Your First Comic?

[michaelpaciocco]

What was your first comic? When did you get into it? What do you think your first comic says about you? Do you remember?


Now, for me, I remember getting exposure to comics early on, with some GI JOE and Alf comics (STFU, if you don't like Alf, then you and I can never, ever be friends, the end ). But the first comic I remember getting and reading and fully enjoying....




No, I'm not fucking kidding - at age SEVEN, I picked up Claremont at his densest, most impentratable - at the penultimate chapter of a crossover story arc.

Now, let's be clear, up until then, my ENTIRE EXPOSURE TO THE X-MEN consisted of:

-Their appearances on "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends"
-The "Pryde of the X-Men" aborted Pilot Cartoon (yes, the one where Wolverine sounds Australian and the White Queen shoots lightning)

This means I went in not knowing about Madeline Pryor, THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA, where was Charles Xavier, why the hell Beast was Blue, or who the hell
Archangel, Psyloke, Rogue, Havok, or Longshot were. Oh, and trying to figure out where Firestar was. (Remember, 7 years old).

And yet, I kept up with it and slowly filled in the gaps (ah, thank you comic shop boom with your questionable back issue pricing schemes), and by 1991, I had it mostly figured out.

So...I have no idea what that says about me. But I figure the fact that my first comic book was Chris Claremont in his prime, featuring nearly-naked Storm probably goes at least partway to explaining why I'm on this forum

Tag you're it,

Michael

[K-Box]

My first comic was probably some Archie or Superman bullshit, since I remember my folks getting those for me at the local Dean's Thrift Mart in Otis Orchards, Washington. Superman was always in mid-storyline when I saw it, so since we obviously didn't go grocery shopping at Dean's every single week, nor did they always have the same titles in stock, I wound up getting ahold of a lot of incomplete storylines, going WTF to myself, and caring more about Archie than about Superman (not that I cared that much about Archie, but he was at least easier to follow).

I have fond memories of other people's comics, though. My best friend in grade school, Ryan Ross, was spoiled as hell, so he had complete runs of the Transformers and Batman comics (and even the V tie-in comics - yes, V, with Marc Singer!). I remember reading the Batman issue that debuted Black Mask, whose origin story unnerved the shit out of me as a little boy, in ways that I kind of liked. My aunts, Beverly and Melissa, were in their teens when I was in grade school, so I raided their comics stacks a few times. They had the origin story of Ghost Rider, which I found chilling as a kid, and a run of Dark Shadows comics, with Angelique the witch and Quentin the werewolf.

One comic that my aunts had, which particularly unsettled me, was an issue of Superman with a cover story about "The Satanic Son of Superman!" I didn't get the whole concept of "imaginary stories" back then (or at least, how they were different from "real stories" about purely fictional characters), so I actually thought that Superman-as-widower, with a dead witch for a wife and an evil son, was in continuity (not that I knew what "continuity" was back then, but you get what I'm saying).

The first comics of my own that I distinctly remember, though, are my Ambush Bug comics, set right in the immediate wake of Crisis On Infinite Earths (which I knew nothing about at the time, so all those in-jokes just flew right over my head), and Swamp Thing #37. I loved Ambush Bug for being metafictionally aware of his own status as a comic book character, long before I knew what "metafiction" even was, and I loved Swamp Thing #37 so much that it was the first comic book I remembered the ISSUE NUMBER of. I loved seeing the Swamp Thing's perspective, as a plant, and I loved the diverse cast of characters that was introduced, and I loved the huge, looming, mysterious threat that was alluded to, and I loved loved LOVED the blonde-haired British ASSHOLE with the cigarettes and the trenchcoat.

I even remembered the guy's NAME - John CONSTANTINE - and years later, after I'd quit comics in grade school (because of the goddamn "love triangle" in Superman, which seemed even stupider to me than the love triangle in Archie), but before I started collecting comics in college, I was in the university bookstore, and I saw the cover of a comic that read John Constantine: Hellblazer, and I thought, "Nah, it can't be the same guy ... can it?" But it was, and he was having his last showdown with Papa Midnite, and as much as Garth Ennis' work has declined over the years, I can thank him (and Alan Moore, by extension) for getting me back into comics in college.

[michaelpaciocco]

Actually, that explains a lot - both your dislike of Superman and your general like of snarky bastards

[michaelpaciocco]

Correction: May have been 8 when UXM 243 came out...but the point of the narrative remains the same I hope

[mrjl]

I'm fairly sure it was Transformers 19, the debut of Omega Supreme. Then a couple of weeks later I found Transformers 18 at a 7-11.

Except for a few Archies comics I only read stuff with TV or toy tie-ins. Marvel's Star Comics line, TF, GI Joe, Alf, C.O.P.S.

[jensaltmann]

I remember that Superman story Kirk mentions -- and I remember thinking it was pretty cool at the time.

Of course, I was only 9 or 10 at the time.

I don't remember what my first comic was. Most likely an issue of Fix & Foxi, by Kauka Comics. Kauka is considered Germany's Disney. I also remember reading Disney comics, Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, Lone Ranger, a whole lot of Francobelgian stuff (I remember I particularly liked Michel Vaillant and Rick Hochet). I picked up the Marvel comics series when they rebooted the correct way. (Meaning the previous publisher had lost the licence, and the new licence holder started over from the respective #1 issues). I remember reading Superman and Batman. Heck, I even read The Spirit.

I read pretty much everything that was published at the time. Completely indiscriminately. Because it was available.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, I stopped reading comics that were translated from English and started to read Marvel, DC, and when Pacific and First launched, I was there.

That lasted until Carter lost to Reagan, which caused the US-$ to become more expensive. The publishers raised prices at the same time, so I dropped out of comics entirely.

That lasted about 10 - 15 years.

[jarddavis]

Yes, I am that old.

Yes, for awhile, when I was a kid, comics were bought at the local supermarket or drug store for a mere $.25 cents.

No this was not my actual "first" comic, but this is the one I remember reading first. The first time I started making an attempt to collect the following issues in order to follow the whole story.

The first Marvel issue I remember buying?


Tarantula remained my favorite spidy villain for years because I liked his costume.

Although I do remember reading 130 at some point. Hammerhead. Spider-mobile.

[michaelpaciocco]

Huh...I guess that's not a surprise there.

Interesting side note - the first Spider-Man comic I ever read also featured the Taruntula...but again, this was the late 80s and I'm pretty sure it was an issue of Spectacular. I just remembered it featured the John Walker Captain America being a dupe of the government trying to help the Tarantula (oh Walker...are you ever not a blind minion?)

[Anders]

I have no idea which was my first comic. I've been reading them for as long as I've been able to read (around age six or so) and my parents bought some for me even before then. It was probably Superman or Donald Duck.

The earliest bought for me was most probably one of these:



Bamse is still the Swedish comics character, over 30 years after the first publication and nearly a decade after the death of his creator. Occasionally steeped in controversy - there was a lot of more-or-less overt socialist propaganda in it from time to time - the positive message of tolerance, the importance of friendship and working together and the social roots of crime presented in a child-friendly format won out, probably because it was contrasted with the evil capitalist morals presented in the US imperialist Donald Duck.

Bamse even has his own version of Spiderman's credo: "He who is very strong must also be very kind."