Back in the Day

[Mike225]

I've been reading Silver Surfer Essentials V2, and it made me nostalgic. The majority of the books for the collection came out about 1987, which is just about a year before I started collecting comics.

I'm not sure why I'm starting this thread, other than nostalgia. Claremont and Silvestri were on Uncanny X-Men (the only X-Men book), Walt Simonson was on X-Factor and Amazing Spider-Man had Micheline and McFarlane. That era will always be one of my favorites, just because it's when I got hooked.

Anybody else? What got you hooked?

[BIGROD]

Early Layton IRON MAN, Romita JR on UNCANNY X-MEN, SECRET WARS, CRISIS, etc. were just some of the books that got me hooked in the very beginning. One of my first comics was an issue of IRON MAN. Can't remember the exact issue number (still have it somewhere in my collection), but cover price was 60¢. :cry:

[Mike225]

You just reminded me of why I started collecting comics: someone brought two issues of Uncanny X-Men..the two-part story with Kulan Gath where Spider-Man was crucified. Thanks, man.

[BIGROD]

You just reminded me of why I started collecting comics: someone brought two issues of Uncanny X-Men..the two-part story with Kulan Gath where Spider-Man was crucified. Thanks, man.

Those are the exact issues I was thinking of when I posted. :laugh:

[Mike225]

http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/uxm190-191.jpg

[knockedoutpanzer]

1977 Action comics(not the DC one) got banned for violence and police bashing. The publishers changed it's name to ...2000AD and Judge Dredd took over. I bought a load of cheapo early 80's 2000ad's today with Rogue trooper and Nemesis the warlock and lots of other stuff you've never heard of. But I have. :happy:

[Mike225]

1977 Action comics(not the DC one) got banned for violence and police bashing. The publishers changed it's name to ...2000AD and Judge Dredd took over. I bought a load of cheapo early 80's 2000ad's today with Rogue trooper and Nemesis the warlock and lots of other stuff you've never heard of. But I have. :happy:What was it about them that got you hooked? Seriously, I've never read 2000AD or Judge Dredd.

[Gauthier]

You know what really did it for me? It was those little footnotes that Marvel and DC used to do where they would tell you the issue number of an earlier storyline they were referencing. If something seemed interesting to me, I would write it down and wait until my parents made their next trip into the city so that I could tage along and talk them into making a stop at a comic book store. I remember one trip back in '87 or '88, I had just read an issue of Spectacular Spider-Man where Spider-Man found an old journal of Professor Warren, and the footnotes told me about the original Gwen Stacy clone story, and I just knew I had to read it. And so on my parents next trip into the city, I taged along and bought the comics- but thinking back, what I remember more than the actual comics, is the drive we took in from the suburbs along Lake Michigan, enjoying the Christmas decorations in the yards of the giant lake front mansions; it was just begining to dusk at the time, and the colored lights were so vivid against the deep, almost indigo blues of the oncomming night.
To this day, those little trips into the city are some of my fondest memories, and quite frankly, they're imposible to separate away from comics. When I smell that wonderful back issue smell, I smell my dad telling me I had five minutes to run into whatever comic book store we happened to be at, but in reality giving me a half an hour, or my mom showing me the candy store she used to walk to on her way home from school or the theater she saw movies at on Saturday afternoons.
My God...without comics, I would have just stayed home with my older brother or sister and missed out on those perfect moments.

[Mike225]

That's awesome, man. Thanks for posting it.

[Gauthier]

No, thank you for allowing me to re-live it.

[BIGROD]

You know what really did it for me? It was those little footnotes that Marvel and DC used to do where they would tell you the issue number of an earlier storyline they were referencing. If something seemed interesting to me, I would write it down and wait until my parents made their next trip into the city so that I could tage along and talk them into making a stop at a comic book store.

I used to enjoy doing something similar. I would read the MARVEL UNIVERSE HANDBOOKS (The "Dead" versions especially) and then try to track down issues featuring key events and/or deaths.

http://image.comicvine.com/uploads/vol/4000/3237/3237-68392-1-official-handbook-of_400.jpg http://image.comicvine.com/uploads/vol/4000/3497/3497-66632-1-official-handbook-of_400.jpg

[Mike225]

The decider for me used to be if the comic had a letter page.

