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Post by hondobrode on Jul 11, 2014 1:24:43 GMT -5
Mom swung by the Piggly Wiggly one night after Catechism and I saw my first ever spinner rack. I was mesmerized ! It was a cold November night in 1974. The book, which had some Super Friends and a bunch of cool looking characters, was Justice League of America 115 (100 pages for 60 cents it read across the top).
It had 1 new story, a JLA reprint "Creatures of Nightmare Island" and a JSA reprint "Evil Star Over Hollywood" along with a letters page, a word find, a crossword puzzle (which of course we filled in), and all those cool classic ads.
That's the one and only comic my mother ever bought me. After that my Dad would access what labor we'd given him or were due to, and he'd buy our comics for us, the highlight of my week.
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Post by comicscube on Jul 11, 2014 1:52:35 GMT -5
Here in Manila, there were both new issues and local reprints of old issues, and my grandpa used to buy them for my brother, so when I was growing up, I just had a hodgepodge of random issues lying around. And I mean random, a crapload of Spider-Mans, Supermans, some Kirby Cap, the random Miller Daredevil, Kid Colt, Jonah Hex, House of Mystery when Elvira was still running the show, some issue of Power Man and Iron Fist, etc. Pretty sure it contributes to the fact that I don't mind drastic changes -- I've always thought of different takes on characters as different versions.
My brother was really into drawing when we were younger, so he taught me all about distinguishing artists before I could read. I feel kind of sad that I never really just was able to enjoy comics without thinking things like "Hey, that's good art!"
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 11, 2014 13:15:43 GMT -5
One of my all time favorites was Run Baby Run. I liked gritty crime stories even as a child I guess.  My father worked for that publisher, Logos International, when Run Baby Run was published. I was one of the first people outside the company to see it when it came in from the printer. There was another comic they printed at the same time - Prison to Praise. I thought Run Baby Run was better, but neither of them were good enough to justify charging 39 cents when Marvel and DC comics were 20 cents. The company put out two more comic books - Amazing Saints and Ben Israel, but I had gone away to college at that point and never saw those two. See www.christiancomicsinternational.org/series_logos.html for more on Logos comics. My earliest comics, the ones I'm writing about in the '50 years ago' thread, were bought in a little newsstand/candy store that was between home and school. When I got my allowance, I'd buy a comic book on the way home from school and read it over and over. I don't remember anyone else I knew buying or reading comics except this one kid who kept trying to convince me that he was really Superboy. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2014 13:27:19 GMT -5
Hey, thanks for the link. You're quoted in the article  |
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 11, 2014 13:53:20 GMT -5
How do you think I found the link so quickly?
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Post by Randle-El on Jul 11, 2014 17:49:51 GMT -5
I started buying old stuff too, but to me "old" just meant worn out. I got a stack of pretty offbeat Christian comics. One of my all time favorites was Run Baby Run. I liked gritty crime stories even as a child I guess. A couple years later I'd be buying weird black and white 80's comics almost exclusively, until the superhero bug bit when Robin died. As I recall, that story is based on true events. They made it into a movie as well, with the role of Nicky played by Erik Estrada. |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jul 11, 2014 18:16:27 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure I have both Run Baby Run and Prison to Praise here somewhere.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 11, 2014 18:41:51 GMT -5
I never bought non-direct market comics.... before my time (though I was late to the party, my dad's a sports guy). My earlier comic experiences were when I was 17-18 years old, I worked for a company that did inventories of grocery stores and such... so we worked before they opened.. usually 4-9 AM or 5-10, something like that. There were two comic stores near by.. actually one real comic books store (which was in the same plaza) and a video rental place about a 1/2 mile down the road that had a couple spinner racks.
I had inconsistent cash, so I never had a pull list, but every Wednesday I worked I'd hang out in in the parking lot until the comic book store opened and spend as much as my pay check as I thought I could get away with.. usually 5-10 new off the rack comics, and a few from the back issues (which were almost all cover, or .25 over).. NTT and Iron Man for a long time. If when I got home I noticed I'd missed an issue, I'd hit the other store the next time to hopefully catch it on the spinner rack. The trick was this was about 4 miles from home, and I didn't have a car, so I'd walk most of the time in the summer, reading the comics as I did so.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jul 11, 2014 19:14:25 GMT -5
I never read comics as a kid. Grew up in the 90s, newstand distribution was nill and there were no comic shops around. Our only exposure to superheroes were through the cartoons and movies. Kids would speak in hushed voicess about things they'd heard about comics: Superman died! Bruce had his back broken! Spider-Man had a clone who was Carnage! Any schoolyard debate was trumped by saying "Well in the comics..." It's no wonder manga took off like a rocket in my area. When I was 13 I couldn't buy a Batman, Spider-Man or Hulk book but every two weeks I could head to the bookstore and pick up another volume of Dragon Ball. It wasn't until I was sixteen or so that a book store started selling comics on the side and a few years later they went all in with comics.
