How did you get introduced to comics, /co/? Was it through a friend, or family member, or just out of general interest. How have they affected your life?
>>83524646
Some dud in elementary school randomly handed me a reprint of Claremont X-Men and told me he thought I'd like it. I was utterly baffled that someone would do something like that, but I took it out of politeness with no intention of ever reading it. He told me to bring it back by a certain time on a certain day (IIRC he had to leave for vacation with his family, so he wanted it back before they left). I kept it until like two hours before it was time to return it, then thought "well I might as well read it before I take it back". Read it, loved it, walked over to his house and handed it to him like minutes before the time he told me he needed it back by.
After that I started borrowing comics from friends whenever I could get them. X-Men was big at the time, so I read that. Another friend was a TMNT fanatic, so I read his TMNT comics. Another friend was a weeb and read Ninja High School and other Antarctic Press stuff, so I read those as well.
Eventually my parents bought me a crate of comics from a yard sale. It was some guy's old collection and had I'd estimate from 60-100 comics from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, plus a single Caspar the Friendly Ghost issue from the 50s. It mostly contained 60s Gold Key licensed comics, 70s Marvel fantasy/horror comics, and 80s DC cape comics, plus some other miscellanea.
A while later I went to a LCS for the first time. IIRC I bought Usagi Yojimbo. Next time I went I got a reprint of Giant Size X-Men #1. Didn't start going to LCSes on a regular basis until a year after that. At first I read 2099 (I was REALLY young and this was the mid-90s) and X-Men. Then got into Bone, Batman, Superman, and Flash. Also by chance stumbled onto back issues of Marvel G.I. JOE and started reading those when I could find them. Tried to get into Spider-Man, but this was the 90s and those were unreadably bad.
>>83525341
Once I hit my teens I started reading mostly Dark Horse and ANYTHING by Frank Miller, and also stopped reading cape books with rare exceptions (usually Batman). Though I did read some older cape comics, I just got sick of the new stuff. Kept reading Bone as well.
Then I lost interest in comics in high school. Didn't read any for a few years. Heard people talking about Civil War and Punisher MAX and that got me interested in looking into comics again. LOVED Punisher MAX, HATED Civil War. Got back into DC, then dropped the whole company outright after New 52. Don't really read Marvel anymore either (post-CW Marvel is just retarded, with rare exceptions). Discovered a lot of older comics I never read back in the day as well.
Now I mostly read current indie stuff, 80s/90s/2000s DC, 80s indies, almost anything Punisher or Fantastic Four related unless it REALLY sucks, and the occasional misc. old Marvel comic (Gerber's work, the Epic Comics imprint, and some of their old licensed books are among my favorites).
>>83525594
As far as how it's "affected my life", I can't say it really has other than taking up WAY too much time lol.
And I guess that I forgot to mention that I read select manga nowadays, though I can't say I'm really huge into that in general.
>>83524646
College roommate when I was a freshman. Lent me Watchmen, a few volumes of Sandman, Grendel and Frank Miller's Ronin.
Funnily enough though, as a freshman in high school, I remember our English textbook had an excerpt from the first chapter of Understanding Comics, where McCloud talks about how to define a medium, and the difference between a medium and a genre.
>>83524646
Cartoons got me into Spiderman and Batman, my Dad got me into Sandman and Judge Dredd.
General interest. I got my mom to buy me a handful when I was little and they still sold comics at grocery stores. They were all from different series, no two in order. X-Men, New Warriors, and Superman
Once I was in High School and had my own source of income I just started reading them again, except now I would buy collections.
Then in college I finally had a local comic shop so I got into floppies
>>83524646
I'm 20. I got into comics as a kid through newspaper strips. Peanuts being one of my favorites since my grandfather liked it.
After that it was old collections of Shonen Jump my cousin had. I liked manga since it was always presenting new material and interesting art styles. I stayed away from the big hitters like One Piece & Naruto and read the ones that had definitive endings, Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist being primary examples.
I particularly liked manga because when it was over, that was it. Capes were never my thing because I always perceived capes as being endlessly rebooted so no ending was ever really definitive. Western indie comics solved that problem, read a lot of titles in libraries I couldn't even begin to name.
By the time I was in my early teens sprite comics hit their mark and I was involved in a community dedicated to that for a few years. Made a few of my own, none being particularly worthwhile. Met people through those channels that have been my friends ever since, years after we moved beyond spriting.
These days I'm into western comics, webcomics, and the odd manga if the premise is cool enough. I just like the medium in general and will read whatever. Still don't like capes much though. Some favorites of mine now are Hellboy, The Walking Dead and Empowered.
