shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,874
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Post by shaxper on Jul 16, 2014 22:32:30 GMT -5
Amen. I wish I'd been around for those days. Shax, I gathered from your last post on the topic that you and I are roughly the same age. So you never bothered to check out comics between that first experience with Batman and your later re-initiation into comics as a teenager? I know for myself, my prime comic reading years were roughly 1987 to 1991, or ages 10 to 14. Although I visited a few comic shops, the majority of my purchases were from a haphazard melange of businesses -- the aforementioned "newsstand", drug stores, convenience stores, supermarkets, etc. As a kid, I always thought comic shops were cool (what kid nerd wouldn't have gone ga-ga over wall-to-wall superheroes, Star Wars, sci-fi, toys, and collectibles?), and the non-direct stores definitely had their flaws, but the one thing I miss is how easily accessible comics were. Even if we were traveling, there was guaranteed to be a gas station or small grocery store with a spinner rack somewhere. I picked up a few more after that, but each one was written above my age level, so I stopped trying within the year. After that, I just forgot about comics, dismissing them as not being for me much in the same way I'd do for an issue of Cosmo. I didn't come back until the 1989 Batman film which coincided with a comic shop opening up in the front half of the video rental my family frequented. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2014 13:18:24 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. I remember picking up a Batman comic out of the bargain bin when I was really little. I couldn't read it, but the pictures gave me nightmares.  |
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Post by rom on Apr 16, 2017 11:35:57 GMT -5
I was born in the early '70's, and remember getting interested in comics late in the decade, probably around '79 or so.
At that time, the only place to buy comics was those store spinner racks & a local toy store that carried some - so, I would sometimes go there (when I had extra spending money, which wasn't often) and get some - but I could never follow a series with any regularity, given that you never knew what you were going to find on the spinner racks, and I never knew which days the comics were coming out. That's one of the many reasons I liked those bagged comics, in which three-four comics to a bag were sold - in some cases the same title in chronological order.
By the early-mid '80's, the direct market comic stores were around so it was easier to get them, and Marvel comics had check-lists in the back so you knew which ones were coming out & at roughly what time. However, given that I was too young to have a car/driver's license to go the store I still couldn't get all of the ones I wanted.
Titles I do remember getting & enjoying during this era (roughly 1979 - 1985) included:
Amazing Spider-man
Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-man
Fantastic Four (John Byrne)
Star Wars by Marvel comics
Battlestar Galactica by Marvel
Master of Kung Fu - excellent, and possibly my all-time favorite comics series
Conan the Barbarian
ROM Spaceknight
Savage Sword of Conan - magazine
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
Kull
I also enjoyed the "Marvel Super Specials" at the time, which in most cases adapted popular movies from the era. In many cases, I read these prior to seeing the films (especially since some of these films were rated R). I especially liked the adaptations of:
For Your Eyes Only (James Bond)
Dragonslayer
Blade Runner
Conan the Barbarian ('82 feature film)
Over at DC, I was less into the standard super-hero fare (except for Batman), but more enjoyed the great genre comics (sci-fi/fantasy/war/horror/western/etc.) that were big at that time, like:
Tales of the Unexpected
House of Mystery
House of Secrets
Sgt. Rock
Unknown Soldier
Jonah Hex
Warlord by Mike Grell
Arak Son of Thunder
Arion Lord of Atlantis
& some mini & maxi-series like:
Nathaniel Dusk
Jemm Son of Saturn
Spanner's Galaxy
Camelot 3000
However, I also liked:
Batman & Detective Comics - I especially liked the Gene Colan-drawn issues
Batman and the Outsiders
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Post by urrutiap on Apr 16, 2017 18:33:50 GMT -5
I'm an old timer. My childhood comic book experience was the early and mid 1980s where my parent would buy whatever comics for me and my sister from the grocery store pretty much.
Not every issue but a random issue here and there.Stuff that was around at the time from Spider Ham, power pack, alpha flight, Groo, Conan, Marvel Star Wars, x Men and the 6 issue John byrne Superman man of steel. Then came NOW Comics where Ghostbusters and Terminator they were pretty popular from NOW Comics at the time
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