The Marvel Universe and I grew up together.

I was there when Peter Parker got bit by that rogue radioactive spider. I was there when the Avengers found Captain America frozen in a block of ice. I was there during the very first Kree-Skrull War.

For me, the Marvel Universe — born in 1961 with the publication of The Fantastic Four No. 1 — isn’t about the recently concluded 22-movie, multibillion-dollar cycle spun by Marvel Studios. Or the recent X-Men dud, “Dark Phoenix,” or the hit Spider-Man now web-slinging his way across movie screens. But it is totally about childhood solace and salvation — at just 12 cents per comic book.

When I was in fourth grade at Daniel J. Bakie Elementary School in very rural Kingston, N.H., in 1966-67, my 26-year-old mother broke down. There wasn’t enough money. My father worked two, sometimes three jobs to try to make ends meet. And my mother, who had three children under 10 to care for, imploded. She constantly smoldered near tears. Abyssal sighs were her main parts of speech.

As the oldest child, only 9, it fell upon my skinny shoulders to take care of her. I was a tiny nail asked to hold our rickety home together, so my dad could go to work and not worry about what my mother might do. I missed about half of school that year — and I hated that. I loved school. It spoke to me of necessary escape from small-town New Hampshire, of fleeing to a world where brainpower mattered more than brawn.