I like Spider-Man so I download comics
>>83524646
I don't read comics.
The MCU is what actually got me to start reading the comics themselves instead of watching the cartoons.
I've expanded past the Avengers, past Marvel, and read some indie stuff as well, but The Avengers is when I actually started.
>>83525656
Whoa, that's quite the library there.
Comics based on TMNT, Sonic, and Animaniacs.
TMNT ended, Sonic got boring, and I just kinda...forgot about Animaniacs.
Didn't bother with comics again until 2011.
>>83524646
I'm from the UK, so The Beano and The Dandy were my bread and butter, then my dad and uncle handed me their old 2000 AD comics. I started to read more DC and Marvel stuff by the time Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins were coming to cinemas.
My family as long as I can remember. My father is a huge superman fan used to collect superman in the 60s (before my late grandmother threw them out).
My siblings talk to me about pre crisis stuff since I was a baby when crisis on infinite earth was out.
I believe my first issue was superman just before the death of superman storyline started which was sups and waverider.
It affect me in a way since that got me my fiance who is also interested in comics, games, and movies as well.
>>83524646
When I was a kid, my dad used to make a lot of trips to India (couple times a year), and he would always bring me back comics of Indian/Hindu history/epics/legends/folklore/fables.
I actually consider it one of the most important pieces of my development, since that is where I got most of my morals, and it deeply affected the way I do/see things.
pic related are the ones I can still find, but I can guarantee that there are at least another few.
But after that, I was mostly the "wikipedia comic guy" when it came to Marvel, except for the few trades that I could find at the library.
In 2012, I started reading DC monthly because of the New 52 and Young Justice. Then fell out of it again after I graduated.
And last year (because of Omega Men) I started reading comics in earnest, getting suggestions, reading "important" comics, getting into the history of it, etc. Still working on it, and am currently reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
>>83524646
Reading has always been a passion of me, not necessary comics only. When I was young my mother would always buy me comics for christmas. We were quite a poor family since it was only my mother and I. And comics were quite cheap back then, thus my mother would buy comics or an omnibus for christmas, or my birthday. Of course back then it was the best thing I could have asked for. You could say that it was my hobby, but then I reached teenhood and all that was forgotten.
2 years back I picked this hobby up again and wanted to start collecting comics more seriously, something I can be proud of.
Overall, comics have helped me through depressive and lonely times.
>>83526592
This pic is of the interiors of the Mahabharata comics that my dad brought for me. It's the same story being told in Grant Morrison's 18 Days right now (my parents got a kick out of that)
Also manga. I forgot to mention manga. Basically all Shonen Jump stuff (from 10-16 years old).
>>83526736
I remember a friend I met at summer camp one year, I think I was eleven, brought a big stack of Fruits Basket volumes with her and we spent our breaks reading through them. That was probably my first introduction to manga.
>>83524646
The fuck is wrong with his face?
>>83524646
First comics were Bionicle comics that came with the lego magazine. The art was amazing. Also had a friend who had some older Spider-man comics. Somehow it never clicked that DC and Marvel still made comics past the late nineties?
Around 2008 I stumbled upon a storytime of Battle for the Cowl issues 1 and 2 on a random website. I had so many questions. Say what you will about it being a shitty story, but it drew me in hard. The whole concept was really awesome.
Been reading comics ever since. Primarily DC (Bat family, Flash family, Lanterns and Booster Gold/JLI are my favs). Marvel has never really interested me until I heard about Superior Spider-man. But then that ended :c
The family went to a used book store. They had a comic section, and I followed my brother into it. They were between 10 cents to a dollar, so our parents told us to go nuts.
I didn't care about capes back then, but I was a huge Nintendrone, and I found Valiant's old Super Mario Bros comics, and I think Sonic comics too. I really wish I still had that shit. I think I also got some Ninja Turtles comics, but they were really weird. They weren't like the cartoon. The only thing I know for sure is that they also weren't the original, since they were in color. I think Savage Dragon was there.
Actually got into cape comics when the Spider-Man cartoon hit Fox Kids.
>>83527238
He's just ugly.
