Just because people seem to be hanging about and I'm still stacked. Seeing the enthusiastic banter about comics in the previous thread, then, I'll start it off -- first comic ever read, and what are you digging now?
I came late -- I started reading in high school, because my brother Jon was buying GI JOE and Jon Sable, Freelance (so one of those two, although there's a chance Warlord was in there too.) I don't think I read a capes book until college.
67 comments:
Hey John,
I started with the Ninja Turtles comics because I liked the cartoon, I didn't really view it as a comic but as just an extension of the TV series, even though they were rather... different.
But then it was another 5 years till I picked up Sonic the Hedgehog and Spiderham (the excellent anthropomorphic British parody), before going onto actual Spiderman.
Nowdays I'm reading Amazing Joy Buzzards, which invokes a bizarre hybrid of Beatles movies and Josie & The Pussycats. I'm also reading everything Jim Mahfood puts out. I just finished going through Kazu Kibuishi's Daisy Kutter, which is beautiful and clever much like his monthly webcomic Copper.
Another great work is Tales From The Bully Pulpit, a graphic novel about Teddy Roosevelt teaming up with phantom Thomas Edison to fight Martian-Argentine Hitler.
Like everyone else I am reading everything Warren Ellis pens, as well as Y: The Last Man. Because to not do so would make me a bad person.
p.s: Read my webcomic
Well, I remember reading some Bronze Age horror comics when I was kid. DC's The Witching Hour and, I think, House of Mystery. I also read some Marvel stuff...The Man-Thing and Spider-Man.
I became a more serious reader of comics in the late 80s while in college and got hooked on DC's Wasteland.
The 90s were quiet, but Mike Wolfer's Widow, Moonstone's Kolchak the Night Stalker, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, and Peter David's Fallen Angel have gotten me good and hooked again. Also helping is the large amount of horror comics out there. Many of which are better than a lot of the dreck the studios are releasing, like that absymal remake of The Fog.
I'm not sure -- but the earliest ones I remember were these old Doom Patrols from the 60's that a great aunt had in her basement.
First comic read would probably be a Danny O'neil Batman comic way back in the 80's as a kid. Freaked me out really. Started to pick up a lot more including a memorable issue where someone got crushed by a garbage truck.
At the moment stiking mostly to some Ellis stuff, the occasional Grant Morrison piece, independents and recently Shadowplay from IDW,top story written by Amber Benson with some great art by Ben Templesmith. It's got Vampire Monkeys.
First book was X-Men. Current reading: Marvel Team-Up, Walking Dead, The Losers, Seven Soldiers, Young Avengers, New Avengers
I guess I'm one of the old men here, because I remember the 12 cent comic. I'm not quite sure which was first - either a Jack Kirby Fantastic Four or one of the Brave and the Bolds featuring Hawkman and The Atom.
A month ago, I picked up the trades for Space Ghost and Vol. 1 of Darwyn Cooke's homage to simpler times, The New Frontier.
Interesting to see how the demographic is skewing here. I'm a year older than Bill Cunningham, and the earliest comic I can remember is a Legion of Super-Heroes comic published when I was five years old. But I'm not sure that was the first comic I ever read. Mind you, my parents read comics back in the 1940s, so I may be having pre-natal memories from exposure in the womb.
I started off with a bunch of Marvel's toy/movie comics of the 70s, so we're talking Godzilla (the Essential Godzilla they have coming up might be too cool to pass up), Shogun Warriors and Micronauts. I discovered the Fantastic Four (George Perez run) and then was swept into the murky depths of being a Marvel zombie until the mid-80s when I started reading DC as well.
As for what I'm reading now, alas, nothing. I just moved to the Canadian arctic, where there is no comic store, and shipping costs on singles are prohibitive. So it's only trades for me right now. I just got Identity Crisis (not bad, pretty art) and Spider-Man/Human Tourch: I'm With Stupid (good nostaligic fun).
Upcoming purchases include the new TPBs of: The Losers, Fables, Usagi Yojimbo, anything by Ellis, Young Avengers, Avengers, She-Hulk, Amelia Rules, True Story Sear to God, Invincible, The Walking Dead and a bunch of pretty hardcovers that I see Amazon has on sale, Like Morrison's run of X-Men, Bendis run on Daredevil, etc.
I'm trying hard to resist the HC of V For Vendetta and Watchmen because I already have copies of those stories. But they are very pretty.
I left behind 10,000 comics when I moved here. It still hurts. Thank god I have an understanding wife...
I can't remember the first one I ever READ (it may have been the X-Men/Titans crossover by Claremont and Simonson), but the first one I ever bought was Batman #426, the first of the story where Robin died. These days I'm reading so much stuff: Fables, Ex Machina, Rex Mundi, Planetary, Seven Soldiers, Noble Causes, Elk's Run, Astro City - those are just a few. You can always check out my rants (among others) at Comics Should Be Good.
I got into comics probably in late elementary/beginning of middle school, 11 or 12 years old. My brother collected Uncanny X-Men, but I started out with the old Marvel Transformers and GI Joe stuff, before I segued to The Silver Surfer and that whole Infinity Gauntlet thing, and then, of course, X-Men and X-Force when those launched.
Currently, I try to stay as far away from the mainstream superhero stuff as I can. Marvel's "House of M" and DC's "Infinite Crisis" stuff, I just don't care anymore. All these huge crossovers give me headaches, though I will admit to digging Bendis's New Avengers, Heinberg's Young Avengers, and Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. Superhero stuff or not, good writing is still good writing.
I read pretty much anything Brian Azzarello writes, 100 Bullets, and his new one, Loveless. The first issue of Brian Wood's DMZ was pretty good, too. I can't wait for his new Oni Press book, Local to come out.
Powers is still a favorite, and like frank, anything Jim Mahfood does. Rucka's Gotham Central, too, because Homicide is my all-time favorite TV show and it's just like that, except with Batman and his villains.
