In an on-line comic retailers' forum, my good friend and great retailer Joe Ferrara from Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz CA asked the question "What was the first comic you ever read?"
As we're coming up close to FREE COMIC BOOK DAY, I thought it would be a good question to throw out to readers of "The View from Flying Colors."
Here's my story:
Before I really got into comics, there were a few steps along the way to getting totally hooked.
* I was about 5 in 1961 when I went with my Mom and little brother to visit an aunt in Oakland. My Aunt Fran had a stack of new comics to keep me occupied, including Deputy Dawg, Huckleberry Hound, New Terrytoons and a couple of others I don't remember.
* When I was maybe 7, the neighbors across the street were moving, and the older boys there gave my brother and me a big box of beat up old comics. Looked through them, lots of comics I'd love to have now, including Mystery In Space, Tales to Astonish, etc, but I'm pretty sure they were done away with during some epic Spring cleaning at Casa Field. My Mom may have thrown away the neighbor kids' used comics, but she *never* threw mine away!
* I was 10 in the summer of '66 when on vacation at the Russian River. One of my friends there gave me Amazing Spider-Man #30. I thought it was OK, but it wasn't enough to make me seek any other issues.
* It wasn't until I broke my arm on the third day of summer in '67 that my friend Steve gave me copies of Amazing Spidey #51 and Fantastic Four #65. He also let me borrow other various Marvels of the time (Tales of Suspense #92, Avengers #40, Thor #143) and I got totally hooked.
I read a LOT of comics when my arm was in that cast! To this day, Jack Kirby and John Romita are my two favorite comic artists--- although my horizons have expanded tremendously.
FCBD is a great opportunity to introduce *anyone* to the wonderful entertainment found in comic books. Even though my story takes place in my youth, one of the great things happening in comics over the last few years is that more people are getting interoduced to the comics' medium at various stages of life.
There's so much that comics offer readers of ALL ages in the way of lasting enjoyment, entertainment and edge-of-your-seat excitement! I hope you'll be able to make it to FCBD, the comics ' party of the year. Bring a friend or two to introduce them to wonders of entertaining comics! You know when it happens in comics, it happens in FLYING COLORS!
So with FREE COMIC BOOK DAY just 11 days away (!), I hope you post a comment to this blog with a story about the first comic book you ever read--- and the one(s) that got you hooked.
More New & Cool Comics & Other Cool Stuff hit the racks Wednesday at FLYING COLORS!
Peace!
FlyCoJoe
4 comments:
My first comic book was Darkhawk #13. I think I acquired it through trade with a classmate when I was in grade school because I thought the cover was awesome.
Eventually, I got out of comics as I entered junior high and did not get back into it until Marvel started the Ultimate line and had free dot comics online.
But what really got me back into comics was when I went to Flying Colors for the first time on one rainy night with a friend. One of your staff recommended Preacher to me because I had zero knowledge of what was out at the time, all the comics I've ever known existed between 1988 and 1991. His recommendation and helpfulness brought me back into the world of comics and they are now a staple to my daily life. In fact, I've even started to write/draw and publish comics in my spare time.
Hi, Loren here -- customer and long time lurker of the blog. Anyway, this is a fun question.
I can't remember the exact first issue that I bought, but I remember cutting my teeth on the old Harvey Comics books -- Casper, Spooky, Hot Stuff and, especially, Richie Rich. It's a shame that they don't make these books anymore.
But, the first "superhero" books I remember getting were Teen Titans (When the line up was Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and MAL!) and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. This is also about the time that I started remembering specific issue numbers and I remember carrying around Teen Titans 50 because it had all these teen heroes on the cover -- East Coast Teen Titans vs. West Coast Teen Titans (How funny that history sounds like it will be repeating itself in the One Year Later titles -- and I'm more excited than ever).
But, it wasn't just comic books that got me excited about reading comic books. It was also all the superhero cartoons and movies coming out at the time. I could NOT miss an episode of Wonder Woman or the campy Batman. I knew (and still know) EVERY word to the old Spider-Man cartoon series. I remember how in awe I was the first moment Christopher Reeves appeared on screen in the Superman garb. Again, it's nice to see history repeating itself with so many great (...and, not so great) movies and animated series based on superheroes.
Anyway, great question and thought I'd share.
I remember when Joe first statrted his business and came to my house to buy comics. He bought ALOT of comics. At the time I didn't know his store was going to be such a huge success. (I would have charged him more(Grin))
My first comic was Spiderman number 1!
I bought it and was instantly hooked on the series. I started buying The Fantastic Four but by then the earliest issue I could find was number two. I wrote to Marvel and asked if there was any chance I could get number one from them but Stan Lee wrote back to me personally and said that they didn't keep back issues. He was very kind and apologetic. I still have the leter (SOMEWHERE) in my garage, packed away.
There was a kid on the next block who had a garage sale and was selling a whole box of comics. I acquired them and spent the rest of the summer reading them. (Here comes the tragic part.)
As comics were only 12 cents then and I had no real source of income, I would take my old Spiderman and Fantastic Four comics to Tony, the barber in town and he would give me a nickel for two of them. I had to sell three comics just to get enough to buy one more. I figure I must have sold several thousands of dollars worth of comics to that barbershop just that year.
Over the next couple years I was still reading comics but I began reading the Doc Savage series of paperbacks. It was really cool, then, to see Marvel come out with that series in their comics.
So, even though I don't read comics nearly as much as I have in the past I still collect them occasionally and have several hundred I want to hang on to.
There's no single issue to point to, as I was on board with comics for as long as I can remember. That said, the issue that pushed me a bit deeper over the edge was Batman 362. I went in after a long absence reading DC looking specifically for issues featuring either the Joker, the Riddler, or the Penguin, and this issue (beautifully drawn by Don Newton) was fresh on the stand.
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Batman_Vol_1_362
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