How did you get started with comics?

[nezchan]

So we're all comic fans, that's a given. We all love words and pictures together, but the question is, how did we discover that we loved them?

That's my question. I wanna know your story.



When I was growing up, my mom worked at the post office and my dad worked nights at the railroad. That left my older brother and myself to fend for ourselves on Saturday mornings while one was at work and the other asleep. So every week, in return for our silence and some household chores, my brother and I got two comic books each.

Being the younger, I always ended up with the standard kid fare of the late 70's. Archie and his spinoffs, the dozens of Harvey books, Uncle Scrooge by Don Rosa and other Disney stuff, Hanna Barbera adaptions like Speed Buggy and Top Cat, and so forth. My brother, on the other hand, got Detective, Action Comics, Metal Men, Green Lantern, Batman Family, all the great superhero books of the day. Never more than two in a row of any given book, of course, so I got accustomed to only getting bits of a story, or coming in partway through. I know it sounds horrible in that sense, but I never felt like I was getting a bad deal.

After all, I had all this magic spread out in front of me. How could I be unhappy?

So that started the love affair, honestly. And a few years later, we were both a bit older and my brother started getting things like Heavy Metal, the big-format Space 1999 and Star Trek comics, the giant-sized Marvel Star Wars adaption that came out in two enormous volumes, and so on. And still later came Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cerebus, and Albedo Anthropomorphics, which was one of the early subversions of the "funny animal" trope, and on and on. By the time my brother left to go to college in Toronto, the black & white boom was in fully swing and I'd discovered the Local Comic Shop (Odyssey 2000 and Johnson's Books (later renamed Wilkie's Wonderful World) in Halifax, in case you're interested), and I was off and running.

Good times, great memories.

So how about you?

Here's a Richie Rich cover for legality. I had a bunch of these, although it's funny to look back now and think of what a little stalker he's being here.

Comments

[nezchan]

Your dad and I would get along. I was a huge fan of the Perez Titans, and I actually went looking for back issues so I'd have a full set (paid $20 back then for a copy of #1, which sadly I no longer have).

[darkblade]

I'm sure my Dad would get along quite well with most of this Comm but considering the subject matter of many posts would make it akward to share with him.

Dad gave me most of his old collection recently I've been meaning to go through it but I'm slightly intiminated by the dozen long boxes in which nothing is paged or boarded. I'm too afraid the books will crumble in my hands or something.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh, tut tut. Have you never looked through the old comic collections at flea markets or old used bookstores? Sure, some of them are bagged and boarded, but most of them? Naked and unashamed - and in my experience, usually perfectly all right, even if they're 30+ years old. Just take the usual precautions, and they should be perfectly readable.