i admit it. i'm a huge comic book nerd. i've been meaning to do some posts about comics, but something inevitably comes up and i never get around to it. but it's kind of slow today, so here it goes...
when i was, oh, about 9-12, i was regular comic book buyer. those were the days when comics where 60 cents [and a pack of baseball cards was a dime]. i remember when they first jumped to 75 cents. how would i afford it? now that i think about it, i have no idea how i even afforded 60 cent comics. i was lucky that the comic shop in whittier, where i grew up, was about a ten-minute walk from my house. i don't remember what it was called, but i do remember it was about two shops down from the pussycat theatre--an x-rated theatre. i lie not. that would never happen today! i don't even know how it happened in 1983, but it did. talk about a scandal...
i wasn't really big into the superheroes back then. about the only superhero books i collected were amazing spider-man, web of spider-man, and x-men. my true loves were g.i. joe and robotech. those were some great comics! i remember once we were driving from whittier to utah and we stopped at a 7-11 in las vegas. i saw g.i. joe #26, a seminal issue in the g.i. joe canon and mythology [and can i just give huge props to larry hama for writing 155 awesome issues of g.i. joe? he did an amazing job, as anyone from my generation who read them will attest. no one can deny that snake eyes and storm shadow are the coolest. toys/action figures. EVER. am i right, tim, or am i right?] lucky for me, my parents bought it for me [to think a 60 cent comic could send a kid over the moon is inconceivable in this age of wii's, x-boxes, ipods and the like]. i devoured it. finally, we got a little bit of snake eye's back story! and what a story. vietnam vet! the hard master's assassination! zartan! i still have that issue. it's in terrible condition, but i still have it and i treasure it. some day i hope to have the entire 155-issue run. as of right now i'm about 1/2 way there. and by the way, the current g.i. joe comic title 'g.i. joe: america's elite' is one of the better books out there. it ain't your 12 year-old's g.i. joe. it's a gritty, modern-day story and even more relevant given the fact that cobra was always a terrorist organization. larry hama was more prescient than he probably would ever like to have been, but prescient he was.
after we moved to utah, i continued to collect for another year or two, but gradually my interest waned. you can blame depeche mode and the smiths for that. i still had two boxes of comic books. when i moved back to california in 97, they moved with me. when i moved back to utah 2001, they came with me. but i never read them.
well, earlier this year i heard joss whedon planned to launch buffy season #8 in comic book form. my interest was immediately piqued. it'd been a long time since i'd even looked a comic and about 20 years since i'd bought one. i had no idea where to begin. enter the internet. oh, the beauty of the internet. i found the forums over at comicbookresources.com and started asking questions. the DC faithful were very helpful. i got all sorts of repsonses and recommendations. the marvel folks? not so much. so i went with dc titles. i started reading detective comics, justice league, justice society, catwoman [a suprisingly and uniformly excellent comic!], and my favorite, the flash. i know spend about $35 a month on comics. totally worth it. i'm also reading the aforementioned g.i. joe: america's elite, buffy, angel, madame mirage [written by former 'lost' story editor and detective comics scribe, paul dini], and storm shadow -- yes, he has his own comic! and what's better it's written by the legend himself, larry hama. that's just too many kinds of awesome to even enumerate. but if i had to hazard a guess, i'd say about 1,412. at least.
i can't even tell you what a joy it's been to discover my passion for comics again. comics really have grown up a lot in the last twenty years. the writing is much more sophisticated. the stories are generally better. the coloring seems to be mostly done with computers. as far as i can tell the pencils and inks are still done by hand [thank heavens!]. i do admit that i miss the good old-fashioned paper. the new glossy paper is ok, but there's just something about those old comics and the way they feel in your hand.
part of the problem, however, of taking a twenty year haitus from comics is going back and catching up. unless you have a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend on back issues, it's impossible. well, not too long ago i was trolling through amazon.com [as i often do], and i came across 'the amazing spider-man: the complete collection.' 545 issues of spider-man, beginning with his first appearance in 'amazing fantasy #15,' then continuing with 'the amazing spider-man' #1 and running all the way through june of 2006 for a measley $33 clams. can i just tell you what a brilliant idea this is? every issue of spider-man scanned and digitized [there are also hulk, iron-man, captain american, avengers, fantastic four, ghost rider, and x-men collections on dvd-rom, too]. it's something like 17,000 pages, complete with adds, letters to the editors, everything. cover-to-cover. incredible! now if we can just get DC on board...
my dad ended up buying the spider-man collection for me for my birthday and it came in the mail earlier this week. again, it's so many kinds of cool that i can't even begin to count the ways. last night i read #1 and it was great, just great. stan lee [scripts, marvel founder] and steve ditko [pencils/art], as is generally common knowledge in the comics community, were true innovators of the comic book. sure, the stories are generally fluffy and slightly naive, but beneath it all are some good-old fashioned teen-angst stories. great stuff. what's curious about 'the amazing spider-man' #1 is that peter parker is referred to as peter palmer. i read that and i was like, 'huh? is that a misprint? but a few panels later stan lee again called him peter palmer, so i guess it wasn't a misprint afterall.
#1 is split up into two stories -- the funnier one being the second in which peter palmer [?] tries to join the fantastic four to earn some money, only to find out the f.f. is a 'non-profit organization' and what little money they do make is invested in science. a disappointed peter palmer shoots a couple of webs and is off to fight the chameleon. it's a slightly naive story, but it's so charming when taken in context--1963 was, after all, a very long time ago.
anyway, if you want to take a trip down nostalgia road and read #1, i've posted it below in pdf form. click the link and it will take to sendspace.com. click the link next to the moving red arrow. when it's completed downloading, a new window will appear. drag it from that window to your desktop to copy it over. you'll need adobe reader to view it properly. you can get that here if you don't already have it.
→ the amazing spider-man: #1
enjoy! i know i will.
i heart comics
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3 shout outs:
you make me want to be a comic lover by heart. you still impress me with your writing.
I've recently rekindled my comic book love as well, but you are right. it is difficult to catch up! I bought the newest Marvel Ultimates recently, as it marks the return of Joe Mad to the comic world. Damn he's good!
Side note, just how do you post song clips on your site when you do? maybe i just need to be more techinologically savy.
P.S.- finishing up my lists finally, stay tuned ;)
I have to comment again, I didn't have a lot of time when I read this the first time.
Its interesting to read your lil comic interest bio, cuz mine started about 10 years AFTER yours, but its extremely similar. I got started in '92 or '93, but it was in Japan. My initial interest started with the manga titles like Dragonball and Yu Yu Hakusho, both huge when I was there, but moved to American books when I saw the cover of Wolverine #79: A brilliant picture of Wolvie with his bone claws busted, and a fabulous story, then written by (who else??) Larry Hama. I knew the basics of the X-men, so it blew me away to see Wolverine's "indestructable" claws in pieces before him! I HAD to know why! So I started buying. I didn't get as far back as the beginning with Wolvie, but I started from there and also started collecting the X-titles religiously. Admittedly, my main interest in some of them was the fantastic art of the Kubert bros, and Joe Madureira. So, when they left the titles, my interest faded slowly. I also had interest in a few Image titles, as they were booming at the time: Spawn, Gen13, etc.
It's been a good 10 years or more since those days for me too, but when I went back to Japan on the mission, I bought every book of the Dragonball series, and just recently started into the Marvel Ultimates cuz of Joe Mad's return. Occasionally when I see some art that blows me away, I'll pick it up, but like you said, it sure is hard to get back into the swing of things! Anyway, long comment, just thought I'd share our common interest and the earily similar details.
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