[MARK A ROBINSON]

Paul Smith & Chris Claremont on X-Men.- To this day...nothing compares.
Lannings and Oliver Copiel on LEGION
Azzarello & Fruscin on HELLBLAZER
The Luna Bros.
John Byrne's Alpha Flight and FF stuff
Marv Wolfman and Perez on Teen Titans.
SECRET WARS

but i remember hating comics for a long time until i read

The Authority with Millar and Quietly.

that's when i knew there was hope.

:)

M.

[Newt]

I didn't start reading comics, beyond a few scattered issues here and there, until I was already in my 20's. Los Bros Hernandez' Love and Rockets is what got me hooked.

[Mike225]

I've heard of Love and Rockets but never checked it out. Are there any collections?

[JackpotTiger]

I hope you all don't mind me pitching in my offerings here. For me, I'm afraid, I've always thought of my love of comics as a curse. The very thing that made me feel different from everyone, the very thing that made comics so appealing. I grew up in a small town in NW Pennsylvania. When I say small, I mean no stores, no post office, just a paved road and some houses and lots of pastures and cows. Spider-man and his world were hardly accessible through print media, so that left television, and the weekly Spider-man strip in my grandparents' Sunday paper. This is what got me hooked and made me crave more. I can barely remember the first comic book I peeled open. I know for sure it was Superman. The cover had Lex Luthor flying wearing this green sort of armor. The splash page had Superman kicking/punting something metal through the sky. I remember this because I'd seen the Superman movie by this time and as a kid I loved the football gag where Clark launched that pigskin into the stratosphere. After seeing him do nearly the same thing in the pages of the comic, I remember thinking it was one of his 'moves.' I never tracked down that comic in later years, but I'm sure somone out there could recall it based on my description.
Anyways from then on it snowballed into an intense desire to draw comics for a living. When that dawned on me life actually made sense. Un fortunately everyone, and I mean everyone, thought it was the stupidest thing they ever heard. If they didn't say it out loud, they said it in their eyes. My father is a Civil War/general history nut. Weirdos in their own right, just like me. He didn't get that. He thought comics were stupid, I didn't get his love for the Civil War. But me mom, God bless her, was able to get him to bite his tongue. So instead of him saying out loud his true honest opinion, I had to fear what he was thinking. Unless I drew a Civil War soldier or went to a re-enactment (several/the things we'll do to get attention) all I got were blank stares, and unimpressed nods. I know all this sounds like petty whiny excuse making, but I've never talked to anyone about this. I didn't go after it. Sure I drew a lot. I went to art school. After graduating high school in '95 I sent seven pages to Marvel. I was so clueless I didn't send an SASE. After a long time went by I called the number that was listed in the tiny writing below the splash page of a random Marvel comic. I spoke to a man named Lewandowski, I believe. He explained what I'd done, but mailed me a two page critique anyway. I was the only one who thought it was a big deal. But I let other people steer me in other directions. I made decisions based on people's reactions. And I am so ashamed. Here I am at 30, working at Lowe's. I've looked my fifteen year old self in the face and saw the disappointnment.
This past year has been my breaking point. I went to my first comic convention. My girlfriend took me. It was in New York City and it was amazing. I took 5 poorly drawn pages, most of them can be viewed here.
I dropped them off at the Marvel booth and waited the weekend. Within that time I got a critique from inker Art Thibert and I had a smoke on the terrace with Peter Mayhew. That was amazing! Art Thibert was great. He said tighten it up. He said I could be doing this within a year. Marvel wasn't ineterested, but I wasn't surprised or upset. I'd been to way too many re-enactments before allowing myself this experience. It was all worth it.
I'm sorry fellas, I got kinda carried away. Y'all were talking about the good ol' days and I felt compelled to share. Hopefully you can relate, or at least empathize. Thanks for starting this thread.

David William Ferry

[Mike225]

Don't be sorry at all, man. Thanks for sharing that.

[knockedoutpanzer]

What was it about them that got you hooked? Seriously, I've never read 2000AD or Judge Dredd.