Anything Warren Ellis writes, too, I usually enjoy. Desolation Jones and Fell have been good so far. Brian Vaughan's Ex Machina, Bryan O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, Corey Lewis's Sharknife, all excellent.
Pretty much anyone listed on my blog's sidebar, I try and read their stuff, and if you take a look, I have quite a few names listed, so I think I'm gonna stop there, because this is starting to depress me, the amount of money I spend on comics.
Thanks, John.
Earliest comic I can remember was Batman Family 10 with Robin, Batgirl, Killer Moth and the Cavalier.
My parents were stationed in Gitmo and I was about four or five, maybe six.
Didn't really get seriously into consistently reading and collecting comics until GL/GA 112. Now, I have the entire GL run after many stops and starts.
Today, I find myself reading less capes (though I'll never cut them out completely)
Top of my pile these days includes GL, JSA, Fell, Desolation Jones, Gotham Central, Queen & Country, and new to the pile...Jonah Hex and DMZ.
Uh. Lord.
I think it may have been Buck Godot or Phil Foglio's illustration of Myth Adventures. If not that, then early Claremont X-Men. Possibly Ranma 1/2 or Cerebus.
It's all a blur.
First comic: Transformers #something or another. The one where ratchet and megatron are merged and Optimus has to decide if he should kill the merged being.
Right now I am sad to say I am reading Infinitly long crisis, and I am enjoying it.
Intimates used to be one of my must reads, but alas, it is no more.
The first comic we had in the house was an old Aquaman comic that had somehow survived grandma's Great Yard Sale of '69, where she sold all my dad's comics and baseball cards the second he moved out of the house.
There's lots of titles I'm following right now, but I'm especially enjoying: The Walking Dead, Powers, Bear, Y: the Last Man, and I've been recently re-reading Gaiman's Sandman series.
Nice mix here. Congrats on that.
The first comic I can remember reading contained a story illustrated (I believe) by Kurt Schaffenberger, in which Jimmy Olsen and Professor Lang discovered this huge old stone honeycomb thing out in the desert. Jimmy walked through it and wound up in a world where anyone who didn't wear a cape was a slave. So the Professor Lang of that world immediately clapped the capeless Jimmy of our world in irons and sold him on the free market. Eventually, Jimmy tumbled to the dodge that five year old me had spotted immediately, pinned a bath towel around his neck, and bingo... instant emancipation. Shortly afterwards, Superman showed up and took him home again.
The first comic I ever BOUGHT myself was a 12 cent Superboy comic with a story in the back where Superbaby went to the rodeo. I had two nickels and begged 2 pennies off my mom to get it when I saw it on a spinner rack at a five and dime store. And the first comic I ever bought as an adolescent was an issue of Steve Engelhart's CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON where Steve and Sam fought the Cowled Commander and his Legion of Losers (Eel, Scarecrow -- Marvel's Scarecrow, a truly pathetic man -- Porcupine, Plantman, and the Viper) and Cap discovered he'd gained super strength as a side effect from some strange herbs the Viper had injected into him, intermixing with the original super solder serum.
Currently I'd have to say Geoff Johns is my favorite writer in comics. At Marvel, I buy and enjoy the stuff Robert Kirkman is doing on MARVEL TEAM UP, as it's nicely continuity derived, and I've been mildly enjoying NEW THUNDERBOLTS, too. I love Alan Moore's ABC stuff and vastly enjoyed the TOP 10 series as well as the new graphic novel. I also play a lot of HeroClix when I can get a game with someone who will play by my house rules.
I've pretty much given up my own ambitions of writing comics one day, due to various circumstances too tedious for me to bore anyone with here. However, I'm hoping to have some good news soon in regard to one of my several unpublished novels, as a friend recently introduced me to his agent and we seem to be getting along.
Oh, I should probably also mention that I think Busiek and Perez's JLA/AVENGERS crossover may be the finest superhero comics story ever published. It certainly, at long LONG last, does real justice to what such a titanic crossover event needed to be, in a way that could and would not have even remotely been achieved by any of the various other writers who submitted plots and ideas for the project over the past thirty years.
However, Geoff Johns' INFINITY CRISIS may just top it. Can't wait to find out.
Hmm.
The earliest I can remember is Golden/Silver Age Wonder Woman (I bought tons of them from a used bookstore. They got thrown out in a move). Then in the 80s/90s, it was Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld, Psi Force (one of Marvel's New Universe titles, IIRC), some Power Pack, a little Swamp Thing, I think something called Black Orchid, and probably a few others. I don't think I ever actually read the big-name books. Oh - read a fair amount of Cloak and Dagger back then.
Hm. More-or-less recently I've bought the first two TPBs of Fables (need to pick up the rest of that sometime), the TPBs of the Voltron comic Devil's Due put out, and a fair amount of manga.
Never got into the capes-and-tights books, etc., etc.
--Kallah
Kallah,
Fabian Nicieza's PSI FORCE at New Universe may be the best four dimensional teenage superteam comic ever done. I lost my set in a move; I need to start looking to replace them. Pity they never had particuarly good art, but Nicieza was just writing brilliantly then, before he sold out and tried to go mainstream with NEW WARRIORS.
BLACK ORCHID started as a strange and mysterious back up series to Supergirl in ADVENTURE back in the 70s... she was this mysterious super powered woman who showed up, saved someone from doom, and then vanished again, all in 8 pages, usually illustrated by Nestor Redondo. Neil Gaiman apparently remembered and loved the character as well and one of his earliest projects in comics was doing a miniseries that explained who she was... or what she was, as it turned out she was actually something pretty weird. You most likely read the Gaiman miniseries, which was tangentially cross connected to Alan Moore's SWAMP THING continuity.
If any of that helps. ;)
The first comic I remember buying for myself was an issue of The Invaders - it was the return of Union Jack. I don't remember much else, but I do recall being very confused about the whole Human Torch situation when I found the Fantastic Four a few months later.
