31 days of nerd heaven #28: Preachering in Monument Valley

When you’re growing up on the arse end of the world, Monument Valley - and its epic evocation of the American West - might as well have been on the moon. I never expected to actually get there one day, but I wasn’t surprised that the first thing I wanted to do when I stood in the shadow of those literally awesome monoliths was read that issue of Preacher that was set there.

31 days of nerd heaven #27: Khan’s wrath made a great first date

I’m only 7 when the second star Trek film comes out. I hadn’t even seen the first one (although I still, to this day, have my little Spock and Kirk and Ilia action figures, which proved a lot more durable that their Star Wars counterparts).

But I’ve seen the ads on the telly, and am desperate to see the new film, and only slightly horrified when my Mum only lets me go if I go on a date with Katie, a girl from my neighbourhood. Despite my intense and entirely rational fear of cooties, I get over it for the Star Trek.

Me and Katie have a great time, and she’s into the film even more than I am, showing this dumb little boy that girls can like the nerdy stuff too. It's not a bloody competition. We can just enjoy it together.

31 days of nerd heaven #26: New roads open up at the airport

It’s all very sad, saying goodbye to my big sister, who is off to live in Australia for a few years, but after saying goodbye at the gate, I am heading straight for the airport bookstore, because holy shit, it’s a DC motherlode in there.

For some reason, the bookshop there has a tonne of DC comics from the past few years, all going super cheap, and it’s not just the junk, it’s all the great, weird late ‘80s/early 90s comics, and a large chunk of Armageddon 2001 annuals.

I’m all loaded up with asparagus-picking money and go a bit crazy and buy heaps of the slick new thrills. Most of these comics never come close to my little corner of the world, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a lot of them.

That’s where I first read my first issue of Sandman, and my first Hellblazer, and the first Doom Patrol.  They’re only bite-sized chunks of these brilliant comic sagas, but it leaves a huge hunger for more that is still barely sated.

31 days of nerd heaven #25: Tom Baker’s grin

When I see Tom Baker’s big goofy grin staring up at me from pile of junk put out on the street for the local council’s latest round of inorganic collections, my first thought is that there is no way that it could be part of a pile of hundreds of Doctor Who Magazine back issues, impossible to find anywhere, just sitting on the road, ready for anybody to pick up and take away.

But that’s exactly what it bloody well is.

31 days of nerd heaven #24: Bonding for life over the Judge Child

So this kid Kyle, who I’ve just met after starting Miss Green’s class at Temuka Primary in early 1985, he reckons he’s into comics too, and says he’ll lend me the issue of the Judge Child Quest, if I want. He seems pretty cool.

Thirty-three years later, we’re still incredible geeks about things like Doctor Who and the X-Men. We’re a hell of a lot older now, but when it comes to this shit, we never really grew up.

The other week we went for an eight-hour drive just to go check out the comic book possibilities of Dunedin. He still seems pretty cool.

31 days of nerd heaven #23: Birthday movies

My birthday is exactly one week after New Year's, so usually falls on the one weekend of the year nobody wants to party any more.

So from a very young age, instead of parties, I grab some mates and go to the movies. I see a Bill and Ted film for my 17th, waste one birthday at the godawful Batman Forever, and see at least three different Star Trek films.

The best was probably my 40th, when I see John Wick at some hipster cinema in Portland, Oregon, after a night of deep degustation and classic video games. Some people want to rock all night and party every day, but I'd rather sit in the dark with the wife and watch Keanu shoot gangster scum in the face.

31 days of nerd heaven #22: Break open your heart

The only right and proper place in all of this gleaming, shining space-time curve of the universe to read the Invisibles is on some beach in the mid-1990s, brain swirling with a cocktail of drugs and alcohol and dodgy existential ideas.

It always worked for me, anyway.

31 days of nerd heaven #21: One day of geek hell

Sometime in 2003, I visit my little sister in Sydney, and it's great to catch up, and the short holiday gets even better when I find a bunch of 2000ads going cheap at a second-hand place in the centre of town.

I'm in a peak 2000ad period, and especially obsessed with the latest deepening of the Judge Dredd and the balls-to-the-wall thrills of Nikolai Dante. So I'm trying to snap up all the issues I've missed over the past eight years, a task that is proving surprisingly difficult, and when I see ones that are only a couple of years old, going for an Aussie buck each, I grab a fucking shit-ton of them.

To be more accurate, I end up walking out of there with about seven of eight kilograms worth of comics, which isn't a big deal, until I remember that my sister's place is a good few kays away from the train station, and I gotta walk there in the early summer heat, because I've blown all my cash on comics.

There have been a couple of times when being a total fucking nerd has almost got me killed, and this was one of them. I sometimes think that if I die and go to hell, it will all go a bit Sisyphus, and it will be something like that endless fucking walk along baking Sydney streets, carrying a dead weight of printed paper and getting weaker and weaker, and getting to the end of the journey, only to discover they were a bunch of issues I already have.

31 days of nerd heaven #20: Up all night watching music videos with my mates

And when we’ve all just moved out of home, and are far away from Mum and dad, we discover we can stay up all night watching music video channels until dawn, and nobody is going to stop us. We’re grown ups now, and can do what we want, and what we want to do is watch music videos all night.

We ended up doing it a lot, and every night would end with a mission to the 24 dairy for some supplies, and a climb up some hill to meet the sun. It was so easy back then, but I am old now, and the last time I stayed up all night, it took me three days to recover.