What Got You Hooked On Comics?

[diet_orange]

So what tickled the serotonin in the back of your brain when it comes to "four-color funny books"?

Some of my earliest comic memories are going to a grocery store where I used to live (almost always smelled like freshly baked bread) and finding comics (some of which I still have). My favorite was a lesser known book, meant to branch out the DCAU called "Adventures In The DC Universe"

Seven was a great issue! And also served as my introduction and beginning of my live-long love of the "Marvel Family"

Then we moved away and my mom started dating a local newspaper reporter who was super big into comics, getting both me and my mom into it (she has pretty much everything Alan Moore has written up to the early 00's). One that really stuck with me was an annual that took place in DC's Elseworlds. It told the story of "the man who wears the sign of the bat", who's dying and leaves it up to his apprentice, "Little Tengu" as the Catwoman Ninja call him, to aid his Emperor in a war for the throne. I was absolutely hooked and it's what got me into Japanese period dramas

As I got older, I used to poke around my mom's comics stash and found a little title called Judge Dredd. The black humor and biting satire absolutely hooked me. I couldn't get enough of it and chased down as many of the Eagle and Fleetway/Quality colorized American reprints I could find. Later on, and thankfully so, Rebellion started releasing the JD Complete Case Files in the states, which helped fill in many of the single issues I had that were part of larger story arcs like "The Day The Law Died" and "Block Mania"

Also around this time, still dragging my mom to the flea market (which for the longest time was the only continuous comic book store my area had), I'd come across a Howard The Duck mini-series by Ty Templeton. It wasn't really all that great, but it did encourage me to ask for some of the older stuff and I was given a copy of "Howard The Duck Essentials" for Christmas

Much like Dredd, Howard was something that I'd never encountered before with unflinching sharp wit that was unafraid to make mockeries of modern (well, for the 1970s at least) America. I read it cover to cover endlessly, eventually giving it to an old college friend who "lost it in the mail"

 

[Bakuma1997]

Not comic books, but comic strips

My mom used to collect them of the newspapers, cutting them and sticking them in scrapbooks, i used to borrow them to read them, Peanuts (Here called "Rabanitos") And Garfield were my favorite

 

[diet_orange]

Not comic books, but comic strips

My mom used to collect them of the newspapers, cutting them and sticking them in scrapbooks, i used to borrow them to read them, Peanuts (Here called "Rabanitos") And Garfield were my favorite

Oh, I did the same with quite a few back in the day. Namely Curtis and Garfield

 

[Lod 10]

ParaFor me, it was our beloved orange cat who hates Mondays but loves lasagna.

 

[Deleted member 906485]

Phonics

 

[Ephemera1_]

I was always surrounded by them. I had a collection of comics given to me by one of my moms friends when i was incredibly young and it started to grow from there. It intensely grew in my pre-teen/teenage years through power scaling debates and hypothetical fights between characters. Eventually i grew tired of that, and because i had read so much, so quickly in a short amount of time, (mainly for researching feats to help in those aforementioned debates) i burnt myself out for awhile. Especially with superhero comics. Still to this day I don't read too many superhero/hero adjacent comics anymore.

What got me BACK into comics and graphic novels though is quite simple, i just enjoy stories.

 

[diet_orange]

I was always surrounded by them. I had a collection of comics given to me by one of my moms friends when i was incredibly young and it started to grow from there. It intensely grew in my pre-teen/teenage years through power scaling debates and hypothetical fights between characters. Eventually i grew tired of that, and because i had read so much, so quickly in a short amount of time, (mainly for researching feats to help in those aforementioned debates) i burnt myself out for awhile. Especially with superhero comics. Still to this day I don't read too many superhero/hero adjacent comics anymore.

What got me BACK into comics and graphic novels though is quite simple, i just enjoy stories.

Most of what I read growing up (and we're talking 9-11 years old here) was kiddie fare like Bongo's Simpsons books, Marvel's STAR line, DC's Cartoon Network Comics (Mainly Powerpuff Girls), Archie's Sonic The Hedgehog, and Valiant's Nintendo Comics System. I liked Superheroes, but I didn't really read too many besides Captain America and Green Lantern. But that changed when I got back into comics in my 20s out of boredom.

But yeah, very much all about the story for me as well, couldn't care less what it's about

 

[petran79]

In the 80s and mid-90s I was hooked on European Mickey Mouse versions, ranging from 30 to 300 pages, French comics like Asterix and Lucky Luke, the classic Spanish comic Mortadello and Filemon, Italian version of Popeye and some other Italian comics like Serafino and Tiramola, our own local magazines that had compilation of British comics, mainly about humour soccer and adventure, Spiderman (the 60s version with orange colour pages) and other Marvel heroes, Conan the Barbarian, Tarzan, Blake, Sgt Mark but also the manga of Candy Candy and Faustine, translated from Italian. And our own local comic about a mouse and a prisoner or two sparrows and other themes that had humour and existentialism.

 

[Octopus]

Yeah I grew up around them pretty much. My older brother was into comics, who got into them from my dad so I kept the chain going basically. Some of the earliest things I remember reading were my dad's old Iron Man back issues. He had the Demon In A Bottle arc I distinctly remember, and the first appearance of the stealth armour. Spawn came not long after as any comic kid of the 90s was likely obsessed with, and it kept snowballing from there.