I currently don't read anything, because my toddlers would just destroy any comics I brought into the house. Yes, I recognize the irony of not buying comics because I have kids.
Highlander:
Yep, that's Psi Force. I should dig out those old, beat-up issues and read 'em again.
Gaiman's miniseries sounds like the one I remember, because it was definitely weird and IIRC probably involved a mad geneticist.
Thanks!
--Kallah
edited to fix busted tags. Sorry for the deletions.
I read a lot of the Harvey stuff when I was a kid: Casper, Hot Stuff, Richie Rich, but I couldn't name the first of those.
The first superhero comic I remember reading was an issue of Captain America that featured him fighting a giant-brained guy named Animus. That giant head scared the crap out of me. It was bought off of a spinner rack at the Food King. Later I'd go to 7-Eleven and pick up whatever I didn't already own. Loved the DC Digests, such a bargain! By the time I discovered the Los Angeles Comic Book Convention (then at the Ambassador Hotel), I was hooked. I picked up lots of silver age stuff, because back then it was cheaper.
I started early with the underground/small press stuff after that. Love and Rockets, Tales of the Beanworld. My favorite comic book of all time is Zot!
My tastes nowadays are pretty diverse. As far as capes-and-panties go, I'm loving both Seven Soldiers and Infinite Crisis (but not the preludes). I feel that the 1985 Crisis and its aftermath was one of the biggest editorial mistakes of all time, so the recent series has been quite thrilling.
I read Captain America and I love Young Avengers and Teen Titans! There are plenty of other titles.
I like the entire Brian K. Vaughan groove. For most of the Ellis titles I wait until the stories are complete. I make an exception for Desolation Jones.
I'm really liking what Chip Kidd's doing with the Pantheon Graphic Novels. Dan Clowes' Ice Haven kicked my ass really hard, and I consider it one of the greatest graphic novels ever written. I am also about to catch up on Black Hole, because I'd lost track of which issues I owned and couldn't get back on step.
Nowadays, I'm on staff at Broken Frontier so I'm encouraged to be quite diverse in my reading. Not that I need much prodding in that direction.
The first one I got may have been a Batman comic that I still have. Batman fought a guy that killed homeless people and put pennies over their eyes. I got it at a yard sale. I was a Marvel kid after that, though. Spidey was my favourite.
Recently got back into comics thanks to Warren Ellis's Bad Signal and the Sin City movie. Just finished The Losers: Ante Up and am now reading Cromartie High School.
Are we ever going to see the second part of that Funnybook Publishing post?
My first memory of comics was when I was 7 or 8. I had picked up a comic book at a yard sale (to this day I have no idea what it was called, only that it was about cavemen riding dinosaurs). Anyway, my uncle made it a point to tell me that it would never be worth anything because it had a UPC symbol on it. I was 8 and the idea of collecting and value appreciation was lost on me. All I got out of the conversation was, "Don't waste your time." So I didn't.
For 20 years.
I didn't get "back" into comics until my brother started coloring them in the late 90s. Even then, I really didn't read them. I just bought them because the books had my brother's name inside. I was still under the false impression that comics were primarily kids' books that didn't have any literary value.
That was until I met Mark Waid at a dinner party. He was talking about a new comic he was going to be writing (Superman: Birthright) when the conversation turned to Clark Kent's glasses. As Mark explained their meaning, their symbolism and a whole host of other delicious literary tidbits behind them I remember thinking to myself, "You can do that? With COMICS?"
I told a friend about it and he responded, "Well, DUH." He then proceeded to turn me onto to all the great writing I'd been missing the past 20 years.
So I've been playing a horrible game of catch-up. But right now I'm hooked on Y: The Last Man, The Walking Dead, Elk's Run, Conan, Fables and anything by Ellis, Waid or Whedon.
First thing I ever read was The Beano and Dandy - can't get more British than that. I also had my dad's old Eagle annuals so Dan Dare was the man right up until I discovered 2000AD.
NEVER got caught up in the weirdos in tights DC/Marvel stuff because it just wasn't as good as Dredd busting heads (and knees and arms and spleens).
These days if it's not Warren Ellis I tend to pass.
I think I have everyone beat. My first comics were bought en masse. I was at the 7-11 one morning and I was going to be stuck at the country club while my father golfed all day. I was 12, and these comics called the "New Universe" caught my eye. So I made Dad buy me the first issues of all of them. Yep, my first comics: Kickers Inc, Nightmask, Star Brand, PSI-Force, Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, Justice, DP7, and Marc Hazzard: Merc brought me to comics. Other than the rather effective Shooter/Romita Jr run on Star Brand, these were pretty awful, but just good enough to hook me.
It's kinda like someone saying they really got into rock 'n' roll because of Edison Lighthouse.
Frinklin,
Shooter's STAR BRAND and Nicieza's PSI FORCE were the high points of the NEW UNIVERSE, without a doubt. Hmmm... I lost my early run of STAR BRAND in that move, too. Bummer.
Fad,
I like ZOT! a great deal myself. However, I hung out with Scott McCloud quite a bit when we were both at Syracuse University, so I'm doubtless biased. I used to think Scott's DESTROY! was the greatest superhero comic ever created, but that was before JLA/AVENGERS. However, I still believe DESTROY! essentially laid the foundation and set the pattern for the entire Image line and probably 70% of everything that happened in superhero comics in the 1990s.
I've always thought it was a pity that Lee, Liefeld, McFarlane, et al never seemed to understand that Scott intended DESTROY! as a joke...
2099 comics. Ravage. I kid thee not.
I was looking for a "starting" place in comics when I finally started hitting the comic stores. 2099 and the X-men revamp hit around the same time.
argh forgot the Diggin now...
Transformers. Cable/Deadpool. Gi Joe.
