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.