"The One that Got Me"

The thing for me is I used to get more hooked on having the comics as a kid than reading them. Usually the serialized stories bored me, so I spent most of the time looking at the art and drawing the characters. I know, I'm responsible for the terrible comics boom of the '90s.

The first comic I distinctly remember getting is Uncanny X-men #300. It was that one with John Romita Jr. art and a terrible holo-foil cover that I thought was all-too-cool at the time. It took a while before I actually started reading and appreciating them from there, though.

I stopped reading or buying pretty much any and all comics for a good while, and briefly read some more when Grant Morrison's X-Men stuff came out. Got a few issues of that, but then quickly went back to reading nothing. When I was on a trip a few years later I needed reading material, so I grabbed the Assault On Weapon Plus trade to read on the way back, and then Dark Knight Returns, which I had read years earlier.

I then stuck entirely to trades for a while, but eventually couldn't help myself and started getting several ongoing series when the stories sounded too fun to wait for. Haven't looked back since.

Oddly, as a kid I hardly ever bought comic books. I thought they were all right but not worth spending my money on. I went to movies instead. I bought the odd one like:



but never as much as my friends did.

I didn't get into having a collection until Sandman. Bone followed shortly thereafter and now I have a few that I read on a regular basis including 100 Bullets, Y, Ex Machina and Fables. I've never been big into the superheroes thing, I guess.

I think what really got me into comics was actually hearing about the death of Bob Kane back in '99 when EW mentioned there was this plotline about Gotham getting hit by an Earthquake and then being shut down. I then headed over to a local comics shop and got this:



Mind you that's the first trade but the issue was Batman: No Man's Land #1 and the cover was the same.

Damn, I was literally just googling for that image. Rom # 1 was the first comic I ever bought (from the corner Stop-n-Rob around the corner from my house).

Edited to add: The Dire Wraiths wars what got me hooked into X-Men (remember when Storm lost her powers). Thinking about it, Rom was not your typical gateway comic book.

Rom is that cool (and shiny).

This issue got me into comics the first time when I was 8:




I was big into Hulk because of the TV show. And I loved that the imprint art in the corner was like a little flip-motion cartoon showing Banner turning into Hulk. And I loved the concept of a being like Nightmare toying with Banner's mind and forcing him to give up and let the Hulk take over full time. It culminated in what (at the time for me) was the coolest crossover of all time in Incredible Hulk 300:



My favourite part was the page showing Thor and Hulk throwdown in the middle of New York with lightning and thunder going off overhead. This storyline led to the Hulk being exiled to interdimensional Crossroads. As an 8 year old, this stuff blew my mind.

Over the next year, my parents stopped buying me comics and I got interested in other stuff. The following Christmas when I was 9, my grandparents put this in my stocking:



This is where my fandom for Spider-man began. I didn't realize at the time that Marvel Tales was just a reprint series, and I didn't care. All I knew was that the scene where Spidey is trapped under tons of steel in Doc Ock's underwater lair and he's about to get flooded in, his only thought being that he can't get the serum to Aunt may to save her life really had an impact on me. The scene right after when he manages to pull together his last ounce of strength to remove the huge hunk of steel off of him... that image will be forever burned into my mind. At that point I understood who Peter Parker was and what elevated him over others as a great character. With the exception of the Clone Saga and the recent crap involving lame-ass plot devices, I've been a Spidey fan ever since.

ETA: Link change for the Marvel Tales issue.

Similar to Mr. Bendis in the first entry of the linked article, the first comic I can remember was an "audio book" version of this issue of Amazing Spider-Man:





The record, which slid into a little sleeve inside the back cover of the comic, included sound effects for rain, shattering glass, a snarling Man-Wolf, etc. Pretty much the coolest thing ever at age 7.

I think these were mentioned in a previous CHUD thread ages ago, which included links to MP3 copies of the records. Hearing that Man-Wolf record again after 20 years put a huge grin on my face.

Pretty sure this was my first comic.
I barely remember what happened in it. I think Gordon had a heart attack?