I've had to cut back on my comic habits, so it's down to those three right now.
the short answer is nothing and that's because my heart was ripped from me and carried away by termites.
for the long answer, read the short essay on my comic experience that i spat out on my blog. be sure to check it out if you are really really dying for something to read after every last bit of information on the internet has been parsed.
My father, like the magnificently oblivious immigrant that he is, bought me an issue of Savage Sword of Conan when I was 11. Scarred me for life in the best possible way. Actually ended up in the hospital after trying to make a cool gold band to wear around my bicep out of a hanger. Oops.
Then fell for the bait that was Secret Wars. From there, Claremont's X-Men for a long time. And Spidey, some of the early McFarlane stuff. Then Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen happened, and I became a DC boy.
Now, following Ellis, Vaughn, Bendis, Waid, and Azzarello. Dug really hard on The Walking Dead and Queen & Country. Gotham Central rocks my puny world on a regular basis...
First comic ever? It's hard to remember, but it was probably some newsstand X-men book from the late 80s.
Currently I read anything with Morrison, Busiek, Gaiman or Whedon on the cover, and occasionally splurge on general DC universe books.
Highlander
I remember when I first read Destroy, I was surprised at how pointless it was: just a huge, rampaging fight scene. It had a funny capper, though. I had both editions (3D and normal, I think one was treasury-sized). I missed most of the Image stuff, but I think I get your point.
I didn't start reading the series until I was in College, I think. That was just before the Earth stories. I found every single issue... wish I could say the same today.
Mike
When I first read the Eagle 2000AD stuff, my mind was blown again. The 80s was an interesting time for teens to be reading comics.
***
I was already planning to dig through my batcave today, but this topic has got me extra nostalgic.
It's interesting to read the comments and see how so many people were influenced by marginal/fringe titles or comic lines considered failures: New Universe, 2099, Charlton, Black Orchid...
After my initial taste of both DC and Marvel, I too discovered the Dells, Gold Keys, Charltons and Atlas comic lines.
None were considered mainstream successes (Dell, etc.. were kids stuff, and Atlas folded after two years of Marvel imitations), but are remembered now as the wonderfully cheap mags traded with your buddies along with baseball cards and other paraphenalia your mom always threatened to throw out.
Hmmmm...
I remember reading super hero comics at friends, but not buying them. First thing I bought for myself was (I think) Frank Miller's Ronin. I remember thinking, hey, this is different, and I want it! I was so hooked, I basically worked part time jobs to buy comics.
I think of the 80s as a fantastic time for comics (off the top of my head : Grendel, Mage, Elementals (RIP comico) Dark Knight, XMen, Miracle Man, Watchmen, Zot, American Flagg, Flaming Carrot, Cerberus, Moebius stuff, Swamp Thing, etc). But I stopped buying (with a few exceptions - Sandman) in the early 90s.
It would be fun to find some great new things to read. I'm so out of it, though, it's hard to know where to start.
Xian,
Alan Moore's return to superhero comics in the 1990s, first with the stuff he wrote for Image (an issue of SPAWN, a longish cycle on WildCATs, a long, brilliant run on SUPREME), and then with his America's Best Comics material (TOM STRONG, TOP 10, PROMETHEA) is all stuff worth making an effort to pick up and read, if you haven't seen any of it yet. Neil Gaiman also wrote one extraordinary issue of SPAWN right before Moore's issue. Moore's FROM HELL isn't superhero comics at all, but may be the best graphic novel ever done.
I'm also fond of Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli's work together; BATMAN YEAR ONE, and the Daredevil graphic novel BORN AGAIN are some great stuff.
Nowadays, as I've noted in other threads, I mostly read Geoff Johns. Johns has done a lot of work and most of it is available in TPB collections; pretty much any of it is worth reading.
In a note about the 80s, I recently had the opportunity to pick up a complete set of Englehart's COYOTE series from Epic, which was must read material in my small comics clique back in college. I'd forgotten that Englehart reprinted his DJINN series, with art by Steve Ditko, in the back of COYOTE, and it was a pleasant rediscovery. I myself thought COYOTE took a permanent downturn in quality after the first two issues by Steve Leilaloha... I've always thought Steve E. must have been markedly disinspired by the non artwork Chas Truog turned in for most of the book's run... but it was still a pretty singular series.
Another highlight of the 80s for me was Baron and Rude's NEXUS. In fact, for me, anything good published in the 80s pretty much had to come out non-mainstream, as Marvel and DC had been devouring their own innards for lengthy periods by then... Marvel since the mid 70s, DC since a little bit later than that (both companies essentially went to hell after Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber and Jim Starlin did their best work at each, I think).
Starting as an elementary student I remember 2 things: how amazing x-men seemed to me, and how great the Joker was. First comic I remember clearly was the run where Joker killed robin in the mid-late 80's. Read it in school during lunch in maybe 3rd or 4th grade. Got back into it with Excalibur in the mid-90's due to Nightcrawler being a team leader again and got addicted to every one of the x-folks Ellis was penning at the time. It helped that Poiter, Kitty, and Kurt were all presant. Unfortunatley I started on issue 92 or so and it ended the run at 125.
From there jumped over to Slave Labor and picked up Johnny in single issues, the big book of squee, and I feel sick. Still waiting to see what happens in that universe since the end of Invader Zim.
After that I got turned onto Kabuki and picked up metamorphasis and immediately became addicted to David Macks art style, I consider him right up there with Dave McKean which is quite the compliment from me.
After that I started in on Transmet soley from the Ellis name on it and my love of Excalibur, been reading Ellis since then sticking mostly with TPB's. Along with Arkham Asylum and Kabuki, this and some Gaimen stuff (but only things with McKean or actual novels.)