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Post by dupersuper on Jul 11, 2014 20:58:51 GMT -5
I never read comics as a kid. Grew up in the 90s, newstand distribution was nill and there were no comic shops around. Our only exposure to superheroes were through the cartoons and movies. Kids would speak in hushed voicess about things they'd heard about comics: Superman died! Bruce had his back broken! Spider-Man had a clone who was Carnage! Any schoolyard debate was trumped by saying "Well in the comics..." It's no wonder manga took off like a rocket in my area. When I was 13 I couldn't buy a Batman, Spider-Man or Hulk book but every two weeks I could head to the bookstore and pick up another volume of Dragon Ball. It wasn't until I was sixteen or so that a book store started selling comics on the side and a few years later they went all in with comics. This makes me so very very sad... |
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jul 12, 2014 9:54:33 GMT -5
I never read comics as a kid. Grew up in the 90s, newstand distribution was nill and there were no comic shops around. Our only exposure to superheroes were through the cartoons and movies. Kids would speak in hushed voicess about things they'd heard about comics: Superman died! Bruce had his back broken! Spider-Man had a clone who was Carnage! Any schoolyard debate was trumped by saying "Well in the comics..." It's no wonder manga took off like a rocket in my area. When I was 13 I couldn't buy a Batman, Spider-Man or Hulk book but every two weeks I could head to the bookstore and pick up another volume of Dragon Ball. It wasn't until I was sixteen or so that a book store started selling comics on the side and a few years later they went all in with comics. This makes me so very very sad... I grew up in the 90s, the time where superheroes were better in cartoons than they were in comics. It wasn't a huge loss. I didn't actually read a graphic novel until The Dark Knight came out when I was 18 (Dark Knight Returns and oddly enough it made me immediately dislike the movie. Go figure). I didn't collect my first monthly until the New 52 started. Very much a late bloomer and one of the (supposedly) rare "Liked the movie, bought the comics!" people. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2014 16:15:26 GMT -5
That's surprising. I was buying comics off the 7-11 rack back then. Also at the comic shop, but pretty sure I got some of those comics mentioned at the local store. Knightfall and Doomsday for sure. I had the Carnage comics but that was late in my comics reading days, I think it was due to a subscription for ASM I bought through the school bookfair and continued to renew for a couple years after I quit reading comics for the most part.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 13, 2014 5:20:18 GMT -5
I was born too late to have a "childhood experience reading comics."
When I was five, my mother would take me to the local pharmacy after each doctor's appointment to reward me for good behavior. The first time, I went right for the spinner rack and grabbed an issue of Detective Comics, but this was 1984, and the comic I picked up was a dense, brooding, complex narrative not written for a child to comprehend.
So comics didn't become accessible to me until I returned to them as an adolescent,and even then, everything I was reading was either still too dense, brooding, and complex for me to completely follow or the simplistic tripe being turned out to the new influx of readers coming to comics in 1992.
I was definitely born in the wrong time period for comics.
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jul 13, 2014 6:48:51 GMT -5
It was a very different experience reading comics as a kid back in the 60's.Never mind about no direct market or internet,the whole process seemed so different.Early-mid 60s you probably had 1 TV set,most likely black and white,and when your parents were home they controlled it.Besides TV and playing games,everyone had plenty of time to read comics.And it seemed every kid DID read comics.Every boy and even every girl,some more fanatic than others.And we traded them.You couldn't afford to buy all the ones you wanted,but you got to read then by trading.At that time,there was no thought about what they might be worth in the future or trying to keep them in mint condition.You'd read a comic a few times till you got tired of it then traded it for something fresh.I don't recall comic titles having higher trading values,only comic companies.It was always easy to trade your DC,Marvel or Archie.ACG and Gold Key was 2nd tier but easy to trade as well.Charlton was tough to move.Tower comics at the price of a quarter were worth 2 comics.No one traded Warren magazines-those you kept if you were fortunate to get them in the first place.By trading with my friends I was able to keep up on all the DC and Marvel superhero books.I think my trading days were over by the time I was 12 or 13 both because I was able to make extra money doing odd jobs and could buy more myself and because some friends had lost interest in comics
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Post by December on Jul 13, 2014 9:02:53 GMT -5
My mother was a smoker and, when I was a kid, she purchesed her cigarettes from a liquor store near our house. Being a liquor store in California (I've since learned this is not the case in other parts of the country) they also sold soft drinks, snacks, candy and magazines. The bottom shelf of the magazine rack in this particular store was dedicated to comics. They had a decent selection (mostly Marvel and DC with a smattering of Gold Key and Archies). It was decent but not consistent...the first X-Men comic I ever owned (obtained from that store) was X-Men #141. The next issue they received was #146. (The first back issue purchase I ever made was Uncanny X-Men #142 when I was 13 years old and I was ecstatic, finally being able to finish the story I had begun 3 years earlier.). Every time my mom stopped there to buy cigarettes I would get a comic. It got to the point where I would look forward to the bi-, or sometimes, tri-weekly visits to the store. At the time, little did I realize, that something that has provided me so much comfort and pleasure (comic reading) would also become emotionally linked to the cause of so much distress (my mother's inevitable smoking-related illnesses). Ironically, when I start to worry about her health it is, invariably, comics I turn to for escape. Fortunately, it still works. |
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