Da Judge was the first real anti-hero I can remember. (I 'm sure there were others), however the mega-violence and the marvelously anti-liberal and cynical stories are what kept me reading. Of course an anti-hero is just a hero in wolfs clothing,you know he'll save the day it just might mean blowing up a planet in order to do so. ;)

Judge Dredd would save you from a speeding hover- car,shoot the crim-bag driver then throw you in jail for 6 months in the cubes for jay-walking.
Until then heroes had jut jaws,adoring wives/girlfriends/publics,wanted to do "good" and never killed.No wonder I hated them.

[SMT]

wow this is a cool thread here. I remember watching superheroes on T.V. and seeing posters, lunch boxes and various other promotional goodies for awhile and I think the first stuff I read was some of the old Tarzan stuff someplace. But I remember that I was always drawing and writing and early on I knew I was a storyteller and it was something that I just had to do like breathing or eating. It was a part of me and I figured that the best place for me to be was in comics. So I started collecting them sometime in the early 80s and consequently got hooked. Spider-Man got me at first and then it all snowballed from there. I started to spend all my money and time on them. I was reading everything I could get my hands on nothing was safe. I have no formal training but I studied hard and I learned allot from the books and the artists/writers who created them. I think one of the things a remember the most is when I teacher of mine asked me if I was going to be a novelist since she really liked what I was writing. I can still see her face so clearly, as if it were only two minutes ago when I told her I wanted to write comics lol. She seriously looked as though she was going to have a heart attack hehe. It was then that I came clean to my family and friends about, not what I wanted to do but what I was going to do. Yeah my family didn't like it too much to say the least and what eventually happened was I worked as an artist in other media for a spell until I am where I am today making a go at comics. Its pretty sad really though looking back cause I remember comics being so good. It was almost a given that the comic would be a fun read. I can only guess what happened but comics are in a bad way these days. :cry:

[Troy Wall]

My friends, there is but one awful curse running through this thread, and that is the Curse of the Failed Paragraphs.

;)

[Moonrider]

Yeah that's right. Explain it to them, Troy. Because I really don't understand what you're talking about either. :p

[Ian Ascher]

Spiderman on the Electric Company...
Getting a huge box of comics from my grandfather whose friend ran a newsstand...
My dad stealing my Sgt. Rock comics...
Teen Titans drug issues in school...
Superfriends, Spiderman & his Amazing Friends, and the Hulk on Sat mornings...
A jumbo JLA/JSA coloring book with info on all the characters...
Batman and the Outsiders...
Crisis on Infinite Earths and seeing heroes can be killed for the first time ever...
Secret Wars action figures with the motion changing shields...

[J. Alexopoulos]

Claremont and Silvestri were on Uncanny X-Men (the only X-Men book).... Amazing Spider-Man had Micheline and McFarlane...

Oh man, the older Claremont on Uncanny is still my favourite, while those two titles, Claremont's and Micheline's, were the two that got hooked on comics.

Oh the good ole days.

Now I don't even know most of the X-men :yuk: . Bishop is the newest X-Men that I'm willing to accept.

[Mike225]

Oh man, the older Claremont on Uncanny is still my favourite, while those two titles, Claremont's and Micheline's, were the two that got hooked on comics.

Oh the good ole days.

Now I don't even know most of the X-men :yuk: . Bishop is the newest X-Men that I'm willing to accept. :laugh:

For me, the Claremont issues that I collected haven't aged well, but at the time they were really different. Not necessarily exciting (the first issue I bought was the one where Havok killed Storm..Jim Lee's first issue), but something different than any other book I'd read.

Dude, seriously...Brubaker's doing some pretty good stuff, and I like Carrey's run going on right now, too.

[Critters Daddy]

I was a HUGE Godzilla freak as a kid and still am really. So I went to a flea market one day in Michigan on summer vacation and on top of some guys table was a stack of comics and on the very top was GOdzilla #16. It had a bunch of cowboys trying to rope Godzilla and one guy had his lasso stuck to his tooth!

I grabbed it and honestly had no idea that comics even existed anymore at the time. I read it and read it and read it. "Holy crap I have to find the rest of these!" I thought to myself. So I got hooked. I loved the hunt. Trying to find someone who sold comics then finding out if they had Godzilla. Once I found out that comics still existed my fascination grew. Elfquest was a big one for me. I remember seeing X-Factor and Excalibur #1 on the rack and saying hey cool a new book! Transformers, Defenders and picking up my first ever Spider-Man...it was a McFarlane book and it blew me away.

