Thebumwhowalks
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Following a discussion i had in an offtopic thread about earliest contact with comics, i thought i'd start a thread on this as it has been a good read when i read these threads on cbr and elsewhere...
I started getting into sh books cause of the Adam West Batman show on a Saturday morning, and the old 60s Spider-man cartoon which was on a Sunday afternoon. I was obsessed with both, and was soon buying the UK Super Spider-man weekly every week from the newsagents down the road. I would have been about 3yrs old when this started, so I had them read to me, i did not start reading myself until I was about 5 though.
But i would sit and try to draw shs, look at the pics all the time, play 'comic book shop' by laying the books all round the living room in little piles, and selling them to my family...i was just as sobsessed with the books as i was the tv shows.
There was a toy shop in the next area to us, about a mile and a bit down the road, next to my dentists. so, when i would go up there to the dentist, or just my m um was going there to shop, i woul dtag along and hope she would splash out.
Cause underneath the glass counter, they had a massive pile of DC comics, somehow only DC, and i would flip through them all going for any Batmans, Detective, Brave and the Bold....I also got some Supermans and Wonder Womans when they did not have any more Batmans, the SM movie turning me onto him, same as the LC show with WW. Or maybe i should have said that the other way around in case someone thinks i am gay and asks me out. also just anything that looked like it would be good, I got a couple of those Captain Carrot and his amazing zoo crew comics, they were really good, i got a couple of the news one s when they did them a couple of years ago, still good quality stuff.
Anyway...apart from that place..there was an RSMcColls newsagent, they specialised in Marvels, that's where i would pick my Marvel Team ups, for some reaon that was the only Spider-man comic they stocked, bizarre. Actually, it was maybe because they ran the stories from Spectacular and Amazing in the UK weekly, yeah, that would be it.
Also, this was ther period of the Hulk tv show, so I got Rampage magazine, which gave me my first exposure to the X-Men(original and new), Avengers, Man-thing, Dr Strange, Defenders...those were the best Hulk stories i ever read(i have not read *that* many admittedley), and there was also a Hulk weekly i got occasionally whenever i encountered it.
I was lucky to have two siblings who went to Uni and College in the town centre and West end, so they brought Batmans in from there, and amazingly I was able to have long unbroken runs of Batman and Brave and the bold for a few years.
there was only one cb specialty shop i knew of, and it was a real special occasion whenever i would get to go up there. i would never buy regular comics out of there, i always used my bidegt for old books as it was the only place i knew that had back issues. I would always pick the old 100 page Batman/detective/brave and the bold comics from the 70s.
Comic conventions were like going to disneyworld, esp at that age, I used to always be told to be careful with my money as my eyes would be opping out of my head at all the lovely books, and i would always see a couple i wanted after i had spent my money, wishing i had waited until i had looked all round the place. and of course they were all sealed, so you had to go by the covers and hope you did not go home with a 'To Be continued...'., that was always a real pain in the ass, lol. The kids these days are spoiled rotten with those Essenmtial books, holy moses, I had a few comics I waited thirty years to see the outcome of, from the Essentials, and from tracking the conclusions down on e-bay.
I had an Essential Spider-man that had a great to be continued with the Vulture dropping Spidey from the sky, and only last year i got to read the next part 30yrs later, that was some moment turning that page, lol.
My older brother bought a few Howard the Ducks and Conans, so i was luckily exposed to the Duck at an early age, it took me a long time before i got around to getting all the back issues though, many years later at cons. Conans? they were expensive back issue years later, but i bought the missing part from one of the stories my bro had, 'the eye of set', at a con. I had to wait until they brought out all those SSoC books, before i could indulge that Conan itch.
Same with the Frank Miller Daredevils, too frickin expensive at the cons. i was lukcy tahtmy older cousin gave me a couple of books every time i woul dvisit, and two were the first encounters DD hgad with the kingpin, man, i re-read those issues a thousand times, got the concluding part at a con for about 5 quid(back in the 80s!).
but, as luck would have it, i went into a specialty shop that was closing down and got a whole bunch of Miller DD's for very cheap, a genuine closing down sale.
in 82 they started running weekly Fantastic Four and X-men books in the newsagents across the road from my school, that was a real luxury.
That shop ran the usual UK original weeklies the Beano, the Dandy and the Nutty(my fav as it featured Banana-man, and in general they tried to make the characters a little crazy, hence the title), and i got them every week too, but my favs were by far the US superhero comics.
ok, that is about all i can say about that now, i am turning into forrest Gump here as you can see, so, hope that was not too boring, but, lol, i like reading this kind o f thing, esp as comics are such a niche thing, and the folk into the books tend to be obsessive about it, so for me, it is interesting to read such stories.