 

[romantic_cd_scratcher]

what got me into comics was short comics that my parents could read to me in small time frames.
the small amount of words also made it easy for young me to finish a comic before moving onto novels.

 

[Cuestionador]

The narrative aspect of telling stories in sequential form was the thing i hooked me from the start, my first comic-book was The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and beyond my favouritism for Batman, my favourite bits of the comic were the TV-related sequences.

 

[zombie100379]

in the late 80s and early 90s it was the peak of comics - at least for me . you would have comics with super gory violence and nudity along with nightmarishly disturbing (but brilliant art) right next to regular childrens comics , to say we were spoiled would be an understatement - i guess the shop owners had no clue how messed up some of this stuff was.

 

[Michael Frank]

The first one i read was Watchmen, and honestly i don't regret any of it, amazing comic.

Then i read the comic that decades later would become a movie:

And since then i started reading things like Astro City, Rogue Trooper, and many, MANY of the old Marvel and DC runs, Year One being one of my favorite Batman stories.

 

[diet_orange]

The first one i read was Watchmen, and honestly i don't regret any of it, amazing comic.
View attachment 207734
Then i read the comic that decades later would become a movie:
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And since then i started reading things like Astro City, Rogue Trooper, and many, MANY of the old Marvel and DC runs, Year One being one of my favorite Batman stories.

I'd recommend you check out Mike Grell's tenure on Green Arrow in the 80's if you liked Batman Year One. Very solid with pulp noir style action. Also Alan Moore's 1963 too. It's such a great and fun homage to 60's era Marvel that's sadly incomplete

 

[CraigJinx]

As a kid Batman of course, as an adult Wanted and Watchmen.

 

[Moreno909]

Turma da Mônica

 

[NobodyHere]

Tintin and LumberJanes

Tintin got me into the artist aspect of comics well LumberJanes it what really got me reading. My Dad is a huge Tintin fan, he’d let me flip through his collection, which I did often. Despite spending a lot of time with the books I wasn’t actually really reading them , I just really loved looking at them.

Then in my last year of elementary school my Mum bought me LumberJanes from my school’s Scholastic book sale, and I was hooked. I took it and read it everywhere.

 

[Retro Doomer]

Well its been ages since I collected any comics but well they where Simpsons (For whatever reason) and mostly Micky Maus Comics,and how to say it Wisdom Science related stuff

.

 

[diet_orange]

Well its been ages since I collected any comics but well they where Simpsons (For whatever reason) and mostly Micky Maus Comics,and how to say it Wisdom Science related stuff

.

Most of what I read as a kid was the majority of the Simpsons comics line (along with Marvel's STAR line and various DC Cartoon Network books, mainly PPG). I was really sad to see Bongo close up shop a couple of years back. But at least they went out on their own terms

 

[Majora Fi]

I only read comics sporadically and when I tried to collect Spidey, the current run was by Straczynski (I started halfway through and didn't even finish)

 

[Amphineura]

Oooh. Not comic books per se, but I used to have access to excellent compilations of Calvin and Hobbes, Asterix & Obelisk, Bill Watterson and even Turma da Mônica comics growing up.

Then, when I was a teen on the internet looking for comic strips _like_ Calvin & Hobbes, xkcd, Dilbert, Garfield etc. I made the huge mistake of googling "web comics". Big mistake lol. Accidentally made myself a furry in the process too.

I started with TwoKinds which seems to be running to this day.

Type of comics I was after...

TwoKinds

More modern, Elan School is a must-read.

 

[GuyZero32k4]

The Lou Ferrigno show of the Incredible Hulk. As a child I got scared when he was on screen throwing mother fuckers. Then mother got me a comic for the first time, to show me where he came from. This one actually, was my very first comic ever.

 

[Isegrim]

Phonics

I know what you mean deleted member...wherever you are...

In my case, I learned reading at an early age thanks to our local TV network airing Sesame Street 3 times a day, not to mention the many shelves of children's books my parents left lying around, picture storybooks that intrigued me enough to provide extra motivation to my very young self into reading. Reading and re-reading books and comic books in my time were the main source of entertainment since TV was on a limited schedule, not the "on demand video" instant gratification we have with youtube and streaming services.

One of the first comic books I read was a comic book sewn into a real book inherited from my uncle. Although the concept would be horrifying to comic book collectors, comic books in my early youth were usually taken by adults (at least in our family) and sewn into books with a hardcover through a local bookbinder. This was done to keep the comics tidy and made into a more respectable form visually plus making it handy to store in a bookshelf. Comic collector values and comics as an art form was not a thing known to people in my country back then.

Anyway, the book had a whole series of St. Fury and the Howling Commandos...which I wasn't a big fan of but half of it was about the Avengers, Superboy and the Hanna Barbera heroes I saw occasionally on TV. I loved this collection since every issue were imported from the U.S. with fascinating ads like X-Ray specs and giant 7 foot glowing monsters you could put in your room that was inaccessible anyway since none of them would deliver to my country even if we had money.

Later on, we got just random comics our parents dumped on us with most getting sewn into books. Most of those were reprints from local publishers bereft of those magical ads.

My brothers and I often argued which was better, DC or Marvel. My vote was DC because their stories was self contained per issue while the random Marvel comics issue we got usually ended up on a cliffhanger. Of course, I know now that the extended saga is superior narrative wise but since I was a child who lived in a third world country and only got random comics with no control of whatever we got, I naturally would be more satisfied with a complete DC story than a truncated Marvel one.