The people who didn't start reading comic books until they were adults thread

Cafe Society
1

If you’ve been a regular comic book reader since you were, like, five, go 'way, shoo, scat.

I want to hear from people who, like myself, didn’t start reading comic books until they were well past the age when people should stop reading comic books.

OK, yeah, I did read an issue of The Amazing Spider-man when I was a kid, an issue of a Batman comic back when I was about six or seven, and had gotten my image of the Batman from the campy TV series.(Oh, and if anyone has a copy of "The Slaughter in Silver’, please, please, please sell it to me. Please?) I also read an issue of Wonder Woman, and an issue of the extremely short-lived Isis. Yes, children, there was an Isis comic book. Well, actually, eight of them, but I digress.

Before I was about twenty or so, my entire comic book reading careerk consisted of those four. Then this guy named Chas came to work at my place of employment. Chas was a few years older than me, and an avid RPG player as well as being a total comic book freak. Chas, who always referred to Alan Moore as “Alan Moore, may he live and write forever, author of The Watchmen, may it always be in print.”

Chas loaned me The Watchmen, “The Killing Joke”, a Daredevil trade paperback that really didnt impress me, and The Dark Knight Returns. I was so impressed with TDKR that I actually went out and bought a copy. For years, it was the only comic-booky thing I owned.

Fast forward about fifteen or seventeen years. The two coolest shows on television are Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I get hooked, and both shows are cancelled in short order. Since I don’t have cable, there’s basically nothing on for me to watch. There is a void that needs to be filled. I find TDKR on my bookshelf and reread it. Like, five times. “Aha,” thinks me, “Batman must be the thing to fill the empty place that was left by the end of the Whedonverse”.

So, now, I’m hooked. In addition to the four main Batman titles (well, for the next three months at least, I’m reading eight Batman titles, because of the War Games storyline), I’m reading Green Arrow- I think DC brought him back from the dead just for me- following the Identity Crisis story, and Beckett’s The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty. When I get a job as a massage therapist (which finally seems to be in reach, I take the national certification exam next Friday, yay) and have more disposable income, I’ll probably be adding some more independent titles to my pull list.

I’m probably a statistical anomaly, first off because I’m female and the vast majority of comic book readers, at least in America, are male, but also because most people my age who read comic books started when they were kids and just never gave them up. But I’m surely not the only person who discovered what is normally thought of as a kid’s genre.

So, if you started reading comic books when you were an adult, fess up!

2

Well, I had a few Uncle Scrooge comic books when I was little, and three or four issues of the Legion of Super-Heroes. The only series I liked was “Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!” of which I bought all 12 or so before it got cancelled. But other than that, nothing.

Then, when I was 17 and a freshman in college, my roommates brought me along to the local comic book shop. I thought comics were for dorks (still do, actually – just no longer feel that I’m not a dork) and only went because I was stone bored. I picked up a copy of “The Sandman” #1, as well as an issue of “Hellblazer” because the covers looked cool. IIRC I also picked up an issue from the Birnbaum/Giffen run of “Legion of Super-Heroes,” because I remembered the title. And I think a couple of “Batman” stories, which were instantly forgettable.

That was enough to hook me. At the time, I actually liked LSH the best, and I still think that that run of the series was just unbelievably cool (making me hated by most LSH fans, I understand). The hobby lasted for at least 10 years and hasn’t gone away completely; I’ll still pick up a few issues here and there, but only like once every two months or so. I ended up getting a complete set of “The Sandman” and every issue of “Hellblazer” until right around the end of Garth Ennis’ run. And I’m still buying “Legion” off and on, but just can’t follow what’s going on anymore.

So does 17 count as “adult?”

3

I read Cartoon History of the Universe vols. 1 and 2, as well as Maus and a few R. Crumb comics as a kid. But when I went down to Biloxi, I picked up a few issues of Transmetropolitan. I never thought I would like a comic so mainstream. Is it available as one big book anywhere?

Also,. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers was great.

4

I knew most of the comic book lore because my best friend was really into comic books but I had read only a few myself. One Spider man where he fought Venom and another where he fought some Red guy that was like Venom. That was it.

At about 20 years old I bought Sandman: Season of Mists from my book club. I went on to devour all of the other Sandman books. I then got Preacher (disliked it) Watchmen (Loved it) and The Dark Knight Returns (loved it) I then picked up Grendel:War Child but it was so boring and campy I didn’t get even a quarter into it before I gave up.

I’m unsure what I’ll pick up next but I have my eyes open now.

