It was 6:00 in the evening on June 22, 1989 and I had six hours of standing in line ahead of me. I was part of the second group in line for the biggest event of my young life and I asked my mom if I could jump out of line for a few minutes so that my cousin, Ben, and I could go over to the little cart parked in the middle of our hometown mall that was set up for the summer to sell Batman merchandise. That’s right, kids! This wasn’t your every day ordinary merchant trying to pawn off hand cream or toy helicopters. This cart sold Batman stuff. Batman shirts, Batman figures, Batman key chains, Batman buttons, Batman watches…anything and everything you could want or need to make it in the suburbs of America…and it was all BATMAN! Believe it or not, it’s not comic book heaven; that’s just the way things were back in 1989. That summer, I was 11 years old and I was a huge Batman fan. Heck, I’m still a huge Batman fan. USA Today actually featured me in an article earlier this year talking about the upcoming release of The Dark Knight. Google my name and you’ll see the article. I’ve been a Batman fan for as long as I can remember. I got my first comic books when I was about five years old. I still have them. One was an issue of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man and the other was an issue of Batman. I’ve been a fan since before I could even read all of the words in the story. I think I originally latched on to Batman because my dad was a fan. Batman had been his favorite super-hero as a kid, so Batman was my favorite super-hero as a kid. Once 1989 rolled around, Batman became the favorite super-hero for a lot of people. I was ahead of the curve. On the evening of June 22 of that year, my mom and dad took Ben and I down to our mall theater to stand in line for the June 23 midnight premiere of Batman starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger. We formed that line with the small group of high school kids in front of us six hours before the movie started. I didn’t even stand in line that long for the new Star Wars movies. By show time, the line stretched all the way out of the mall as, literally, hundreds of people waited to see this movie. I was Batman crazy that summer. I not only collected the comics, I collected everything that had had anything to do with Batman. While Batman t-shirts were everywhere that night, I made sure mine stood out in a crowd. I had a collection of Batman buttons featuring characters from the movie and the comics. My shirt featured a giant Batman symbol in the middle of the shirt with a dynamically-posed comic book version Batman underneath it. In the center of the Batman oval, I stuck every Batman button that would fit. I must have been wearing 20 to 30 buttons. Our local news channel even pulled me, Ben and another fan out of line for some B-roll news footage and to talk to us about why we loved Batman. Once we were finally let into the theater, we took our seats and I sat there, enthralled at how perfect this movie was. It wasn’t a surprise. I had read the official comic adaptation of the movie, I’d read the official novel based on the movie and I’d watched or read every preview I could track down. Keep in mind that this was in the days before the Internet and I wasn’t able to just pull up three different trailers for the movie with the click of a few buttons. Even though it has been over 19 years since that movie first released, I can remember moments from that night like they happened yesterday. It was one of those cinematic and perfect childhood memories that will stick with me until the day I die. Now, here I am, close to 20 years later, I’m still a Batman fan and I’m still just as excited at seeing Batman battle the Joker on the big screen as I was when I was 11. My hopes are high for opening night and I’m planning on attending a midnight premiere. Will this Batman movie be as magical as the one in 1989? Will it be better? I can only say one thing for sure. This story is to be continued… *(Drew Van Huss is a longtime comic fan and collector, and a contributor for Comic Collector Live. In his childhood, Drew was Batman, Robin and the Joker on three separate Halloweens.)