Your Collection

[OcStat]

Hey folks! I have been going through all of my Marvel comics over the past few months and have been enjoying it a lot. Most of these books I haven't read since I purchased them.

So with all the negativity that floods message boards and the internet in general, I hope this thread can be a place for people to discuss the comics they have that they DO like.

Which character got you into buying comics? What made you go from being casually interested to having a collection of stuffed long boxes?

My collection has a few books that survived my childhood, but mostly from 2004 on, when I got back into comics. I have been trying to order them chronologically, which has been a blast, and occasionally a chore haha. I have about 4 long boxes now, I'm sure it is over a thousand comics, and that's only from a few years, not too bad if I say so myself.

 

[hippie_hunter]

Batman got me interested.

 

[DeGenerate10]

My dad was a big comic fan in the 60's and 70's so he gave me a ton of comics. unforunately alot of them aren't in good shape but that really fueled my love for comics. But as for a hero I'd say Captain America and Batman.

 

[Themanofbat]

My first comics that I bought were Batman & Spider-Man in 1975... though I had been reading my Aunt's comics since 1972... she had tons of Archies, romance comics, westerns, and a few awesome horror comics...

The first comic I ever purchased with my own money was WereWolf by Night #30.

 

[OcStat]

My dad started me off to, but he didn't have any to pass down thanks to Grandma. Spider-Man was the first character I connected with, along with Batman. I knew plenty about Marvel due to a huge early 90's Marvel hardcover book, that had the company's history going back to before they were called Marvel ( Atlas Comics or Timely Comics...maybe both).

I got into the Avengers characters with the Heroes Return era, that was when my Dad hooked me up with Avengers, Captain America, Invincible Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Rampaging Hulk. That's where I started my Modern Marvel reading marathon, now I am trucking through Dark Reign.

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

Hulk #168

i have it under pressure sensitive, laser beam guarded, glass smack dab in the middle of the living room. makes it kinda hard for guest to see to the tv when they come over though

i think initially i was going to get an Archie or Bugs Bunny comic but saw this and was drawn to it and the rest they say is history!

 

[Spider-Jay420]

I got started with Amazing Spider-Man #334. Return of the Sinister Six with Erik Larsen on art back in 1989. We were at a crummy campground and it was raining. They had like, a general store there with cheap candy and out of date magazines and whatnot. I was 11 years old, bored and hooked instantly. I was dying to finish the story when we got home and I didn't really understand the numbers back then. I would go to 7-11 and got a Spectacular Spider-Man and a Web of Spider-Man and could figure out how the Amazing story wasn't there. My mom then took me to a real comic book store and got me a membership and have been reading ever since.

 

[Themanofbat]

Hulk #168

i have it under pressure sensitive, laser beam guarded, glass smack dab in the middle of the living room. makes it kinda hard for guest to see to the tv when they come over though

i think initially i was going to get an Archie or Bugs Bunny comic but saw this and was drawn to it and the rest they say is history!

Man... you're almost as ancient as me...

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

Man... you're almost as ancient as me...

Hahahahahaha old as dirt man!

but like i tell all these young cats now with zombies and *&^% walking around you will be lucky to get to my age.. I haven't been around this long cause of my dashing good looks!!

 

[plushbug]

