[Frank Castle]

My father gave me a stack when I was kid that I read and stared at the pictures. But when I was in 7th grade, my friend at the time, DJ, handed me Punisher War Journal 42 cover by John romita Jr. I must of read it a dozen times. It was also the start of my crazy collection!!

[Labor_Days]

Always was attracted to the fantastical as a kid. My parents were rather cultured people and encouraged me to read, write and actively imagine. So that fed my early love of superheroes, science-fiction and pulp fantasy.

My father in particular used to ask me the why of things. He encouraged me to look at things critically and analyze why I liked something. He would humor my childish enthusiasms by asking me follow up questions to the stories I would recount for him.

"Ok Labor, but why did Hulk smash that building?"
"Well dad, because he was mad."
"Why was he mad? What got him to that point?"
"Hmm."

That basically translated to a life long love of reading and analysis.

Some years later, I got back into the swing of comics mostly as a diversion. That the medium had evolved from the simplicity I remembered as a kid was intriguing. I devoured the funny books afterward.

This post has been edited by Labor_Days: 08 February 2008 - 09:12 PM

[Just Bill]

As Ambassador Kosh said, "I have always been here."

By that I mean, I have a hard time what drew me into comics at five years old, but whatever it was, it never let go. I remember always liking the "funny' books like Richie Rich, Archies, etc. but at the same time I loved, loved, loved the television show BATMAN and the 60's Spider-Man cartoon when I was a kid (in syndication, I am not quite that old.) And I remember my dad taking me to Seven Eleven to buy me comics as a treat or an allowance of sorts when I was very young. I dunno. The universe concept of DC and Marvel really grabbed me, and I've been reading them ever since.

[yodajones]

when i was a little kid it was reruns of the old filmation dc cartoons, and superfriends as well as reruns of the original spiderman cartoon. i remember my very first comic being a neal adams batman, and i was really confused as the batman in the comic didn't scan with the batman on teevee.

and now i really show my age...when i was a kid, back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, they had a comic book machine in front of our local supermarket. worked like a gumball machine but dispensed comics; best way i can describe it. any who, i was only allowed one comic from the machine. even as a kid i was bargain conscious and would always get a team book, featuring many heroes, rather than a solo book featuring only one. to this day, i still prefer team books over solo...

when i was a kid, i didn't have it so good. my father was an alcoholic, and we moved from town to town with his work. i could find comics no matter where we went, and other kids who read them.

it was neil gaiman's sandman that got me back into comics, and i've been pretty much collecting ever since.

[icculus]

There are two memories I have that really pushed me into comics as a kid, but I don't remember now which one happened first.

One: When I was a wee lad, I had to have an operation that kept me in the hospital for three days (something that would probably be an outpatient procedure these days). I was going nuts with the boredom of sitting in a hospital bed all day, and my mom brought me a bunch of comics. I definitely remember a Little Lulu in there, but I think there were some superhero books as well. I read and re-read those things. My mom, knowing the thousands and thousands of dollars I've spent on comics in the years since, has expressed regret over that act of kindness many times since then.

The other: At about the same time, there was a family that moved in next door to us with two girls, much older than I was. In my memory, they're high school aged, but I was so young at the time that it's probably more likely that they were upper elementary age. Regardless, they had a bed in their house that was in one of those bed frames where the frame has a couple drawers built right into it. One of those drawers was filled with easily fifty digests of Archie and Richie Rich comics. Now for me, as a "little kid" to get to hang out with these "big kids" (who, by virtue of their bigness, were also cool) and read comics was awesome. Because I idolized these girls as being so cool, comics also became a cool thing. Funnily enough, I don't remember those girls much at all - couldn't tell you their names. But I still remember some of those comics.

[Luthor]

My Mom used to buy me GI Joe and Marvel's Strange Tales in the early 80s as a way to get me to read. I loved the GI Joe cartoon and the comic just seemed like an extension of that. Strange Tales was my introduction to super folk but I have to admit, even though I enjoyed it at the time, the characters in the book left a lot to be desired(It was usually Dr Strange with a Cloak & Dagger or Power Pack back up) and none of those characters hooked me.

A few years later my Mom and I were at a local drug store and she gave me a dollar to spend. They happened to have a giant vat of comics that were marked down to 3/99¢. After grabbing 2 random GI Joe comics, for some reason I decided to give something else a try. I had always liked the Lou Ferrigno Hulk TV show and there was an issue of a Hulk comic book, so I thought why not...and that decision, literally, changed my life.

The Hulk issue in question was Incredible Hulk #340.

It was written by Peter David and drawn by Todd Mcfarlane and featured a fight between Hulk and Wolverine(who I had never heard of before then). It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was violent and gory but smart and funny at the same time.

I decided that I had to have more, so that summer I went on a mad spree of comic book buying. There wasn't really an easily accessible comic book store(this would be 1988 and I would've been 11), so I would scan the classified ads for yard sales or hit the used book stores. I also subscribed to pretty much every Marvel title. An old guy who had a weekly yard sale and always had an endless supply of comics for me(usually at a ridiculous price of 10 books for a $1) talked me into trying something something other then Marvel books. He gave me a handful of DC books for free and said he knew I'd be back for more...and he was right. Most of the DC stuff he gave me was from Brave & The Bold which starred Batman, who I had always associated with the 60s tv show and Superfriends. You can imagine my shock when reading these comics. I went from Marvel Zombie to comic book mass consumer.

If I saw something that looked comic related, I got it. I got black and white indy books like Cerebus and Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters. I got underground comix from a local skate shop(to this day I have no idea what those books were about). At one point I even found out that Becker's(an old convenience store chain in Ontario) threw out their old comics on Sunday nights and I began dumpster diving(that didn't last long, one ride in a police car is enough for my lifetime).

There have been times in my life as a comic book fan where I could've easily walked away, but memories of that summer will always keep me attached. If there is ever a book written about my life, that summer will have to be a chapter all in itself.

This post has been edited by Luthor: 09 February 2008 - 02:33 PM

[Labor_Days]

Luthor that story is awesome.