So there's my story. A little footnote to go along with it...I actually found and purchased the original cover art for thet Godzilla #16. That's the shoret version of the story, but it is a true grail quest completed ad I love to look at that thing and remember my childhood and my love for comice that were fun. Not much of that around anymore.

Thanks for listening.

[The DarkMind]

X-Factor #66 is what did it for me. I was about 12 I think and had been stuck at home sick for a few days when my mother had picked up some comics from the spinner rack at the pharmacy for me totally at random (yeah i remember when spinner racks where everywhere). She brought home a handful of them but that one issue is what hooked me. The art, the story, everything. Even the Apocalypse Files in the back. I read that thing over the years until every last page disintegrated in my hand.

I swear I praised that one issue on a regular basis, so much so that i was surprised to receive it as a Christmas present about 4 or 5 years ago. Apparently my ex wife (we were still together back then) really did pay attention when it came to my art pursuit and love for comics and knew how much it would mean to me to have this issue again. after i opened it and had a blank look of shock on my face like i had just seen a dead relative walk through the front door she told me it took her and my mother the better part of 6 months to track that specific issue down to give to me.

and you know damn well i pulled the bitch out of the mylar bag and read it right then and there. my mom never quite 'got it' (despite being the one who really started it all for me) and couldn't believe i did that, but my ex was a comic fan herself by that point and just laughed because she won the bet the two of them had.

[Mike225]

Yeah, that one was good. It was the first time I saw Whilce Portacio's work...I was dumbstruck.

[The DarkMind]

Tha man is truly amazing and my main idol
http://www.marvelcomics.pl/stuff/covers/x-factor/x-factor_66.jpg

[JamieRoberts]

Revival!

I love this thread, missed it first time around.

For me, my initial experience was buying the UK versions of the Marvel licensed properties like Transformers, Thundercats and Spider-Man & Zoids, the latter of which reprinted stories from the black costume era (I think DeFalco was writing at the time, it was The Puma I remember mostly). Transformers, particularly, captured my imagination. I'm sure it's no great surprise to anyone who knows me that I'm a TF fan, but the thing is, even as a 6-year-old I preferred the original UK stories to the US tales. Budiansky focused on humans quite often, while Furman really built a mythology around the characters, lifting it above the typical toy tie-in (Wildman, Senior and Staz's art didn't hurt, either). I collected them regularly, subscribing eventually. I used to wake up at 6am on a Saturday, wait for the paperboy to drop the comic and then spend 40 minutes reading intently.

Beyond that, the thing that really got me collecting was when the big guns like X-Force #1, X-Men #1 and Spider-Man #1 hit. It kinda opened the floodgates for US imports in my little town. Suddenly, I was seeing Avengers West Coast, Ghost Rider, occasionally Daredevil...

You know, I always remember the weather being sunny and warm when I bought a new issue. I'm sure it wasn't, but I like my memories that way.

[jeffo46]

What did it for me was,back in 1966,seeing the debut of the Batman TV show on ABC.I asked my mother what a Batman was,and she mentioned that it was a comic book.I asked her to buy me one,and the very next day,she went and bought me Fantastic Four No.50 which I still have to this day.I was fortunate enough to have bought stuff like Lee & Kirby's FF and Thor fresh off the newsrack,along with seeing new talent debut such as Neal Adams,Jim Steranlo,Berni Wrightson,etc.Those were great times to be involved in comic fandom.

[dickieH8]

I had always watched Spider-Man( 67 in reruns I'm not THAT old)and Super friends on t.v. and had the occasional war book or two that I'd trade with my friends. In the early 70's I saw Trashman by Spain Rodriguez, it was my older brother's and that led me to raid his room and check out National Lampoon and Heavy Metal. Superheroes came later, like in 6th grade. My friend Art Babcock and I would draw our own version of the Avengers and Invaders and trade em. That's when I discovered Thomas and Buscema on Conan. I literally devoured all things Conan. The Pocketbooks collection of Barry Smith's stuff, SSoC, Kull, you name it. Then they made the movie ( hocks loogie, spits)... The dark times came, but that's another story.

chaz

[Buckyrig]

Airborne told me I should check out The Outer Limits and the guy there told me to read DKR.

