Take my money, usually two dollar bills given to me by my grandmothers that I hoarded away like Scrooge McDuck, to the IGA grocery store located conveniently on the same block. Stare at the rows of comics on the racks trying to see if anything new had come out yet while keeping a respectful distance since the store manager was only a few feet away ready to pounce on any kid stupid enough to try reading these things without purchasing them. Grab the ones I really liked first, usually DC Comics. Get snickered at by the older kids who turned up there noses at anything non-Marvel. (And, judging by this forum, nothing has changed in forty years.) If I've got money left over, see if anything new looks interesting. Got to make sure I've got a quarter left for a bottle of Coke. Read stack of comics, read them again, and then file them away in paper grocery bags kept in the closet. The only person I ever seriously discussed comics with was my younger brother and that usually consisted of "can I read your batch?" and making sure we weren't buying the same ones.

My first exposure to a comic book store was a shop that was next door to my father's work place. I would sometimes go with him to work and hang out at the comic shop. I think I was about 7 or 8. At the time, I wasn't actually interested in comic books (though I did enjoy superhero cartoons), but I liked to go to that shop in particular because they had a lot of merchandise related to two other interests I had at the time: Star Wars and the giant robot genre of anime. In particular, I remember that store had a lot of imported model kits from Japan that were probably too advanced for me, but that didn't stop me from buying them and trying to put them together. It was pretty disappointing when my finished product looked nothing like the pictures on the box.  

My dad changed jobs, so I stopped going to that shop.  But a couple of years later, I started frequenting another shop next to the supermarket that my mom shopped at.  The funny thing was, it wasn't specifically a comic shop since it also sold magazines, newspapers, candy, sports cards, etc.  The sign outside even said it was a news stand.  But that store had a pretty big selection of comics, including a pretty decent number of back issues.  And it also sold collecting supplies like bags and backing boards.  Anyway, this was the place where I first started buying and reading comics in earnest.  I was really into the X-Men at the time, and Wolverine in particular.  Some of the first books I bought were issues of Classic X-Men (which I still own -- love the Claremont/Byrne/Cockrum era).

I also remember I had a group of friends who were into collecting sports cards and comic books, but a lot of them were convinced that comics were going to make them rich.  This was around the time when guy Image guys started getting popular.  I remember my friends and I talking excitedly about McFarlane's Spider-Man #1, with people talking about how they saw a copy of the mythical black or silver covers, or whatever rare variant that was supposedly worth a lot of money.

That was the era when I got into comics.  So as much people hate on those Image guys -- and I admit that there's plenty of good reason -- at the same time, I can't help but to have a little bit of a soft spot for them since they were what I read when I got into the hobby.

When I was around 6, I wasn't as fussy or finicky and didn't know about bags and boards much less give one arse about them so...

...I'd sit on the curb in Barr Road, Hertfordshire or Alpha Road, Edmonton in the UK with my comic fully opened on the road. A habit I picked up after finding the second Treasury edition of Superman/Spider-Man a bit too awkward to hold. I wasn't buying comics at the time but my older brother and uncles were doing the honours (between them, they amassed several thousand which are still stashed away across the pond) so I had a lot at my disposal. They would bring home anywhere up to 40 or so new comics after a visit to the newsagent.

The first time I went to a comic book store, I just wanted to buy the oldest stuff we could afford from the titles I liked the most, which were Avengers and Fantastic Four. My dad ended up buying my Avengers #36 and FF #61 for a few bucks each.

But before we left, I took a look in the quarter box. Again, I took the oldest things I could find for a quarter each.

My purchases that day:





50 cents has rarely been so well spent.

I simply grew up with comics. I was a fifth generation comics reader, and while some of those generations weren't around no more, my grandparents, mom, aunt, and most adults right around me tended to be into different comics, different kinds of comics, and they were just omnipresent. For a long time, I just assumed everyone lived like that, and only slowly realized that a lot of my friends had parents who didn't read comics outside of maybe the Sunday funnies, that comics collections could be at jeopardy during casual spring cleaning.

My mom did put the fear of god into my brother and me, by coming out sometimes to our comics, grabbing a stack, and saying she was checking to make sure we weren't reading anything inappropriate. It was only much later that I realized a) she never called us on it if she did find anything and b) she was just grabbing comics to read. She just liked to mess with us.

You deserved it