I did get to read comics as a kid (late '60s) but probably not as many or varied a selection as most kids because they weren't that readily available in the northern settlements where I grew up...it took until 1977 when Star Wars came along, for me to really get into comics with a bang. That was when I remember both looking around and being thrilled to find that books available were a lot better and more diverse in terms of artwork and overall production values, than I remembered from the '60s, and feeling a lot of pressure to buy as wide a selection of titles as I could afford. One of the problems I had to deal with in the day, was that of several key elders in my family having a real edginess about "kids" being fannishly interested in anything that wasn't four-square solidly and unquestionably of the "real" world (so it was OK to be obsessed with sports teams, politics, cats, or growing dahlias, but let on to being hot about anything fictional and one could expect to be mocked without letup or mercy about one's interests) which I found I could beat, by buying a pool of 3 to 6 "cover" titles each month, around the crucial ones I wanted, and playing up the cases where my main interest was in the artwork. Which worked, to give me a large, diverse, and really enjoyable collection through the '80s into early '90s. Never went heavily for the traditional Big Superhero or team books, eg., Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Hulk, FF, or Avengers, but was around for the whole run of SW, Miller's Daredevil, Simonson's Thor, Buscema on Red Sonja, the Evanier/Spiegle Blackhawk revival, large "covering" chunks of Iron Man, Wolverine and X-Men, Gil Kane on Conan, Mike Grell's Warlord, and basically went nuts when we started to see more from 'alternative' and indie publishers. Lots of early mini/maxi-series like Miller's Ronin and Bolland's Camelot 3000, early Cerebus, Journey, Grimjack, Dalgoda, Ms. Tree, E-Man t: damn, it was great. Then I moved a couple of times for career reasons and t: sold off most of the books I'd originally bought as "cover" titles at prices to make several 12-year-old boys and their dads very happy...drifted out of collecting with no thought to return. Chopped down the collection a couple more times during the '00s after another move to a smaller house, really tearing it down to the best of my mostly short-run indie titles and the mainstream stuff I could see cheerfully sitting down to re-read again regularly, the rest of my life (SW, Red Sonja, Simonson, E-Man, the E/S Blackhawk--eh, most of the already mentioned) and considered myself set for the long term with about 10-12 short boxes...

Then history basically repeated with last year's Thor movie getting me back to the comic book shops, and I've been away to the races again. Call it ~25 years' worth of Thor in a year, and basically I'm back into mostly smaller-press and indie books again. No actual DC at this point, Marvel pretty much down to Gillen's JIM and Waid's Daredevil, but enough of everything else from BPRD to Little Green Men, to make my LCS guys very happy.

 

[Thor The Mighty]

Actually most of my collection is from the 70's and 80's with a few 90's and 00 thrown in. It's mostly Marvel and the single largest categories are Thor and Spiderman.

 

[venom892]

The 90's superhero animation boom got me interested in Superheros. Later in late 2000 I got the n64 Spider-man game for Christmas and it got me hooked again. With the buzz surrounding the upcoming Spider-man movie I dove straight into comics. Now I own over 2000.

 

[Max J Power]

X-Men was what got me into it. I bought a few issues of Adjectiveless and Uncanny, and checked out the trades of Ultimate from the library, after Toon Disney reran the animated series in the summer of 2005.

 

[MarvelKnight]

The 90s Animated series(SpiderMan and X-men) got me into superheroes, but X-men's been my favorite since jump. Try to get as many comics as finances will allow. I love Remender's Uncanny X-Force. I also just bought the Old Man Logan TPB. Already read it twice and stated again.

 

[uniqueweasel]

Was always a fan of superheroes from early on thanks to cartoons and tv shows, etc. My first comics were Judge Dredd annuals and 2000 ad.

In the UK we have got the Marvel graphic novels collection, which releases 2 Trades every month in Hardback, it also gives a brief background of the character in that particular story and mini bio's on the writers and artists. So far I am 9 books in and have read:

The Amazing Spider-Man: Coming Home
The Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Iron Man: Extremis
The Ultimates: Super-Human
The Amazing Spider-Man: Birth of Venom
Thor: Reborn
Captain America: Winter Soldier
The Incredible Hulk: Silent Screams
Wolverine

 

[CConn]

Batman '89 got me into superheroes. Followed closely by BTAS and X-Men: TAS.

I tried reading Batman: YO, TDKR, and some Star Wars comic as a young teen, but couldn't really get into the format.

Then, finally, in 2004, I tried reading YO and TDKR for a second time, and finally started to love comics.

First series I started buying were Batman, Detective, Robin, Batgirl, Legends of the Dark Knight... then (between '04 and '05) I quickly branched out into Wonder Woman, The Flash, Adventures of Superman, Aquaman, Amazing Spider-Man, Astonishing X-Men, Fantastic Four...and probably a few more that I'm forgetting.

 

[JewishHobbit]

My mom was thoughtful and bought my brother and I each a comic from the corner store and surprised us with them. One was a Superman comic the other was Spider-Man. I ended up getting the Spider-Man issue (Web of Spider-Man 81) and I was hooked. To this day it's still one of my favorite comics, and not just for nostalgia but because of the story itself. It's really good.

