Any fellow comic book readers on here?

I started collecting comics when I discovered Fantasy Comics in Tucson in 1989. I put together deep collections of all the Marvel Silver Age titles, including the Fantastic Four, Thor, the Hulk, Spider-man, Daredevil, the Avengers, and the X-men. I also picked up a decent number of Atlas comics from the 50s that predate the Marvel era. About three years, I got burned out on comics and sold off a small portion of my collection. I think most new comics from the past few years from the major companies are garbage.

 

I still buy some DCs, but find precious little time to read, which begs the question, why the hell don't I quit?

I do still collect Airfighter/Airboys, however, and have a complete Silver/Bronze age run of Flash Gordon.

 

OH MAN is this 100% on the money.

I have the full run of the Cerebus "phone books" too, and was buying the monthlies from around issue 100 to the end as well. It just TOTALLY went off the rails and never got back on. Still, I had to keep buying it, you know? I mean, I had to see how it all wound up!

As an aside, Sim's Glamourpuss book is a very interesting read -- half over-the-top parody, half serious study of classic comics and strips. Great looking stuff, of course. Sim never lost his way with art, thankfully...

 

I am pushing 40 and never read a single comic book my entire life until a few months ago. Now I'm in the comic book shop every Wednesday and have gotten fairly into it. Why now? A number of factors:

1. My excitement over The Force Awakens led me to appreciate the nature of the Disney buyout of LucasFilm, in that all products bearing the Star Wars name are now considered equally canonical to the films. This got me interested in looking at the Star Wars comics produced by Marvel (also owned by Disney).

2. Without really meaning to, I've come to appreciate the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. I began to realize that all of the films that I've seen have been pretty good and, at the very least, have been a lot of fun. I was also surprised how relatively character-driven they have been, instead of straight-up action.

3. Marvel had a big event this year at the end of which they relaunched all their titles with #1 issues, sort of like the beginning of a new season. This provided a fairly easy point of entry for someone like me.

Now I'm way into the Star Wars comics as well as a lot of the bigger Marvel books (Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc.). Haven't explored the whole DC universe yet, nor the dozens of smaller publishers. There's a James Bond comic from Dynamite that just started that I'm interested in, but I haven't read it yet. I'm finding comics to be an interesting way of telling a story that, with its long arcs and episodic nature, is actually similar to what a lot of TV shows seem to be doing these days.

Anybody else into comics? What are you reading?

 

Oops...thread just got merged...sorry, didn't realized we had this one going on. My bad.

 

I've been a huge comicbook fan my whole life. I stopped buying them a few years ago. When I started they cost a dime! I remember how pissed I was when they bumped the price up to 12 cents! It's sad that the industry has priced itself out of the reach of the kids. Currently my local library scratches my itch.

 

Been collecting seriously since 1983 and I haven't looked back since. I'm still in the every Wednesday ritual. However, my pullbox has never even got past $40 per week, and many times it's less than that.

I'm very selective. Always have been. When Vertigo came around I was one of the first on, so that's still my class, be it Image, or Boom, Avatar, whatever.

 

Silver Age Comic nut.
Now just Sliver haired nut

 

Anybody liking the way Marvel is going post-Secret Wars? I've been impressed with the Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Thor titles so far. It's fun seeing Peter Parker as a Tony Stark-esque industrialist.

 

I was a huge comic book reader and minor collector when I was a kid and well into my teens.

I was mostly into Marvel. Fantastic Four, Spiderman, and Iron Man were my favorites.

I was also a big fan of Gold Key's Space Family Robinson: Lost In Space and Magnus, Robot Fighter.

In the early 80's , in college, and needing money, I sold my entire collection to a comic book specialty shop, for an OK price , thinking (quite wrongly) that I had outgrown them.

Big mistake.

Years later, I was able to obtain the DVD ROM releases of Fantastic Four and Spiderman as well as reacquire most of the issues of Space Family Robinson. I waited too long for the Iron man DVD ROM which now gets big bucks thanks to the movies, but I am very happy for what I have been able to get back.

 

And as an aside, I am one of those folks who still worships at the altar of the late, great Jack "King" Kirby...

 

Always mentioned heavily in Marvel Movies credits











not.

 

No longer I'm afraid. My glory years with Marvel & DC spanned from about '66 to 80 (in real-time terms, that would be from 8 years old to 22). Was lucky enough to get into those magnificent 60s Marvel 'Avengers'/'Fantastic Four'/'X-Men' story-lines and with DC I'd sweat the days out for the next 'Dial H For Heroes' or 'Legion Of Superheroes' comics. It was a very serious addiction which rec'd little sympathy from my parents. They're all packed away safely in the loft in protective plastic bags and stacked in substantially-meaty plastic trays waiting till my granddaughter is old enough.

I had no choice but to give them up back then. I was made redundant as I was saving to get married. Dreadful time! Funnily enough I went back to comics years later when I was in my early forties. I was on holiday on the Greek island of Zante and in a little convenience store picked up something called Wizard magazine which gave news of upcoming releases. Now, time never stands still and it would be foolish to expect that to be the case, but I was dismayed to find that much-loved monthlies such as 'Werewolf By Night', 'Conan The Barbarian', 'Master Of Kung Fu' and 'Tales Of The Zombie' no longer existed. I tried to get back into comics and for a short while enjoyed the buzz, particularly the 'Avengers'/'Justice League' team-up done by the very wonderful George Perez, and Alan Moore's offerings with 'Warrior'. Alas, you can't go back to that feeling you had when you were 14 and it all mattered so much. I'm gone for good now.