I started getting into sh books cause of the Adam West Batman show on a Saturday morning, and the old 60s Spider-man cartoon which was on a Sunday afternoon. I was obsessed with both, and was soon buying the UK Super Spider-man weekly every week from the newsagents down the road. I would have been about 3yrs old when this started, so I had them read to me, i did not start reading myself until I was about 5 though.
But i would sit and try to draw shs, look at the pics all the time, play 'comic book shop' by laying the books all round the living room in little piles, and selling them to my family...i was just as sobsessed with the books as i was the tv shows.
There was a toy shop in the next area to us, about a mile and a bit down the road, next to my dentists. so, when i would go up there to the dentist, or just my m um was going there to shop, i woul dtag along and hope she would splash out.
Cause underneath the glass counter, they had a massive pile of DC comics, somehow only DC, and i would flip through them all going for any Batmans, Detective, Brave and the Bold....I also got some Supermans and Wonder Womans when they did not have any more Batmans, the SM movie turning me onto him, same as the LC show with WW. Or maybe i should have said that the other way around in case someone thinks i am gay and asks me out. also just anything that looked like it would be good, I got a couple of those Captain Carrot and his amazing zoo crew comics, they were really good, i got a couple of the news one s when they did them a couple of years ago, still good quality stuff.
Anyway...apart from that place..there was an RSMcColls newsagent, they specialised in Marvels, that's where i would pick my Marvel Team ups, for some reaon that was the only Spider-man comic they stocked, bizarre. Actually, it was maybe because they ran the stories from Spectacular and Amazing in the UK weekly, yeah, that would be it.
Also, this was ther period of the Hulk tv show, so I got Rampage magazine, which gave me my first exposure to the X-Men(original and new), Avengers, Man-thing, Dr Strange, Defenders...those were the best Hulk stories i ever read(i have not read *that* many admittedley), and there was also a Hulk weekly i got occasionally whenever i encountered it.
I was lucky to have two siblings who went to Uni and College in the town centre and West end, so they brought Batmans in from there, and amazingly I was able to have long unbroken runs of Batman and Brave and the bold for a few years.
there was only one cb specialty shop i knew of, and it was a real special occasion whenever i would get to go up there. i would never buy regular comics out of there, i always used my bidegt for old books as it was the only place i knew that had back issues. I would always pick the old 100 page Batman/detective/brave and the bold comics from the 70s.
Comic conventions were like going to disneyworld, esp at that age, I used to always be told to be careful with my money as my eyes would be opping out of my head at all the lovely books, and i would always see a couple i wanted after i had spent my money, wishing i had waited until i had looked all round the place. and of course they were all sealed, so you had to go by the covers and hope you did not go home with a 'To Be continued...'., that was always a real pain in the ass, lol. The kids these days are spoiled rotten with those Essenmtial books, holy moses, I had a few comics I waited thirty years to see the outcome of, from the Essentials, and from tracking the conclusions down on e-bay.
I had an Essential Spider-man that had a great to be continued with the Vulture dropping Spidey from the sky, and only last year i got to read the next part 30yrs later, that was some moment turning that page, lol.
My older brother bought a few Howard the Ducks and Conans, so i was luckily exposed to the Duck at an early age, it took me a long time before i got around to getting all the back issues though, many years later at cons. Conans? they were expensive back issue years later, but i bought the missing part from one of the stories my bro had, 'the eye of set', at a con. I had to wait until they brought out all those SSoC books, before i could indulge that Conan itch.
Same with the Frank Miller Daredevils, too frickin expensive at the cons. i was lukcy tahtmy older cousin gave me a couple of books every time i woul dvisit, and two were the first encounters DD hgad with the kingpin, man, i re-read those issues a thousand times, got the concluding part at a con for about 5 quid(back in the 80s!).
but, as luck would have it, i went into a specialty shop that was closing down and got a whole bunch of Miller DD's for very cheap, a genuine closing down sale.
in 82 they started running weekly Fantastic Four and X-men books in the newsagents across the road from my school, that was a real luxury.
That shop ran the usual UK original weeklies the Beano, the Dandy and the Nutty(my fav as it featured Banana-man, and in general they tried to make the characters a little crazy, hence the title), and i got them every week too, but my favs were by far the US superhero comics.
ok, that is about all i can say about that now, i am turning into forrest Gump here as you can see, so, hope that was not too boring, but, lol, i like reading this kind o f thing, esp as comics are such a niche thing, and the folk into the books tend to be obsessive about it, so for me, it is interesting to read such stories.
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