My Own Personal Beyonder's World

Category: Geeks Anonymous
Last article published: 29 July 2019
This is the 45th post under this label
Hi, I'm Siskoid and I'm a Geek. "Hi, Siskoid." As you might remember from past sessions, friends, there was a time in my life when I would set up thought experiments and mnemonic exercises based on geek topics. The Mutant School thing from when I was a teenager was particularly egregious. But I recently found evidence of such behavior that takes us into and past the college years, a document dated 05/93 to 05/96 and contains just over 4½ pages, the first of which I present for your amusement or astonishment.
Basically, this is what I used to do. Whenever I would buy and read a comic with a different TITLE (and the mid-90s were a peak in my comic book collecting), I would mark it down and on the same line, set down who the main character of the book was (or if they appeared earlier on the list, a villain or supporting cast member). This character was, for all intents and purposes, on the Beyonder Planet from Marvel's Secret Wars, brought there by a powerful entity (it was me, I admit it), and forced to live in that assembled community. As a mnemonic trick, I would then try to remember each book and each character, lulling myself to sleep with the exercise.

Just from the uniformity of the script and which pens I was using, the first 2½ pages are really a re-transcription, probably from memory (like, there's no way I read 4 Cerebus phone books in a row like that, or just look at the way Bravura titles are listed together), and perhaps a simplification. Because I also remember making this a lot more complex, with each book providing not just a hero, but also a villain and a patch of environment. At a guess, I would say one column or another ran out (too many books taking place in Gotham, for example, or with a previously named hero or villain), so the redress streamlined the process and thus the memory game. I suppose this is also interesting as a document of what I was reading in this specific era, which shows a wide variety of publishers, not just the Big Two. Eventually, there are too many things on the list to work as a mnemonic trick.

But see, I never really stopped doing this kind of thing. In the 2000s, I was doing it with my DVD collection, again until it got unmanageable. These days, I will still imagine a Beyonder's World that has THIS WEEK's crop of movies (from the Geekly Roundup), throwing protagonists, antagonists, and environments together for a limited engagement. In both cases, I wonder what kind of world they would build, who would act as leader, how would a battle between them shake out? And then I doze off.

Secret Wars was a formative book for me, and it continues to haunt my dreams. I fool around with it in other ways too. Like trying to remember who was on the planet, then replacing each with a DC counterpart, if possible the character they were amalgamated with, and then replaying key scenes. I don't deny I have a problem. That's why I come to Geeks Anonymous. To find like-minded people and share.

Comments

tomg said…
Oh!!
I am so glad that I was not the only person who did things like that.
I had several lists going, though it my case it was long before the advent of the internet.
One was an elaborate set of tables and graphs where I tracked all the results of every fan-determined Legion of Superheroes election, illustrating the rise and fall of the characters' popularity through the decades. I guess that makes me a geek, too.
Siskoid said…
That's what makes Geeks Anonymous important. You are not alone.
I still write my own Battleworld headcannon that involves heroes from the big 2. Drawing characters or making rpg version of them was my form of mnemonic device.
Anonymous said…
When I'm walking or running and there's nothing in particular going on around my mind, I often use the original 26 series of Doctor Who to count my steps, assigning 10 steps to an episode (20 for series 23, 40 for Five Doctors).

My favourite at the moment is using the 2014 Doctor Who Magazine survey to trace my steps from the worst-rated story to the best. 59th best? The Androids of Tara, 40 steps, leading nicely to The Ambassadors of Death, 70 steps. Yes, I remember the entire list...
Charles Izemie said…
Meant to sign the previous as Charles Izemie. Too many Anonymouses about.
Siskoid said…
Hi Charles.

As this is under the Geeks Anonymous label, we do offer anonymity as a service.