You and Comic Books

Community Introductions & Off Topic
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I’m 33 years old and have been reading comics for…30 years now. (It’s been that long?)

My first comics were things like Richie Rich; Casper the Friendly Ghost and Hot Stuff the Little Devil. At the time, I was about 4 years old. When I was 9, that’s when I started buying superhero comics. My first was an issue of DC Comics Presents which co-starred Superman and Plastic Man.

Soon I started buying Saga of the Swamp Thing, back when it was being written by Martin Pasko and illustrated by Tom Yeates. I later added Batman and the Outsiders(a PRE-CRISIS books). I started losing interest in Swamp Thing when artists Steve Bissette and John Totleben came along. I thought their art was…well…gross. When Alan Moore took over, I dropped the book. It was too…sick for me. When I was 12, my paternal grandma bought me PRE CRISIS Green Lantern #175. Today, PRE-CRISIS GL #175 through #200 are amongst my all-time favorite issues.

Of course I picked up Thundercats,the Marvel/Star ones.

Over the years, I’ve collected: The She-Hulk; some of Spider-Man 2099; Marvel’s RoboCop; The Power of Shazam; All of Kyle Rayner’s GL issues; Red Sonja…oh, the list goes on and on.

I like the way Ms. Marvel has started off. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming Spider-Woman series featuring Jessica Drew. However, if the artwork in this new series done by the Luna Brothers(like in Spider-Woman: origin), I’ll be dropping the book. To me, the art looks like it was done by a talented child or looks like some anime.

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Chris here…

Comics have been a passion of mine since I was a kid - one of my very favourite things to buy or receive when I was young was a comic. I can still remember the UK comics we had in the late 1980s, there was so much to choose from and each one came out at least once a fortnight, often once a week! I still have a bunch of my UK comics - whereas a lot of kids in the UK had a “Read it and throw it away” mentality towards their comics, that never made any sense to me as I loved to re-read them! :slight_smile:

In the summer of 1991, my Dad had to go on a business trip to America, and came back with a pile of American comics for me as a souvenir. At that time I had no idea you could buy American comics in the UK, and these were like treasures from another world to me! My favourites of the comics my Dad gave me were Captain America #'s 390 & 391, which started me on one of the greatest loves of my life, the Marvel Universe! :slight_smile:

A few years later I made two discoveries - one, that you could buy American comics from specialist comic shops in the UK, and two, that you could buy back issues! I was hooked! From early 1994 onwards, I spent large amounts of my pocket money on Marvel comics from the 1970s and 1980s, especially Captain America. From about 1996 onwards I concentrated for a long time on aquiring comics from my #1 favourite (non-Marvel) property, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a couple of years later became addicted to Star Trek novels, which took up a lot of my money. :slight_smile:

About five years ago I began to get “the itch” again, and started seeking out comics from my favourite 1980s properties - not just TMNT this time, but ThunderCats, MOTU, M.A.S.K. and Visionaries too! Then, about a year later, after re-reading some of my precious Marvel superhero comics, I decided to re-emerse myself in the Marvel universe and began collecting comics again in absolute earnest. :slight_smile:

What do comics mean to me? Quite simply, they’re one of my primary forms of escape. Why I love the Marvel universe so much is that all Marvel comics are ultimately interconnected, either as part of that series or by way of a crossover, and so consequently what you end up with is a huge, rich, complex world that just expands as wide as you want it to go. On top of that you have exciting characters, dramatic situations, wonderful artwork, fabulous storytelling - all of it helps me to escape from the world and relax. Stupid though it sounds, twice during two difficult periods of my life (one of which was last summer), reading Marvel comics has kept me sane by giving me another world to escape to. Comics are one of the biggest parts of my life, as you can possibly tell by the sheer length of this rambling post!! :wink:

Take care… :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=He-Fan]

What do comics mean to me? Quite simply, they’re one of my primary forms of escape. Why I love the Marvel universe so much is that all Marvel comics are ultimately interconnected, either as part of that series or by way of a crossover, and so consequently what you end up with is a huge, rich, complex world that just expands as wide as you want it to go. On top of that you have exciting characters, dramatic situations, wonderful artwork, fabulous storytelling - all of it helps me to escape from the world and relax. Stupid though it sounds, twice during two difficult periods of my life (one of which was last summer), reading Marvel comics has kept me sane by giving me another world to escape to. Comics are one of the biggest parts of my life, as you can possibly tell by the sheer length of this rambling post!!
[/QUOTE]

Well said, He-Fan. Comics are a great escape for me. In fact, I prefer them to most of today’s TV! In fact, they also gave me a head start in reading before I began school.