/co/ and io9
I used to watch the old Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons when I was younger. My first time seeing a comic book ever was an issue of Venom: Lethal Protector my uncle had in my grandma's basement. When I was in 2nd grade my mom bought me a couple of 80s and 90s X-Men comics from the flea market. My first comic was What if Phoenix Rose Again?
a girl
I think my grandpa first got me interested, he was an old school fan of newspaper comics, like old enough that Mutt & Jeff was his favorite comic ever. That got me into newspaper comics and then I started picking up comic books at the grocery store, usually stuff based on cartoons Then I started picking up any comic I could find at garage sales, flea markets or those grab bags they had at the drugstore, which at some point developed into a huge love of Spider-Man. Shortly after that I was a teenager so I started getting into Vertigo, manga and alt comics and that's where we are today.
They probably haven't affected my life that much aside from spending money on them that would be better invested elsewhere.
My older sister loved Witchblade and bought any Top Cow comic. She didn't want me to read them but I did anyway when she wasn't around. Then later on she got into Crossgen and I read those too. I didn't buy my own comics until she went to college.
I was introduced to superheroes with the Superman and Batman cartoon that would play on TV when I was a kid.
It grew when my dad actually introduced me to a lot of mainstream Marvel stuff like Spider-Man and X-Men and actually taught me about how all those characters from the cartoons and movies came from comics that he used to read as a kid.
My dad would frequently take me to the local library to borrow the few collected trades they had on hand and I ended up reading a lot of Ultimate Spider-Man and Academy X.
Any question I had about those kinds of characters, I would just ask my dad and he'd tell me as much as he knew about them. He didn't know a lot but he let me embrace the hobby and would try and take me to comic book shops that we would see when we drove around town. We would only ever buy an issue or two every few years since we didn't have a lot of money and the shops were pretty far away from where we lived.
When it came to a point where I had asked about all that he knew, I would read up about the characters and the events on Wikipedia.
In terms of how it's affected my life, I'd say it had a pretty big impact. Capeshit has always been a big hobby for me since I was a kid and I would always talk about those heroes with my dad and my friends, though they had no idea what I was talking about. Even when I started picking up other interests, like anime and manga, capeshit was still a big thing that I genuinely enjoyed. My friends actually go to me for explanations about all the cape movies and post credits scenes and how they can "get into comics" (they never actually do).
Superheroes are and I think always will be a big part of my life because they showed me that everyone has a potential to be good. Most capes are just regular dudes that try and do the right thing, no matter what they get out of it and I think that's something that speaks to a lot of people that try and be good and selfless and do things not just for themselves but for others, as well.
The Arkham games.
When I moved to my new home I was having a bit of trouble fitting in and would get depressed so my dad started stopping a comic shop and picked we up a couple issues of batman(I forget which run but it had him doing some proper detective stuff and fighting the devil) and I read them for a bit then kinda dropped off because of money, but have recently picked them up again thanks to /co/
when I was 8, around when shonen jump became a thing in the us, i saw shonen jump listed in the book fair catalog and begged to have one ordered after catching yuyu hakusho on toonami. then I got absorbed into it and saved up enough money from mowing peoples lawns every year to order a subscription and renew it. From there I started doing more side jobs to buy manga (My favorites in particular being shaman king, yuyu hakusho and rurouni kenshin). Eventually I got burnt out at 14 and sold my shonen jump collection (i'm still sad I did this, I miss those things). 2 years later at 16 I get into American comics because of get this: the green hornet movie. I mean I liked batman beyond and JLU as a kid but i never got into comics. The GH movie trailer intrigued me so I purchased GH year one by Matt Wagner which led me to purchasing a bunch of sandman mystery theatre single issues (eventually completed my run) which led me to buying vertigo trades like transmetropolitan (i had been working fast food at this time so income was kind of steady) and stuff like batman year one.
Now I'm 21 and while I still read the occasional cape comic or shonen manga, my development as it was led me to appreciate indie/non-superhero centric titles more (the vertigo stuff was hugely guiding for me)
Comics are cheap entertainment (or were) so family would buy some until I developed a habit
When I was 12 my grandfather gave me a copy of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1A 90's reprint but it was still pretty coolHe was a racist asshole and we didn't agree on a lot but we both loved comics. By the time I was 16 he got into a motorcycle wreck and couldn't speak for about 6 months. Now he lives in a trailer alone, old, and crazier than he ever was. It wasn't until he cussed out my mother on the phone and made her cry that I quit visiting and calling.
>>83533924
Ouch... When did he die?
>>83533924
The fuck is wrong with you, nigga?
>>83524646
I started off with a couple of Space 1999 and Planet of the Apes issues back around 1976ish. I then went into Richie Rich and Scrooge McDuck before moving onto Archie Digests. Hit age 14 and dropped it all. Fast forward to 2013, worked with a guy heavy into graphic novels which I thought meant those cheap flimsy comic books of my youth. Wrong! Lent me ' Kickass' a fave movie and was surprised at the quality. Still only own Kickass 1c& 2 but periodically go to the public library which has a large selection. Walking Dead was last series I read.
