Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,222 
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Post by Confessor on May 30, 2020 19:09:13 GMT -5
1. It's hard to remember exactly, but a combination of my Mother, who was buying me black & white UK reprints of Spider-Man, Batman and Superman comics in the late '70s (when I'd have been 3 or 4 years old), and watching reruns of the 1950s George Reeves Superman TV show and the 1966 Batman one.
2. Well, my Mum would've been buying me the comics mentioned above around 1976 or 1977, I guess.
3. I was regularly getting comics up until the very early 1990s, when I sort of lost interest in them. I returned to actively collecting comics around 1996, picking up stuff like Astro City, Untold Tales of Spider-Man, Marvels and the Vertigo Jonah Hex minis.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 30, 2020 20:02:37 GMT -5
1. Who is complicated and I have to say, I don't really know who provided me with my first comic book. I read the comic section of the paper (well looked, then read) and I watched the Batman cartoon on Saturday morning. Either my parents or grandparents or someone else provided the first title I can remember reading, which was an issue of Super Goof, from Gold Key (Goofie as a superhero) and I know I saw an Uncle Scrooge around that same time frame. I have no recollection where they came from. I also have memories of reading Fox and the Crow, which ended before I was old enough to have seen them, so no idea where that came from. Similarly, The Three Mouseketeers (Sheldon Meyer), but that was being reprinted when I started reading, so that has multiple possibilities. I did have a neighbor who moved in when I was in the second grade, who got comics more often than I did, which gave me more access to them, as he would let me borrow them to read. He outgrew comics long before I did (I'll let you know when that is, when it occurs. It will probably be in my obituary).
2. What year? That is also tough. My mother once told me that she discovered I could read when we were driving somewhere and I was reading signs out loud. I wasn't in the first grade yet; not certain if I was in kindgarten, yet. I know that I watched Sesame Street and the Electric Company and probably learned to recognize letters and sound out syllables there. The best I can pin it down is about 1970, when I would have been 4 years old.
3. What year did I stop? What's the temperature in Hell right now? In the words of Rob Zombie....
"Yeah, never gonna stop me, never gonna stop
Never gonna stop me, never gonna stop
Never gonna stop me, never gonna stop!"
(then I think he curses a lot or plays a sound clip from some cult horror movie)
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Post by tartanphantom on May 31, 2020 0:59:16 GMT -5
1-- I don't remember what attracted me to them initially, perhaps the Batman and Green Hornet shows.
2-- My earliest memories of owning comics dates back to 1966-- age 3. I think my mother was actually the catalyst, she was an elementary school teacher, and taught me to read at a very early age-- even comic books. I read them constantly until around age 12 or 13, but I began seriously collecting in late 1979 (age 16).
3-- I quite buying new books around 1996-- basically I became disillusioned with how bad the writing was on books around that time, and how the whole "investment boom" had taken the fun out of the hobby. I kept my collection though, and re-entered active collecting around 2008-2009, but primarily back issues only. I have some post-modern comics, but the bulk of my collection is 1950's-1980's.
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Post by MWGallaher on May 31, 2020 9:41:38 GMT -5
1/2. I liked the superhero cartoon shows of the late 60's, but never really considered reading the comic books until 1971, when I picked up an issue of Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen to satisfy my monster movie itch, with no new Famous Monsters magazine on the stands that week. Those first few months I specialized in monster-centric comics, of which there was never any lack in that era.
3. I quit buying new comics in 2010, mainly a financial decision. The last one I purchased was the final issue of DC's Wednesday Comics. I've bought a few collections of older material since then, and read a good sampling of newer stuff from the library.
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Post by Phil Maurice on May 31, 2020 9:59:19 GMT -5
It was reruns of the '67 Spider-Man cartoon that prompted me to pester my Dad to buy my first comic at a Kresge in upstate New York. I recognized the Green Goblin on the cover from the cartoon. The comic was Amazing Spider-Man #122, so it must have been Spring, 1973.
I cut up that copy and pasted the panels in a notebook to "create my own story." Hey, I was five. I bought a replacement reader copy in 1986 and then a beautiful 8.5 in 2013 to celebrate 40 years of collecting.