[Mark Bertolini]

It was the GI Joe cartoon that did it for me. I was at the supermarket with my mom, and saw GI Joe comics on the spinner racks. I got three of them (the "Snake-Eyes Get a New Face" storyline), and some C.O.P.S. comics. Any cartoon tie-in to a comic book was something I had to have.

And then I discovered a comic shop near my house, and the rest (as well as all my money) was history.

[Newt]

I've heard of Love and Rockets but never checked it out. Are there any collections?

Sorry, I never saw this. Yeah, the whole original run of L&R (1981-1996) is collected into TPBs (I think there are 15); after that the Hernandez brothers continued their various stories in several separate variously-titled books until 2001, when they started L&R Volume II; much of that is also collected into TPBs. Additionally, each brother's main storyline was collected into a graphic novel sometime in the early 2000s, including all the stories from that storyline from Volume I and the assorted comics of the late 90s; Jaime's is called Locas and Gilbert's is called Palomar.

[BJCochran]

Airborne told me I should check out The Outer Limits and the guy there told me to read DKR.

Are you talking about The Outer Limits store in Waltham on Moody Street? Great store.

As for me. When I was an infant my parents tried putting Disney, Seasme Street, and other kid programs on for me and I would just cry and scream. The only thing that would keep me calm and I would actually watch was Spider-man and his Amazing Friends, Spider-man 80s cartoon, the Spider-man live action TV series (They were combining 2 episodes to make movies on saturday afternoons on channel 56 in Boston), The Greatest American Hero and The Incredible Hulk (Live Action and 80s cartoon). So of course my Mom taped them at the time so I could watch them over and over again.

Then my parents started reading comics to me to get me to sleep. And thus a very dangerous obsession began

[Buckyrig]

Are you talking about The Outer Limits store in Waltham on Moody Street? Great store.

It was on Long Island, right next to a gun store. I wish I had taken a picture of the giant sign out front that read:

TOYS
GUNS

Ah, memories. :)

[BJCochran]

It was on Long Island, right next to a gun store. I wish I had taken a picture of the giant sign out front that read:

TOYS
GUNS

Ah, memories. :)

HAHHAHA

[The Spirit]

Marvel Team-up 62 and the original Byrne Claremont X-men, issues 114-116.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/marvel-team-up/62-1.jpg

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/thumb/e/e8/Uncanny_X-Men_114.jpg/391px-Uncanny_X-Men_114.jpg http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/thumb/a/a3/Uncanny_X-Men_115.jpg/394px-Uncanny_X-Men_115.jpg http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/thumb/c/c5/Uncanny_X-Men_116.jpg/300px-Uncanny_X-Men_116.jpg

[JamieRoberts]

Is that last cover 'fire-hentai'?

[The Spirit]

Is that last cover 'fire-hentai'?
No it's a picture drawn by Byrne and inked by Austin that has nothing to do with hentai. It does have to do with the context of the story.

[JamieRoberts]

No it's a picture drawn by Byrne and inked by Austin that has nothing to do with hentai. It does have to do with the context of the story.
Really? Because I was being serious.

[The Spirit]

Really? Because I was being serious.
Really? Because so was I.

[JamieRoberts]

Touche.

[Mcd91]

Hi,

What a nice thread.

What got me into comics was a classmate, and nowadays good friend, who introduced me to a German comic character named "Werner". In hindsight the artwork was poorly, but back than it opened a whole new world.

A year later I was in a summer-camp and there was a library that carried "Spriou and Fantasio", a very popular series in France and Belgium. That was the moment I was really hooked. I picked up everything I could and devoured it.

The last impact came during a comic convention in Cologne, when I, just by chance, bought "Spiderman Torment" by McFarlane. That was when I got into American comics. Luckily that was in the early nineties, when Image was all the rage. The Image universe was easily accessable because it was fresh and new. It snowballed from than on, especially by getting background information from Wizard about the creators. I still have fond memories about those times, and the nineties, although terrible times for comics in general, always hold a special spot for me in terms of American comics.

Best

Rob

[Mark Bertolini]

This is off topic, but if you heated up Colossus, would he feel the heat inside the metal skin?