You probably would have understood it better if it were in english.

I would have kept and remembered that comic if it was full of BATMAN: YANKEE DEVIL Communist propaganda.

I had no idea of the backstory or anything, but the Thing and the Hulk teaming up to bust shit up was enough.

The first comic I remember was a reprint of Superman #141 my uncle got me when I went into the hospital to get my tonsils removed. But the ones that sucked me in ended up being a two-issue arc of the Justice League fighting some doughy alien things as well as Thomas Oscar Morrow. The big reveal at the end was the Red Tornado, who had broken free of his ties to T.O.Morrow and wanted to rejoin the JLA, even if he was merely a synthetic.

Damn...that was a long time ago.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't. IIRC during my dollar box diving days, that book dealt with some storyline where Batman went over to Moscow forwhatever reason. So don't worry true believer, that's not Bat-mankoff you're looking at.

Probably the giant sized Marvel adaptation of Star Wars. That's the earliest comic I can remember being bought.

All I know is from that moment on, my Batman drawings always had eyebrows.

The first comic book I ever read/bought:




And the second:

Interestingly enough, I actually own both of those comics. I also remember that Iron Man tried to use some sonic gizmos that shot out of his shoulders to fight against Fin Fang Foom. They lasted about a second until he got them with his fire breath.

On the way to the beach with my family one summer, I hassled my parents until they let me drop some allowance on a 3-pack of comics. I can only remember two of them; one was Deadman and the other was a nasty (hey, I was 7) DC horror comic called "The Witching Hour." I can't find a link to the cover, but the series featured stories that were often Poe-esque with theives and cheats and murderers getting their grisly (but just) deserts, supernatural style. My gateway drug, for example, had a murdering duellist (you know, guy with a rapier) and one of his former foes comes back from the grave to take revenge, or some such nonesense. Damn I loved horror comics.

Deadman wasn't bad, either.

Not only does Batman go to Moscow, he singlehandedly saves Mikhail Gorbechev from assassination!

For me it was probably a late 70's Conan with John Buscema art. But I also remember my dad bringing me home X-Men 120 with Alpha Flight as guest stars. I also remember having a bunch of old issues of Sgt. Rock, Blackhawk, and Nick Fury Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D. that I got from nickle bins at a used book store near my grandma's house. Tough to say really.

My first:



A hand-me down from my step-uncle (my dad's step-brother) who was living with us, back in the early 70s. He left after graduating high school, leaving us all of his comics, including the crown jewel of my collection... Amazing Fantasy #15!

ETA: Back in those days, we used to get comics down at the local 7-11. Coolest shit ever was when my dad would not only buy us comic books (at 15-25 cents each!), but Slurpee-filled Superhero Cups!

The first comic I ever read was Tin Tin. I got all of them for free by a neighbourkid when it moved away. It was a glorious collection and some glorious fun for my childhood.

And then I sold them all for 10 bucks. Worst deal of my life.

But I never got too deep into Marvel/DC territory since there has been virtually no market for it around these parts. But thanks to sites like this I have come to appreciate quite a bit of that stuff in the last decade.

My first comicbook was a Batman, where he saves a woman in a red metal bomb suit, and it ends with her dying by a river. I can't remember much else.

Cool. Do you still have that issue of Amazing Fantasy #15?

I don't know if they were in fact the very first comics I ever read, but the two earliest comics I remember were BLOODSHOT #0 and STAR TREK ANNUAL '92. The Star Trek one is notable for featuring a woman on the cover with buck teeth.

I remember picking up this Spiderman set at Toys-R-Us. It was a combination of seemingly unrelated issues - one where Spiderman gets captured and beaten by gangsters, one which told the origin of Doctor Octopus, and one about Carnage, I think - in a black cardboard packaging. Who knows what that was about.

My grandparents got me subscriptions to Amazing Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk when I was about six or seven. The first issues I got were the 1st appearance of the Hobgoblin and the 2nd part of a Hulk story where he and the Avengers are chasing the Leader backwards through time. Awesome.

