Things I've Found In The Back Of A Drawer - #1 In An Irregular Series

 We have a lot of stuff. And I mean a lot. We live in a rather large house with a lot of storage space and over the years, particularly since the children all moved out, we've filled most of it up. 

So, now we're vaguely thinking about moving to somewhere smaller and more manageable for our twilight years, we're going to have to do something about that. And since it's going to be a long job, even though it's very unlikely we'll be going anywhere for a couple of years, I've already started on my half.

The bulk of my stuff is old. A lot of it I brought with me when I moved here thirty-five years ago and much of the rest I acquired in the ten years after that. I have plenty of new stuff, too, but nowhere near on the old scale. One big favor playing MMORPGs did me was stop both of us going round charity shops and car boot sales every weekend, hoovering up detritus from pop culture's past. If not for that we might not have been able to get into the house at all by now.

Going through cupboards and drawers has been full of fun and surprises. I won't say it's been a revelation, sorting through things I haven't seen for decades, because for all I say about my memory being terrible, I'm very good with triggers. I can't bring things to mind from a standing start but give me a visual clue and I'm right there, back in the past..

Well, sometimes. Not always. The really interesting finds are the ones I don't immediately recognize. The ones where I have no clue how I got them in the first place. Like those stickers in the picture at the top of the post.

Oh, I know who they are. Of course I know who they are. They're The Legion of Superheroes. Some of them, anyway. The LSH has a huge membership. It sometimes feels like they let just anyone in. And even the applicants they reject end up in the Legion Reserve or the  Legion of Substitute Heroes or that third-division crew who even the Subs won't take.

Of the twenty-eight characters above, I think I can name just over half on a first pass, with some ideas about a few of the others. There are several about whom I have no clue, though, which is strange. It's one thing to look at the faces and the bits of costume and not quite be able to bring the name to mind but it's quite another to find yourself thinking "Who the hell is that? I've never seen them in my life!"

Or it is if they're all characters from your favorite superhero team. The one you grew up with. The one whose adventures you followed through the aptly named Adventure Comics into all their own myriad series and spin-offs for the best part of thirty years. 

The team many of whose appearances from the early 1960s through to the early 1990s you own in the original comic book form and all of whose appearances from the very first in Adventure Comics 247 (Didn't even have to look it up!) to sometime in the 21st Century you own on a DVD of very dubious origin. The one you bought on EBay from someone in Singapore or Malaysia or somewhere equally unlikely.

So, yes, I do feel I really ought to have at least a vague idea who the big, green person second from the right on the bottom row might be. Or the woman at the top right corner, who looks like she might be wearing a hijab. In fact, it's bugging me so much now I know I'm going to have to go to the exhaustive DC Universe wiki and look up all the faces I can't put a name to.

What I won't be able to do is look up where the heck I got these stickers. Or when. I'm going to guess it must have been at one of the UKCAC (United Kingdom Comic Arts Convention) events I went to in the eighties and nineties. That seems by far the most likely possibility. 

I would have thought I'd remember but I don't. I remember a lot about those Cons. More than I remember about most gigs I've seen. 

I remember sitting in the foyer stuffing goodie bags before the doors opened. I remember introducing Dave Sim on stage and interviewing  Marv Wolfman in some back room. I remember walking Will Eisner through the corridors as his so-called security detail. I remember the costume parades and the dealers hall and countless hours in the bar and even some of the conversations we had there. I remember a surprising amount, considering how much drink was taken but I don't remember where I got these stickers.

Oh, I suppose it's time I googled it. What are the chances, though?

And there it is! I really didn't expect to find anything. I just googled "small square stickers of the faces of characters in the Legion of Superheroes" and there it was. Well, there it was eventually. After I looked at a whole load of things that weren't it at all. 

According to a 2009 post at a blog/website by the name of "Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin" they were "a promo giveaway for the Legion of Super-Heroes, 1st reboot version, from 1997."  The artist, or so Mike Sterling believes, was Jeffrey Moy. 

1997 is after I stopped buying comics regularly and almost after I stopped going to comic conventions, although I also found evidence while I was clearing things out that I went to at least one Con in the 21st Century. Jeffrey Moy didn't ring any bells with me but he has a blog, too, although he doesn't seem to have posted anything since 2020. I like his art style a lot but I'm pretty sure I've never seen his work in any comic I ever read.

There were 40 stickers originally and from the image on Mike Sterling's blog it's clear they were produced as a single sheet. Mine are all loose singles, which is odd. They could have dropped off a full sheet but given the way I found them, in a little pile at the back of a drawer, that seems unlikely. They're also not sticky on the backs any more. 

Did I peel them off for some forgotten reason? Has the glue dried out over the years? Or did I get them like this, loose and not fit to stick to anything? 

I have no clue. I was hoping typing this out would jog something loose in my memory but no dice. They're really lovely little images, though. I'm going to have to figure out something to do with them. I might get a clip frame and hang them on the wall. They look good against the wooden background in the photograph, though. Maybe I could glue them onto a piece of driftwood.

Or I might get Mrs Bhagpuss to do something with them. She's not keen on superheroes but she loves tiny pictures. She might put them in a diorama. They'd make a great miniature portrait gallery.

If it ever happens, I promise to post pictures.