Right now I'm waiting on the TPB for Kabuki:Alchemy, Nextwave I'll probably pick up single issues if I can get em and I heard that Excalibur (real excalibur with Britain and Megan) may be starting after house of M finishes up, if thats true I'll have single issues of somthing again. Need to read New Avengers because I've heard nothing but praise for it. And in the non-american world, still want some english copies of the whole 3x3 eyes run... here to wishing. Also for manga Hajime no Ippo just because I got addicted to the anime.
I dunno, I must have been sexually abused as a kid or something 'cause I can't remember my first comic.
Probably a Spider-man, since I loved him--even that stupid TV show that you'd watch 80 minutes of Peter Parker just to see Spidey "magically" climb a building--I'm sure it had nothing to do with the rope you could clearly see.
I REALLY got into comics in the $.60 era--the Paul Smith/Claremont X-men, the Dark Knight Returns, The Crow, Batman: Killing Joke.
I can’t pin down the first comic I ever read. It might have been Jonah Hex or a Batman comic featuring a disfigured villain. Whatever it was, I remember it had a Kool-Aid ad on the back. In the ad, Kool-Aid Man is holding up a pitcher of Kool-Aid while busting through a wall and yelling “OH YEAAHH!”
Anyway, since I’m an amnesiac bastard I’ll just share a few favs…apologies in advance for breaking with the format.
Secret Wars (v1.0) early 80s – Shooter/Zeck
Blows any chance I have of walking away from this vile crack-like medium — imagine my chagrin when I discover it’s a marketing ploy…and battle world is not a real place. The v2.0 follow up makes for good birdcage lining material.
X-Men — mid to late 80s — Claremont/Romita Jr.
Telepaths rule and mind games abound, Logan, like NAS, “obliges every opportunity to fight ya punk asses,” the Hellfire Club looks cool in black and white, Charlie walks, Ororo loses her powers and gains a mohawk — those were the days.
Swamp Thing — mid 80s — Moore/Yeates
Dark, melancholy, smart and somehow sweet — like biting into bitter foreign chocolate — angular pain spray right in the jaw.
The Legion of Super-Heroes — mid 80s
Utterly weird and truly fantastic — who knew appending lad, lass, boy and girl to all of the cool words in the dictionary would yield my second favorite super team.
Electra: Assassin
Miller and Sienkiewicz have a blast at my fragile psyche's expense.
Marshall Law, Sláine the Horned God, Judge Dredd and most of the British invasion stuff also stand out as favs.
Not reading many funny books these days. Occasionally, I’ll walk into Jim Hanley’s and read the Ennis Punisher. If I squint and hold it far out in front of me, it's kind of like reading Preacher.
I learned to read on my Big Bro's 70s Avengers. Byrne and Perez. Gyrich, Kang, Ant-Man, Wundergore Mountain, Wonder Man & Beast, Magneto is Scarlet Witch/Quicksilver's pappy???, Jocasta & Ultron, Wanda's the big bad, Ms. Marvel impregnated/date-raped by her own son/lover/say what? Good times. Don't get me started on the New Avengers or House of M.
First comic I ever bought was Batman 323, Jim Aparo. Paid the 40 cents with allowance money, bought it off a drugstore spindle. Hey Kids, Comics! Still my favorite story. Catwoman waking up naked in Bruce's cave. Me-ow. Plus that amazing cover on #324. My offer still stands: my hand in wedlock to whichever geek boy owns the original artwork. Hope you're not allergic to low doses of daily arsenic in your morning coffee.
Unlike most of you guys, I'm a tights fanatic. Only in the last year have I really started reading non-suped work, and only then when my male friends insist I borrow. I've been enjoying Fables, Powers, Promethea, Global Frequency.
But I'm in love with Alias. I heart Jessica. And Bendis' dialogue and sex scenes.
Oh, and any Batwork by Loeb & Sales.
By the by, you Zot! lovers who purchased directly from Eclipse 1990-1991? I packaged that puppy for you. With love.
My first comic was Marvel's STAR WARS. I loved the movie and my parents thought I'd like the comic; if they only knew what they were doing.
After that it was G.I.JOE, SECTAURS, MICRONAUTS (that was the one that got me into a comic store the first time, since I kept missing issues on the newsstand) and BLUE DEVIL, which as I said elsewhere led me to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS -- by that time the damage was irrevesible.
I have been all over the map when it comes to comics, although I've never totally shaken the superhero books. Here's a list of what I'm currently reading (this mostly my local store's pull list, and doesn't count new stuff I pick up because it looks intersting):
SUPREME POWER
FANTASTIC FOUR
ASTONISHING X-MEN
ULTIMATES VOL. 2
IRON MAN (whenever Marvel can figure out how to get one out -- is Warren Ellis's run even done yet?)
Ellis's ULTIMATE GALACTUS miniserieses (is that a word?)
ZATANNA
SHINING KNIGHT
LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (was going to drop it at #12 and only get the collections, but a certain monkey convinced me to hang on a bit more...)
OUTSIDERS
Ellis's JLA CLASSIFIED run
FABLES
PLANETARY
Y THE LAST MAN (in TPBs only, though I flip through the singles to keep up)
Warren Ellis' FELL
GOLD DIGGER from Antarctic Press
Scott Kurtz's PVP
Aaron Williams' NODWICK and PS238 (I got my wife hooked on the last one)
USAGI YOJIMBO
ASTRO CITY
Alex Ross's JUSTICE miniseries
::waving salt shaker around, making warbling noises::
I think this comment thread is dead, Jim.
After a pre-pubescence that was completely focused on Star Wars, I happened to flip through a friend's copy of Uncanny X-Men #138 (the series-length recap framed by the funeral of Jean Grey) while at a ballgame. I completely ignored the plight of my hometown Padres and had my brain blown open by John Byrne and Chris Claremont. Funny that. 25 years later and my girlfriend still glowers whenever she sees the floor-to-ceiling stack of longboxes in my office.