Anyhow, after that my allowance went to comics... every dime. Then the X-Men cartoon came out and I loved it. I refused to buy the comics though because, as funny as it was, I felt like it'd be cheating on Spider-Man. Well, a neighbor starting buying X-Men books and I read one or two (during the X-Cutioner's Song) and I thought they were cool. Then my grandmother took me to a comicshop and gave me some money to blow. I bought some Spider-Man comics but ultimately bit the bullet and picked up Uncanny X-Men 300 and a few other X-titles. Those hooked me and while Spider-Man's come and gone, I've been a solid X-Men fan ever since.

 

[slicer4444]

I watched Spider-man and a little Batman back in the 90s when I was a kid. I really connected with Spider-man, I bought a couple comics, but that was about it. I picked up a couple Buffy trades after I finished the television series, but nothing too serious. I picked up an Ultimate Spider-man trade sometime in college and since then I haven't been able to stop. I have every USM trade through Ultimatum. Along the way I started picking up other trades that I thought looked interesting, some Daredevil, a whole slew of X-books, and other random Marvel trades. More recently I've been reading Captain America and Thor, however the best reads I've got are probably the Daredevil ones, and they range from Miller to Smith to Bendis to Brubaker. So Spider-man got me in, but there are many titles keeping me interested.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

What got me into comics? I would have to answer translated classic Superman comics my father owns, got me hooked, and I loved Batman seeing reprinted Batman stories

Sadly though, my collection has less of Superman than it Spawn comics, I have the first 100 issues of Spawn

 

[OcStat]

I always thought Spawn was a neat character, my cousin introduced me to him around the time the movie was coming out. I was too young to distinguish the fact that the creator had ties to Spider-Man, but the similar style of the character is what initially caught my eye. I haven't read very many but I enjoy the mythology Todd created. And from the little I know about the storylines they have taken Al Simmons to interesting places.

I've thought about getting omnibus trades but I read about the removal of some issues due to a dispute between Gaiman and Macfarlane over Cogliostro? Not sure if it is major or minor, care to elaborate?

Gaiman's Sandman was actually THE book that got me reading comics again when I was in high school. A friend let me borrow the trades and I tore through all of them, from there I wanted to see what Marvel had been up to.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Spawn is neat indeed, and the version in comics is the best version of him

Cogliostro was created in a Gaiman written issue if I remember credits correctly, issue 9 I believe. Don't know about their disputes

 

[BigSams50]

The 90's X-men and Spider-Man cartoons got me hooked on superheroes. And every wednesday my dad would take me to a comic book store and i would pick up one comic. I stopped collecting comics for a while though, my dad had passed and it was kinda painful to do anything like i used to with him. Then one day my mom got me a GL comic as a present, and i remembered how much i loved collecting. That GL comic was Rebirth #1. Now i have over 200 issues of GL and IM, my two favorite characters

 

[WOLVERINE25TH]

It was the Konami X-Men game that got me started. That Xmas I got my first batch of books, the top most one being Silver Surfer vol. 3 #55, which I count as my first collected comic. But, before then I'd be reading Archies and magazine strips.

 

[SpideyForPrez]

I actually learned how to read through comics, and school of course, but the comics really helped. My older step brothers had some comics and I got started reading theirs, and one day my dad bought me the Marvel Masterworks Spider-Man collection and from then I was hooked and started collecting my own. I the first issue I remember reading was a reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #13, which caught my attention because Mysterio looked like such a strange and cool villain.

I would just pick random issues at the 7-11 or bookstores when I could. The first series I collected in whole was the Spider-Man Adventures book that was based off the 90s Animated Series. I still remember buying the first issue at an airport. I thought it was going to be worth a ton of money some day because it had a #1 on the cover!

At some point I stopped collecting and stopped reading for a few years. Then one random day, at the age of 15, I stumbled upon Ultimate Spider-Man #1 at the comic shop. I read the first four issues, then got a subscription for my birthday since the only comic shop was pretty far and I didn't have a license or car yet. Slowly but surely I started getting into other books and yada yada yada, I know go to the comic shop twice a month.

 

[mjdiddy1]

Mine adventure actually began with Marvel's Star Wars back in the early 80's. We were in a grocery store and my mom got me a copy to read while she shopped because I was talking too much. It eventually became a must to read every comic that I came across.