5

I watched the 90’s X-Men TV show religiously, but I barely knew anything about comic books until I saw a blurb in the newspaper about Marvel comics. My interest was peaked, and I picked up some X-Men. I would walk every week to our grocery store to purchase X-Men Universe and Gambit, and later got *Deadpool, The Avengers, *and Daredevil by subscription.

Then I discovered Preacher and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and life hasn’t been the same since.

6

Oh, I forgot to mention I was a 13-year-old girl when I got into comics.

7

I read Elfquest when I was in college, I don’t recall who gave it to me. I read all of them in pretty short order.
Just after college I read Cartoon History of the Universe.
Those were the only graphic novel I read untill I was almost 30, when I was really really bored in a friend’s apartmet and read a Sandman. I went out and bought all of them. I then promptly devoured Watchman, V, Preacher, Cerebus and probably some other stuff I don’t remember.

8

Not in one big book, but the whole series is available in ten trade paperbacks, running fifteen to twenty dollars each, depending on how many issues are collected in it. Well worth the money, too.

I was never a huge comic book geek when I was a kid, although I had a lot of 'em. Maybe a hundred or so, but with no real rhyme or reason to what issues I got. The only exceptions were the Dungeons and Dragons comic books, and The 'Nam comic book. Oh, and Elfquest. I stopped reading comic books almost entirely when I got to high school, and didn’t start reading them again until three or four years ago. I still don’t bother with individual issues, though. I just buy the TPBs.

9

I haven’t really gotten into comic books until the past year or so. I loved 1602 (being an utter history geek), and I’ve really been enjoying Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. I also really like From Hell, though I read it compiled as a graphic novel, not as a series of comics.

10

I didn’t read comics when I was a kid. Neither did any of my friends. When I was about fifteen, I read Neil Gaiman’s Book of Magic. The library in town has a not bad selection of graphic novels, and one day I picked up a Sandman TPB (Brief Lives, if I recall correctly.) What hooked me was Death, who makes a brief apparence. I wound up buying all issues of Sandman in comic form off a guy I worked with, and from there I’ve been hooked. I buy TPB’s instead of comics now, beasue then I can lend them to people.

11

I didn’t read comics as a kid, aside from going through the box of Archie comics I found at my grandparent’s house one summer. I never got into the superhero stuff. It wasn’t a lack of interest so much as being a child and having to depend on the parents to buy things for me. And my parents didn’t buy me comic books. Besides, I was already fascinated with reading novels before I was out of grade school, so…

Fast forward to when I was about 21 years old. I had my first apartment, where I had no television, no nothing. That was okay, though, because I working steady and I was spending most of my free time in the bars with my friends. But, alas, I fell ill with chicken pox. Yes chicken pox at 21. Sucked. Missed two weeks of work, and I couldn’t go out. I ended up bored stiff. For no apparent reason, my sister went to the store and bought me a stack of randomly-selected comic books to read.

One of those comics was The Punisher #7 (unlimited series). And now I was hooked. As soon as I was healthy, I headed for the local comic shop. I found Punisher back issues there, and soon I had issues 1 through 7. I got on the shop’s list so that the guy would save The Punisher for me every month. Then I started getting into more titles. And more titles. And then some more, until I was eventually collecting about 40 titles each month.

Of course, every comic I bought, once read, was placed into a comic-book-sized plastic bag along with a stiff, comic-book-sized piece of cardboard and then placed into a comic-book-sized box. I usually bought at least two copies of the first issue of new titles.

I eventually had to stop collecting for financial reasons, but I ended up with almost 2000 comic books. And I still have them all - in fact I just got them all out of my mom’s garage today and brought them to my new place. I’m going to catalog everything and guess at the value and then sell the whole lot of 'em. Maybe. Maybe I’ll keep 'em all and start collecting again. But the comics I have are all between 10 and 15 years old now, so I’m a bit out of the loop. Things have changed, I hear…

But I loved my comics, and yes, I read every single one of them. I wasn’t one of those collectors who just bought the comic and put it right into a bag. I liked reading them. And my dad and sister liked reading them, too. In fact, it was The Punisher that got my dad into it, too (he was a cop and an ex-Marine). He didn’t collect, though, he just read mine :wink:

My favorites:

The Punisher (duh)
Spider-Man titles
Superman titles
Batman
Anything Green Lantern
Justice League (the funny ones)
Groo the Wanderer
Starman (the Will Payton series)
Various Mutant titles - especially Excalibur
V for Vendetta (12-issue miniseries)
Hawk & Dove

While The Punisher was my favorite, I was primarily a DC Comics fan.