That said, I've lived to see not one but 2 exceptionally well-done Avengers films. Telling that to my 9 year old self would have caused me to faint with anticipation. Loving what the tv companies are doing with Flash, Daredevil and Arrow too - and Smallville wasn't bad either.

 

As do I.

Without whom, etc. etc.

On a slightly(?) more modern note, I enjoyed the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil before the book descended into a dull ninja fest.

 

What Marvel and later DC did to this poor man and his family was deplorable IMO, even though he certainly had company among other comic book artists treated just as shabbily back then.

Kirby has sadly, never been given anything near his proper due for creating many of Marvel's greatest known characters

 

I was a big comic fan as a kid through college age, and worked in a comic store for a while while in school. Mostly Marvel until Dark Knight appeard, and then it was a mix of Marvel and their Distinguished Competition.

I read Walking Dead these days and the occasional title here and there. I really loved ther Hawkeye 2012 Series... who would have guessed that?

 

When I think of sixties Marvel comics, Kirby defines that period he was the main visual illustrator and conceptual ideas man imo. Stan the man Lee just mugs it up in all his Marvel film cameos. Kirby seems neatly airbrushed out of Marvel history.

 

I've been following comics since the mid-1970s, and used to read a mixture of DC and Marvel titles, with a few independents (such as "Ninja High School" by Antarctic Press) mixed in. I eventually dropped all of the Marvel titles because of their massive focus on the X-Men and how confusing X-Men became (I could follow and understand the entire DC Multiverse but I couldn't follow the X-Men). Plus, I found DC's writing to be much better on the whole, and while art might interest me in a comic, it is the writing that well keep me reading.

My interest in DC has dropped a bit due to all of the confusing continuity changes from these events: Crisis On Infinite Earths, Zero Hour - Crisis In Time, Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint, and Convergence. Right now I'm not sure what is in continuity and what is not and it has caused me to put them to the side for a time. As an example, due to continuity changes after "Flashpoint" logically Superman is not married in his own comics but is married to Lois Lane in the "Green Lantern" comics.

Instead, I've been enjoying them via video (such as "Young Justice" which was excellent and ended far too soon, and "Green Lantern - The Animated Series," also excellent and ended too soon too). It's nice to enjoy the heroes without the massive continuity baggage that the comics have.

I'm slowing returning to reading (recently read and issue of "The Flash" and enjoyed it), and I'm hoping that I can rekindle the enjoyment that I once did. I just hope the tangled continuity can be straightened out.

 

Exactly. While I am happy to give Stan Lee his due as a contributor, in his rather revisionist view, he seems to want to imply nowadays that he was the sole genius behind Marvel's success in the 60's, where it was just as much ( and probably more so) due to Kirby's immensely creative mind as well as his ability to quickly turn out page after page of superb quality work.

 

What should also be mentioned is Jack Kirby's work for DC Comics, creating characters like Darkseid and The New Gods who are still significant characters (especially Darkseid) to this day. Many villains tend to be the focus of one hero or group, but Darkseid is a significant villain throughout the entire DC Universe and just an appearance by him has a major impact (such as in an episode of "Young Justice").

 

Not a huge fan of comics, but I like a few things - such as underground comix (I splurged for that complete Zap set that Fantagraphics put out last year); some "alternative" comics (esp the likes of Daniel Clowes and Pete Bagge); and the more personal/low-key "graphic novella" stuff put out by Drawn and Quarterly (I particularly like Seth's stuff, and when is Joe Matt going to reappear?). I'm not too into the superhero-oriented stuff, but I have a few volumes of that - along the lines of Watchmen and a couple of the "dark" Batman stories from Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

 

Maybe DC will give Jack Kirby el grande kudos with The New Gods with film adaptation.

 

I can't believe DC has passed on
The New Gods film version. If your going to compete with Marvel play them at their own game by doing a Marvel type movie with Marvel type characters.

 

In a couple of weeks, DC is relaunching its entire line. It's not a reboot, but it promises an emphasis on continuity. It might be a good time for you to jump back on board.

The book that is starting it all is coming out on May 25th. It's called "Rebirth" and is a very reasonable $2.99 (especially so considering it is 80 pages).

 

Retired comic collector here. I got into it pretty hardcore around 1980 (when I was ten years old) till about 1994-95, when I bought my first new car and suddenly didn't have much $$ to piddle away on comic books, haha. At its peak I guess my collection was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 books.

I sold off the bulk of my collection in the late 90s but I hung onto one long box of "keepers" - nothing particularly rare or valuable, but personal favorites that I enjoy re-reading from time to time.

I was always a bargain box dweller so I had a pretty eclectic collection of weird stuff from the fifties through the '80s/90s - my favorite character was Spider-Man (I'd buy anything with him in it) but I also read a ton of Superman/Batman, Star Wars, Sgt. Rock, E-Man, Blackhawk, Ninja Turtles, the classic Disney Ducks adventures by Carl Barks (aka "The Good Duck Artist"), X-Men, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, ZAP Comix (or anything else I could find by Crumb) Archie, Cherry Poptart, and on and on and on...

My 8 year old is beginning to show some interest in comics, he's picked up a few random issues of Spidey, Batman, and Simpsons Comics at yard sales. The weirdest thing he's found so far was a Planet of the Apes comic from the '70s that was part of one of those Book & Record sets - the record was missing but the book was in mint shape! So the tradition continues.

I still love comics as an art form, but I don't have the money or the storage space to get back into it after all these years. I've been out of the loop for so long now that I barely know who the players are any more.