I cancelled my pull-lists and detached from buying new comics in 2008. My interest in the older stuff just overrode everything else.
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Post by junkmonkey on Jun 1, 2020 17:35:47 GMT -5
1. Who or what got you started on comic books?
Realising my kids didn't have the great comic landscape that I'd grown up with. The weekly comic market that I knew, and took for granted, in the UK back in the 60s and 70s was gone. It had vanished without me noticing somewhere.
2. What year did you start? Start buying them again? 2015.
3. If you stopped buying them regularly what year? as a kid? gawd knows. Some time in the late 70s.
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Post by berkley on Jun 1, 2020 20:02:28 GMT -5
1. Can't recall specifics but I think it was just a matter of seeing comics and other reading material around the house and finding out early on that I liked reading in general.
2. I think 1967, in the sense of asking my parents for specific comics I'd see on the stands. A few years later (1969 or 70?) in terms of having an allowance and thus money of my own to buy them myself.
3. I've never really stopped. The Marvel/DC stuff tapered off to zero in the 1980s, but by the end of that decade I was reading independent comics and have kept it up ever since. Love and Rockets is about the only regular comic I buy right now but there are always new things popping up. I did stop for a few years in the early 70s when I didn't have enough spending money to keep buying both comics and the paperback books (not to mention record albums) I was getting into.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 2, 2020 15:31:44 GMT -5
1. Who or what got you started on comic books? 2. What year did you start? 3. If you stopped buying them regularly what year? 1. My father read the Sunday newspaper comics to us before I could read. He identified with Dagwood. I first noticed comic books at a local newsstand one day in my first month of second grade. Whichever parent was with me encouraged me to pick one, and I chose Spider-Man #7. 2. September 1963. 3. May of 1978. I graduated from college and started looking for a job and preparing to get married. No more time or money for comics. In the next few years I dabbled - completed The First Kingdom and bought the Freak Brothers whenever there was a new one, but after that I was away from comics and fandom until about 2001. |
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Post by spoon on Jun 2, 2020 20:30:16 GMT -5
1. My older brother was reading comics, so I got interested in buying and reading my own. Also, I watched The Transformers cartoon and the comic book series had recently started. I wanted to read it.
2. 1985
3. That's hard to say. Around 1997, my interest in buying new comics declined enough that I didn't feel like going to an LCS every month. But it was more off-and-on than a clean break. I'd stop reading new comics, but then get drawn back into a new title. For the past couple of decades, my pattern has been to only follow one or two current series (like the Busiek/Perez Avengers, DnA Legion, Amazing Spider-Girl, or Waid/Samnee Daredevil), but to keep buying back issues and TPBs.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 5, 2020 21:00:38 GMT -5
You know, I just realized what led me to comics, after posting something in the There I said it thread..... Picture books. As a kid, I grew up in a small farm town. apart from my school library, we had no municipal library. Instead, a bookmobile came out once a wee, from the Decatur Public Library (20 miles away). It was there I discovered Dr Seuss, Jan de Brunhoff, Robert McCloskey, Ludwig Bemelmans, HA Rey, Jan & Stan Berenstain, Virginia Lee Burton, Maurice Sendak and Ed Emberly. My parents also bought some books, via mail order, from Parents Magazine Press, including my all-time facvorite story, The King with Six Friends, by Jay Williams and illustrations by Imero Gobbato. The story features a deposed king, who wanders the countryside, where he aids 6 people in trouble. Each has a special ability and they join him, out of gratitude. he comes to a new kingdom, where the ruler seeks a husband for his daughter. The deposed King is struck by her beauty and asks permission to court her. The ruler knew the young king's father, but worries about him being able to defend his kingdom. He sets a series of tasks for him and the young king carries out each one, with the help of one of his friend's abilities. In the end, when he marries the princess, a steward remarks to one of the 6 how the king did nearly nothing. The man counters, "He led us." It was like a storybook Justice League and it helped inspire my love of adventure heroes (and was one of the best books about real leadership I ever saw) All of these artists were great visual storytellers and their books progressed much as a comic book ad it was a natural segue from them to comic books.   |
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