First comic I remember reading was THE X-MEN in the early eighties. I was never that dedicated a collector, but I enjoyed the superheroes for a while and followed the X-Men in particular up to the period when the franchise developed a gajillion (or was it bazillion) spinoff titles. I was later (and remain today) a pretty big Alan Moore fan, and also dug Frank Miller's SIN CITY books and Grant Morrison's THE INVISIBLES (at least the earlier instalments).
I very rarely buy comics today, but those that I do buy tend to come from the Canadian indie tradition, people like Seth and Chester Brown. I am, however, very curious about THE FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE, which looks like it could be awfully cool.
Reprinted annual of FF with "photos" of the team and notes to the fans in the back. As well as cutaways of the Baxter Building, Pogo Plane and the Fantasticar.
Haven't looked back.
Oh. And I'm all over FELL, SUPREME POWER, WINTERMEN and, dare I say it, ZOMBIE TALES.
I started with GI Joe. Then I let someone borrow some issues and they 'lost' them and decided to pay me back by giving me some X-Men comics. The next thing I knew I was collecting X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, Excalibur, Wolverine, and soon had no money for my GI Joe comics. And then when all those artists formed Image I went with them. Now I collect all the Wildstorm titles (Sleeper was awesome) and any Warren Ellis title. Also I'm still a X-guy and am one of the few who really enjoyed House of M.
-Jack
jackcameron.com
Ah ha ha! What a mook Highlander is. Says the comments are dead and we get fifty more comments. What a dope! What a maroon! What a ultramaroon!
Hmmm. Well, I count six more comments, not fifty, and I believe I said "I think", rather than anything definite. But I'm happy to be wrong, regardless. And I think 'Magnificent Sven' is a pretty cool name, too. Are you the bald guy? :)
Magnificent Sven,
Love your name...but you get that calling someone a maroon is a racial slur like kike or wetback, right? Just because Bugs Bunny cartoons got away with cotton-picking and maroon sixty years ago doesn't make it cute now.
Sorry. Just...had to be said.
Kid Sis,
Not to speak up in defense of Magnificent Sven (who can doubtless speak for himself) but I'd always understood that the term 'maroon', when Bugs used it, was a mispronunciation of 'moron', so his usage of 'ultramaroon' was just a sort of odd pun on 'ultramarine', with 'moron' thrown in.
If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but you're the first person to tell me it's a racist term. I mean, I've used the term myself (old Warner Bros Saturday morning cartoon fan here) and never in my life thought it was non PC. I just thought it was a Bugs Bunny non sequiter. I imagine Magnificent Sven thinks that, too. Although, as said, he can speak for himself.
Oh you are kidding me. Maroon and cotton pickin' are considered racist nowadays? PC run amuck. Sorry this is cotton pickin ridiculous and anyone who tries to tell me that ultramaroon is a racist word is just stupid.
Highlander you are right I don't need you to defend me. And no I am not Yul Brinner. I am me, Magnificent Sven. That is why I sign my name that way.
As an official black person I'm going to have to rule.
"Maroon" is, in fact, a mispronounciation of the word "moron."
The word you're looking for is "octaroon."
What the hell "ta ra ra GOON dee ay" is supposed to mean, i have no clue but, you know, there it is.
So, to sum up: maroon (and the permutaions thereof) and octaroon.
Not the same.
No harm. No foul.
Move along, folks.
Nothing to see here.
Highlander and Redjack,
I hope you're right, 'cuz I luvs my Bugs Bunny. All I know is I've been trapped in rooms with racists who used it as maroon, and the webster definition is "the term for fugitive slaves in the west indies." Calling it moron frankly sounds like a clever WB PR doctor's spin when parents started freaking out in the 80s.
Highlander,
I hardly see how MS needs defense from brief and kindly-given word definitions. I notice you didn't leap to my rescue when he got overlydefensive and actually called me stupid.
MS,
Anybody who uses words and doesn't know what they mean and then defends them with a lame Straw Man argument and name-calling has made his point, in my book. Much more so than researching the words and building a constructive reply.
Whose 'Cotton Picking Hands' do you think the cartoonists were referring to? All those white northern cotton pickers?
Nobody's suddenly said these terms were racist. They've been racist terms since the civil war and before. The WB just got away with putting in those jokes (as well as characters in blackface) and airing them well through the 70s, just as there was plenty of racist jokes in movies last century.(Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's anyone?). It was after that the cartoons were sanitized by a more enlightened generation.
It's a free country, you can keep aping Bugs Bunny, but now that you're not naive about the meaning you'll be intentionally insulting people. You're welcome. (I assume thank you flowers are on their way for me caring about your reputation/not wanting you to accidentally make an ass of yourself somewhere you could get fired or sued for it? I'd tell you if you had a booger hanging from your nose, too.)
Come, join us. It's pretty over here in Tolerance/Responsibility Land.
To Kid Sis:
I'm sure you mean well, but hasn't it occurred to you that the usage of words changes over time? For something to function as a racial slur, both the target and the user have to be able to recognize it as such without consulting an etymological dictionary or being helpfully informed by their neighbourhood pedant. Semantic drift has pretty clearly deprived the word "maroon" of its former associations*, and I should say there are damned few people of any race who would take umbrage at "cotton pickin'" either.
For just this reason, I'm not at all impressed with latter-day "enlightened" censors who took it upon themselves to excise these and other supposedly-offensive terms from modern airings of Looney Tunes. It accomplishes nothing except to spoil the cartoons as period documents for those few who would be interested in the dynamics of original usage.
All of which means that Magnificent Sven was right to be irritated. Just... please don't.
[* I doubt you could find even 1 in 50 black people today who would know or care about the origins of "maroon." I come from a reasonably well-educated and politicized black family, and I only learned the term's origins while studying history in third year university. Nor did the knowledge affect my perspective on current usage all that much.]
My first comic? The first comic I strictly remember was an issue of Detective when I was about 3 or 4, circa 1975. I remember it because it was a Clayface issue, one where he was oozing out of his costume, and it scared the crap out of me. I started collecting, sort of, with Marvel's Star Wars comics a couple of years later.
