The Justice League got me driving to freedom

It was sometime in 1992 and I was 17 and at my peak nerd stage. Mum and Dad were up in Christchurch for a darts tournament and would be at the Cosmopolitan Club all day. I had just got my full drivers license and was allowed to borrow the car, and I had some cash from my first ever job picking asparagus. 

Holy fucking shit, I had never felt such freedom, and I was going to indulge in it by getting as many Justice League comics as humanly possible.

It was my first time driving in the city, and I was very concerned by the number of roundabouts in the city, but it turned out to be an absolute piece of piss. And I was in fucking heaven, man, because I wanted to go to all the comic and book stores.

Comics used to be everywhere when I was growing up - you could find them in every dairy, in every bookstore, in most supermarkets and some cafes; and every bookstore in the country has some weirdly unique mix. And while I was desperate to check them all out, my parents rightly did not have time for all the nonsense, and we would drive on by places I knew were stacked with four colour brilliance.  

For my entire life, I'd been at the whim of parents and uncles, and couldn't just stop the car to look at an interesting display in the window of an open bookstore, and had to let it roll by.

I'm not saying getting the opportunity to stop wherever the fuck I wanted was the main reason for getting my drivers licence as soon as humanly possible, but it was certainly a factor.

Once I was driving, I primarily used my newfound freedom to go over the other side of town and buy the comics I knew would show up at random stores. But now I was in a town with an actual comic shop, and second hand stores all over the city, stuffed with all sorts of comic goodness.

There was a lot of things going on in my life around then, like girls and liquor and other grown-up pursuits. But you could have that and still be fantastically huge nerd who found the joys of absolute freedom by driving around town and getting as many of the Justice League International comics as I could, and finding almost all the Adam Hughes issues in that one day.

Once I was in full employment a few months later, I didn't need to wait for Mum and Dad, and could go up to Christchurch any weekend I wanted. And I would come back with a back seat full of comics - I soon hunted down the last of the Justice League I needed (although it would take some years before I got all of the Europe).

I would drop hundreds on Love and Rockets and Hellblazer back issues at Comics Compulsion, while David's Book Store had the best selection of back issues in town - I got a first printing of The Killing Joke for an exorbitant twenty bucks in the mid-90s. (Dave's still hanging in there, way out on the edge of town now and with a meager selection of comics, but he's still there, man.)

It was always an absolute fucking delight, my nerdy mates would pack out the car, visit our other friends in town and hit the bookshops, and eat bread rolls on the banks of the Avon, before catching a couple of movies and heading back the same day, laden with geeky shit.

And I could stop anywhere I wanted, I could go anywhere. My scope, at that time, was severely limited, but it never felt more open. Christchurch is still a pimple of the arse end of the world, but it was everything for a while.

My tastes have calcified somewhat over the years, and Christchurch isn't the big city I thought of it was. It barely has any bookstores left. But I still find myself driving on the same old streets whenever I'm in town, getting a cheap thrill of nostalgia for cheap freedom, even if there's no comics at the end of them.