12

SolGrundy 17 is pushing the envelope, but since you were in college, I’ll give you a pass. Mississippienne, 13 is too young. Sorry. You’re disqualified, but you do have good taste in comics, which is probably the product of a relatively late start. burundi and manx, please state your ages. Phase 42 your addiction is obviously a product of a diseased brain. I like that in a person.

Now, I’m going to ask again.

Does anybody out there have a copy of a Batman issue titled “The Slaughter in Silver”?

It’s an early '70’s issue, I think '73 or '74, and it really burned a hole in my consciousness. Like I said, I had gotten my image of the Batman from the TV show so I just wan’t expecting… well, the story ends up with the Batman pegging the fleeing villian between the shoulder blades with a silver brick, paralyzing him. I was more than a little freaked out by it, being maybe seven at the time, and expecting silliness.

I really, really need to lay my hands on a copy of this issue.

13

I believe the issue in question is Detective Comics #446. I’ll check my collection when I get off of work to see if I have an extra copy. However, as of this writing, eBay has THREE different auctions for this single issue ranging in price from $1. to $7. and NO bids on any of them.

http://search.ebay.com/detective-comics_446_W0QQsofocusZbsQQsbrftogZ1QQsonewuserZ1QQfromZR10QQsotrZ2QQcoactionZcompareQQcopagenumZ1QQcoentrypageZsearch

I hope the link works; if not, go to eBay’s home page and search for Dectective Comics #446. (I wish I had spied this thread before I was at Wizard con this past weekend. I know I’m banned from this thread, since I’ve been reading comics since I was 5. However, I hope you’ll allow me a caveat IF I can find an extra issue in my collection. Either way, I’ll let you know; if not, you still got some chances via eBay. Good luck. Like you, I’ve got certain issues etched in childhood memory!)

14

Well, I started reading comics as a 16 year old girl, soon after I met my first (and current) boyfriend. I think I qualify for this thread because i already had my other reading habits and tastes pretty well set, and I started reading “grown-up” comics right away. Watchmen was my first taste, too. I snagged my boyfriend’s copy from a friend of his after said friend had borrowed it, and I was blown away. That was around the time that the collected Ghost World came out in paperback, and I jumped right into that!

15

I read a few comics when I was a kid. When I was around 12 or 13 I would buy some regularly (I was a big fan of the Claremont-Byrne X-Men) but eventually stopped. Then I went to college and two things revived my interest; my roommate was a fan and a local shop sold underground comics. But I transferred to another school and again my interest waned. A few years later, I relocated for a job and there was a local comic book store. It also happened to be a very good period for comic books (it was the early to mid 80’s). I now had a steady income and ready access, so I’ve been reading pretty steadily since then.

16

Dat be da one!!!

Dude, if you can hook me up with a copy of that issue, you can dance through this thread in your Fruit of the Looms for all I care.

That single issue (which, BTW also has the distinction of being the first comic book I ever read) has been screwing with my head for, like, thirty years.

17

Sorry, Mango. I had dupes on #447, but not #446. Maybe try eBay. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes open for you. (Oh, BTW, it woulda been Hanes boxer briefs.)

18

Hey Miz Mango, I’ll look for it for you on Wednesday if you want. I’m going to a comic shop I rarely go to (since I buy almost everything online now), and they usually have any random, obscure back issue you need. Of course, they’re usually expensive and the store is a mess and hard to navigate, but they have the best back issue selection in South Florida. Let me know if you want me to connect with one for you.

19

I used to read 200AD when I was a kid, from the age of 13 to 16.

Then a 12 year gap until about 6 months ago when I picked up a copy of TDKR.

I’ve now went through Batman TPB’s at a wallet frightening rate.
Also started reading Preacher, Y Last Man, 100 Bullets, Sandman, Green Arrow.

My current subscription takes in 12 monthly titles and I’m also reading Identity Crisis.

I wish I’d never stopped reading comics as in many areas I’m having to play catch-up.

20

Well… depends how expensive. I’m making six bucks an hour doing unpredictable part-time temp work right now (take the national certification exam for massage therapy this Friday, then I get to start jumping through the licensing hoops) so money’s kind of tight. I’m thinking I might try e-Bay, even though I’m not a great fan of Pay Pal. But for that particular issue, I’d be willing to drop about ten bucks (actually, if I was making anything like decent money, I would be willing to pay a helluva lot more, but I’m not making anything like decent money.)