Right now, it's mainly sundry Wildstorm titles and Marvel's Ulimate books, with a little Ellis and/or Mahfood thrown in for flavour.
Kid Sis: Oops, it looks like you edited your post before I posted my reply. I notice you now mention:
All I know is I've been trapped in rooms with racists who used it as maroon, and the webster definition is "the term for fugitive slaves in the west indies."
You've actually met racists who used the term "maroon" as a specific racial epithet for blacks? Living in a fairly redneck area code myself, I've heard plenty of anti-black epithets that would equate to "kike" or "wetback," but "maroon" was never one of them...
To Doctor Slack,
Well-played. Thank for actually thinking about what I said for a moment and formulating a thoughtful reply. I think it's been a stimulating conversation, and I do appreciate it. I'm so freaking bored of the laziness of the "I'm anti-PC!" comments. And thank you for noting I mean well, as I'm sure you do. Just because we have different opinions about the subject doesn't mean either stance is invalid or silly.
I do understand that language changes over time. You've brought up a very good point. Let me continue on your train of thought and ask you, if it were fifty years into the future and the word nigger had been diffused in areas of the country, would you still feel the same emotionally about watching your grandkids run around innocently calling each it because they learned it from a cartoon character?
My grandpa was old enough to know what calling people cotton-pickers was, and his generation made the cartoons. He probably watched me say the words, too, thinking I was cute like Bugs Bunny.
It's been inferred here by several people that I tried to censor MS and accused him of being a racist. There's a huge distinction between pointing out the meaning of racist words to someone accidentally using them and what some of you are leaping to the conclusion of: That I told him not to use the words here and called him racist for typing them. I have a right to be damn irritated by the hysterical nature of those accusations against me.
It accomplishes nothing except to spoil the cartoons as period documents for those few who would be interested in the dynamics of original usage.
The cartoons do still exist for historians. But that is certainly not the use cartoons are in rotation on cable for. They're there to sell cereal and Happy Meals. Kids mimic everything they see. Their brains are little sponges. I don't understand why you think I'm so misguided for noting the history on this site if you're all for historians studying cartoons. Do you not want them to ever talk about their findings anywhere? Or is your point that I'm unqualified to talk about this subject because from my diminutive fictional avatar you don't think I'm black or a media historian?
We're not talking about ancient history here, unfortunately. It's great that words lose their meaning over time, but I doubt you're a neighborhood pedant who has polled every county in the country as to whether these words are still triggers.
Would you be comfortable walking into an establishment in the deep south and jovially telling a white guy to use his cotton-picking head? I'm very curious from your position on this whole conversation where in the deep south you have lived or visited, as that is where the words in question originated from and are still in circulation.
You're right about the analogies I used. Better equivalents to cotton picker are wetback and moneychanger (I'm sure there's many more for every racial group). When have these terms lost their meaning? And who should be polled exactly? Only the races the terms apply to?
You've actually met racists who used the term "maroon" as a specific racial epithet for blacks?
I don't understand this whole paragraph of yours. It sure reads like you're calling me a liar because I've had an experience you haven't. Have we lived in the same towns and hung out with the same people? Wouldn't it be more scientific to compare notes with me about geography first before claiming to have awareness of what is said everywhere in the country? And perhaps as a white woman I have been in different conversations than you have as a black man or woman.
Don't worry, you didn't miss anything in the "editing" of my comment. Redjack posted while I was writing, so I deleted and copied my own comment so I could include him in the conversation. No big whoop.
I thought most of your argument was very interesting. But your "So...just don't" I definitely interpret as your attempt to censor me with a little condescending pat on my head. Very unappreciated in an otherwise civilized debate.
I realize positioning yourself as the authority because you're black and you think I'm white is a good way to try to shut down the conversation and "win", but complicated, thought-provoking questions aren't meant to be "won." They're meant to be discussed by everyone. There's nothing empowering about telling people not to think or talk about history, or that they don't have a right to because of their race, or that something our grandparents and great-grandparents believed and experienced doesn't matter because we never listened to them.
One last point regarding the editing of the Looney Tunes' racial slurs: How do you feel about them taking out all the cartoons that had smoking cigarettes and blackface in them? I'm not trying to push a button here. It's a fact that those images were also removed, and I'm wondering if maybe you're more of a visual then an audio person and that's why the words don't matter to you and you assert so strongly that therefore they shouldn't influence anyone else.
For the record, I am white and the words do matter to me, and that should be as important as polling any other person of any race about it. If I were working in a corporation I would never walk into a business meeting and use the terms cotton-picker or wetback or money-changer or watermelon-eater or any of that race-related garbage. I guess if I wouldn't use it in a board room because it's innapropriate, I personally wouldn't be so fragile that I couldn't handle someone pointing out it might be weird to use on someone else's blog.
I have to get ready to travel to a family funeral. Please don't take my lack of response here as disinterest, cowardice, or conceding. Real life simply intrudes on the philosophical.
You've given me something to chew on, and I hope it's mutual.
HEY!
I told you people to move along.
You're blocking traffic.
(and, yes, as a person who has met many a redneck, okie, cotton picker descendant white person, the best you're going to get on "cotton picker" is a delay of game.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)
To Kid Sis:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. And my sympathies about the death in your family.
I'm mindful of Redjack's injunction and I'll try to keep this as short as I can; I feel like we're at minimum on the verge of threadjacking now but I also think your post deserves a response.
In no particular order:
1. First of all, I'm not playing the race card in an attempt to "win." Nor did I mean to condescend at any point... but I do see what you mean about the "please don't" comment. My bad.
