CSA:HB56

The Rebirth of HB56

     A ranch style home in suburban Pittsburgh. A wife. Two children. A steady job. Reader of Star Trek novels. Fan of the X-Files and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. All in all a good life. But lately there's been a nagging feeling he can't shake. A feeling there was something else. Something more. Another time. Another place. The feeling started slowly. Thinking back it began while looking for a new Star Trek novel to read. Another book in the reduced bin caught his eye. Written by Diane Duane, author of many Star Trek novels. Cost is reduced to next to nothing. Her ST books are good so why not try Spider-Man: The Octopus Agenda? Good book. But there was something familiar about it. One of a trilogy. Soon all three are read. Then other Spider-Man novels. Then Marvel Team-Up novels.More characters. More paranormals. Why are they so familiar.
                Looking for info and feedback on the novels he goes on line to the website of the editor of the books. From there he follows a link to the Crawlspace. All this talk of comics. Seems the novels are based on characters from comic books. Characters who inhabit their own universe. Maybe the answer lies there; in a visit to the comics store. But upon entering it's not a comics store. It's a neighborhood drug store. There's an eleven year old boy gleefully opening bindles of comics and placing them on the display rack. He's purposely placing a certain group in the rack's most prominent spots: Fantastic Four, Journey into Mystery with the Mighty Thor, Daredevil, the X-Men, and yes, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. They're all there from the novels. But it's the boy who really catches his gaze. Because the boy is him. Yes, he realizes, there is another place. Another time. Another universe. The Marvel Universe. And he was a part of it. Almost from the very beginning. But somehow, some force pulled him away. Wiped his memory.
     With a little help from the books of genesis: Essentials and Masterworks, his years in the early Marvel Age are reconstructed. He works from two sides: from deep in the past going forward and from the present back. He reconstructs the re-boots and now keeps current.        Still he's left with a 20 to 25 year gap. Years stolen by some powerful yet unaccountable source. Galactus? The Celestials? Hydra? Victor Von Doom?
       Although he continues to reconstruct his lost Marvel years he now moves freely between his life, as mild mannered civil servant Harold Bloomfield with his 3 bedroom ranch in the suburbs and his adventures in the Marvel Universe he has rejoined as HB56.