As a kid, I was always into the movie tie-in comics (Marvel's Super Special line and the occasional DC release).

I had Buckaroo Banzai, Krull, Last Starfighter, Conan the Destroyer, Little Shop of Horrors... these comics are probably one of the bigger reasons I became such a movie freak as a kid.

I still remember the time my grandpa bought me a copy of the Blade Runner comic when I was 9 (yeesh, 20 years ago). I had no idea what the movie was about. But I didn't let go of that beaten-to-hell comic until I found a mint copy for cover price in a bargain bin some twelve years later in college.

By then, I'd discovered Mark Waid's Flash and became a real comic geek.

Another of my first comics was the Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. A lot of those early-to-mid 80's Marvel movie tie-ins were drawn by some serious greats (Al Williamson on Blade Runner, John Buscema on Conan the Destroyer, Gene Colan on Little Shop, etc).

I remember being on holiday and the weather being really bad. My folks bought me a comic that involved the Justice League moving to Europe. The only two characters I knew in it were Batman and Superman, but I remember thinking The Martian Manhunter was a lame superman rip off.

I was about 7 mind you.

Yep! Pretty good condition, insured, and kept somewhere safe. Won't get top dollar for it (not mint), but enough to finance my kid's college education (if and when I have kids that is).

I also have the Punisher's first appearance, as well as lots of other '70s era books (John Byrne X-Men, etc.)

The first run of comics I remember that sent me hauling ass to the comics spinner at the drug store every month was the build up to Spectacular Spider-Man 100. Cloak and Dagger, the Kingpin, the Spot(!), Spider-Man dating and splitting from the Black Cat...That was the beginning of many, many thousands of dollars down the hole.

Neat. Having Amazing Fantasy #15 in your collection must be pretty cool.

That cover's by Frank Miller, by the way.

I've been reading comics for so long that I don't remember what my first comic was. I've got a photo taken when I was 3 years old, though, holding this particular issue:

Gorbechev's birthmark is melting right of his head.

Not my first comic. I had some weird marvel almanac as a kid, but this the first that really got me.

When I was 13 years old, I ... er, embezelled money from my newspaper delivery route to pay for this issue. I regret nothing.

I think it was an early issue of "Transformers" from the mid-'80s. Shockwave is on the cover standing next to a wall with "Are All Dead?" burned into it. The Autobots apparently had gotten their asses handed to them by the Decepticons, and Optimus Prime's severed head was kept in some weird room with all the wires plugged into it. Pretty heavy reading for a 5-year-old.

I think mine was one of those old three packs Marvel used to sell in the 70's to maybe the mid 80's? It had one Spider Man (don't remember if it was Amazing or Spectacular, just that it had the Black Cat) one Incredible Hulk (he fought some warriors made of ice) and an issue of Micronauts I still have somewhere, sans cover. I'm guessing it was around '79.

Started collecting for good in 2nd grade ('83-'84). Loved Rom and his integration into the marvel universe as well. Those were the days.

I didn't follow comics at all as a kid-- I was more about Mad and (shudder) Cracked. I think the first run I collected was the Marvel adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. Still, whenever I was visiting relatives I seemed to get cheap comics thrown my way as a sort of generic 'kid' thing. One book made an impression, and strong enough that I hunted down a copy some thirty years later: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #233.

My original was missing the cover, so this was my first impression of it:

...it goes a ways towards explaining a minor sneaker fetish, I think.

Also memorable was the splash page introducing the villain-- a perfect expression of the lasting influence of both Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko:

Laser babies, man. Frickin' laser babies.

This book is rare in that it exists almost exactly the way I remembered it, down to the Letters column. Having since collected much of the surrounding run, I can now appreciate it as an anomaly as well-- the art and writing are far above average for the series.

My first two comics were Superman fighting this villian named Thirsty Thursday and some Batman story where Catwoman was in her purple/cat'o'nine tails costume. She raked a guy across the face with her nails and left bloody marks.

First comic I ever read. I had no idea what was going on but I loved it.