and The Marvel Saga<\/em>.\u00a0 Now if I could just find a Slush Puppie machine in my area and a copy of the Essential Marvel Saga<\/em>…<\/p>\nTell the world about ONCE UPON A GEEK:<\/h3>
![\"Slush](\"http:\/\/onceuponageek.com\/images\/slush_puppie.jpg\" "\\"Slush")
<\/p>\n