2. Do you not want [historians] to ever talk about their findings anywhere? I'd prefer if they talked about it in ways and contexts where it's relevant, is all. By much the same token, the phrase "big galoot" is still in marginal circulation as a playful insult today. While it's probably true that the word "galoot" derived from a slur for African galley slaves, I would see it as ungracious and pedantic to bring this up with the implication that the person so informed must avoid the term for fear of transgressing the bounds of tolerance and responsibility. (No, I don't think you were calling MS a racist, but I do think this is a fair description of what you were doing.)
3. Let me continue on your train of thought and ask you, if it were fifty years into the future and the word nigger [were similarly diffused...] The answer to your question is "yes," as it happens, but then I come from a generation to whom the venerable N-bomb retains its offensive power mostly in specific interracial contexts. In any case, "maroon's" case of semantic drift is much more advanced AFAICT than any epithet currently in use, so finding useful analogies to it is likely to prove difficult. (Which, in a way, is my point.)
4. On the semantics of "cotton pickin'," Redjack's comment has pretty much pre-empted me.
5. The cartoons do still exist for historians. But . . . They're there to sell cereal and Happy Meals. Kids mimic everything they see. Personally, I dislike the notion of the "sanitized" versions corwding out the originals in the historical record, which is entirely possible. I'm also wary of the invocation of child psychology as justifying certain forms of censorship, but that's a different debate.
6. How do you feel about them taking out all the cartoons that had smoking cigarettes and blackface in them? Differently, but then visual imagery is often not subject to the same kinds of semantic drift that words are, which is probably a more relevant criterion than what kind of learner I am specifically (auditory, as it happens). Most people today still know what blackface minstrel-era stereotypes mean, and can interpret them as signifying racially-coded disrespect; the same is not true of "maroon," unless there are regionally specific usages I'm not aware of.
7. I'm very curious from your position on this whole conversation where in the deep south you have lived or visited . . . "Maroon," incidentally, originates from 18th-century Jamaica AFAIK, not the American South, and to the extent that either "maroon" or "cotton-pickin'" are in circulation at all, they're not exclusive to the American South. But the short answer to your question is "I haven't," nor am I pretending to have taken a scientific survey of usage habits across North America. I have, however, known a reasonable number of people from various regions of North America and the Caribbean (including the American South), and my anecdotal experience tends to jive with textual sources that pay virtually no attention to dimensions of the term as a specifically racial epithet.
8. It sure reads like you're calling me a liar because I've had an experience you haven't. No, it was an honest question. If there actually are people today using the term as a racial slur, I would actually find that pretty interesting.
There's a lot of ground I haven't covered, but I'm going on way too long as it is, so this will have to do for now. Cheers.
Kid Sis,
"Kid Sis,
Not to speak up in defense of Magnificent Sven (who can doubtless speak for himself)
is how I began my comment. You clearly believe, as I do, that language is a precision instrument, so please, read my language precisely. I did not defend him; I wouldn't, in fact, defend him. I simply addressed your point.
I might speak up and defend you, if I thought you were being bullied by someone. However, I doubt you'd ever need my help. Regardless of that, I believe I will reserve my right to defend or not defend whoever the baby jesus I feel like it at any given moment of my life, and invite you to deal with my right to choose. You are, of course, free to continue to be snarky about my choices, and misconstrue me as you will, but if you're going to misread things other people say, willfully or otherwise, you certainly shouldn't get all ramboed up when people seem to be doing it to you.
Not long ago, I took a political blogger named billmon to task for insulting conservative bloggers he didn't like by using the word 'homoerotic' to describe their apparent fixation with America's heroic soldiery. He blew up at me and accused me of being overly PC; I responded that he had, essentially, just called people he didn't like 'faggots' using a bigger word, and over here on the left, we weren't supposed to do stuff like that. He didn't respond further.
Now, I suspect, I have a better grasp on his frustration.
It's always interesting to me to try to figure out exactly where freedom of speech has to give way to socially responsible expression. I especially find it interesting when someone who is remonstrating against someone else's choice of words then gets defensive and claims the shelter of the Bill of Rights when other people criticize their choice of words. It seems rather Ourobourean to me... or, to be less pedantic, kinda circular.
As to the rest of what you've said, it's an interesting argument, but I have to ultimately say this: I don't think Bugs Bunny (or his writers) were intentionally being racist when they used the term 'ultramaroon' or 'cotton pickin'. I cannot speak for Magnificent Sven, who clearly thinks his own thoughts wild and free, even if he doesn't spell them very well. (He does come up with excellent self identifiers, though... I really love the tag 'Magnificent Sven'. It just rocks.) For myself, I have never had the vaguest clue 'maroon' or 'ultramaroon' or 'cotton pickin' were racially derived, and while I certainly respect your scholarship, I like the phrase, I like the pop culture reference, and I enjoy being colorful in my speech and writing. So, once again, I will take shelter in the Bill of Rights... while continuing to understand how billmon felt when I bitch slapped him for his use of the word 'homoerotic' as an insult.
Sometimes, you know, we all just need to put our heads down on our desks for a couple of minutes.
My first comic was Billy the Kid...a short Marvel series, I think, that I conned my Dad into buying for me on a long night drive back from Brownwood to Ft. Worth, TX. I read a lot of different titles in the late '80's. Spider-man was my favorite, and I liked the X-men. Now, all I read is Dark Horse's Conan.
I started out on early '60s DC comics that I'd get at the local thrift store. I recently dated a comic book cover I saw at the local liquor store when I was a wee lad tand I was was three years old at the time. Of course, you have to remember that I was reading lots of stuff at 4 years old, and the image of a giant man in a city with fire for a head was pretty unforgettable.
The first ones I remember are the early LSH, Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, etc.
I watched the old Superman reruns, along with the Saturday morning cartoons that featured DC and Marvel characters flying about and punching bad guys into defeat.
I always looked forward to the summer JLA/JSA cross-over, and don't remember when I didn't know the Superman origin story.
I went as The Spectre for Halloween one year in a costume Mother Avenger made for me.
For my part every person may read this.
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