>1976ish
Dammit i'm old :-P
My mom bought me an issue of the Micky Mouse magazine back in the early 90s That made me interested in comics in general.
Could never get too interested in big 2 comics though.
>"You should go to /co/ they love drawfags!
>Start lurking
>Like a lot of the shows and comics posted
>Start reading comics because of /co/
backwards relationship
>>83524646
After winter soldier came out in wanted to learn more about the two characters in the after credits scene so I started reading xmen.
It affected my life in that I have a lot less money after each paycheck now
>>83524646
I learned to read because I wanted to read Garfield and Hagar the Horrible.
>>83524646
Started on my own, as a kid I would kinda randomly buy floppies of either PK or Spiderman. Occasionally Spawn even, I saw the movie and loved the character. I also used to buy Topolino/Paperino but that was mostly to get the toys that they occasionally had with them
But yeah, I was also a bit encouraged. One of my influences was an uncle of mine that collected Dylan Dog books. When we used to visit him as a kid I would always either play his videogames read those. Actually, I didn't even read them, mostly, I just liked to look at all the monsters and gore, with the occasional female nudity as a pleasant extra.
Other than that there was this friend of my father's that also collected comics and would let me read them. I remember a book in particular about Spiderman and a very demonic Hobgoblin, I should really look it up. Eventually because he noticed my passion he gifted me 6-7 issues from his old Diabolik collection
>>83534376
I guess I should've specified that cape cartoons are what inspired me to buy comics, specifically Batman and Spiderman TAS, although it's funny that I never bought a Batman comic before highschool
I was into manga and misclicked /co/ instead of /ck/ and decided why not read a western manga.
someone storytimed kingdom come. it got me into comics
>>83524646
>grow up with the occasional cartoon on TV
>Enjoy Spider-Man and X-Men movies and games
>read Nextwave and GLA after hearing about them on TV Tropes
>grab a torrent of Deadpool, read from Kelly through Cable & Deadpool up to Kelly, stop reading about ten issues into Kelly
>nothing for several years
>feel bummed that the [prototype] franchise is dead, look up other action games with combat tentacles
>find out about Web of Shadows
>play it. realize how much I enjoy the concept of symbiotes
>read Agent Venom
>read all the other symbiote books I can find
>this includes the Earth-X stuff which really tickled my fancy the more I read
>hear about an issue in JMS Spider-Man that compares Spider-Man to Loki as trickster figures, which sounds intriguing
>read all of JMS Spider-Man
>come to love Spider-Man as a concept
>devour nearly everything Spider-Man
>catch a storytime for the last issue of Agent of Asgard
>ask around and go back to Thor vol. 3 onwards following the entire rebirth, dead, and rebirth of Loki leading to the kid Loki saga, young avengers, then agent of asgard proper
>decide to fully take up comics as a hobby
>read Morrisons Animal Man, Moore's swamp thing, Watchmen, Morrison's bat epic, and all the other Comics 101 books
>start keeping up with weekly releases while filling in the other gaps in my capeshit experience
>tl;dr I mostly have Web of Shadows to thank more than anything
When I was 12 my uncle gave me a big box filled with batman comics from the 70s to the early 90s.
>>83524646
Loved the movies so a mate of mine took me along to FCBD a few years back. Picked up some free comics and blew through almost an entire paycheck buying bagged entire runs, one of which was the New 52 Blue Beetle (not complete run but it was like the first three issues or so at the time) and I've been collecting every since.
>>83524646
>How did you get introduced to comics, /co/?
Impossible to remember, I have read comics literally longer than I can remember. I assume my parents gave me a comic when I was like three.
>>83524646
Really enjoyed the X-Men Animated series in the 90s, my father found out and was a comic book reader and showed me his collection of Marvel Conan comics, and later his Heavy Metal Comics.
>>83524646
I blame it on X-Men. Without them, I wouldn't be here, with you, ugly faggots
>>83524646
4chan.
>>83524646
ThroughLinkara. Checked out Sinestro Corps War and Blue Beetle as a result, and moved on from there.
I'm much better now though.
>>83535239
These two things are literally two of the five to six good things that drunk asshole did in my life.
>>83524646
When I was a kid my Dad used to buy my floppies of either Wolverine&Gambit or Spider-Man from the newsagents every now and then. I guess it went from there.
>>83524646
My first comic was the last comic of Robocop vs Terminator that my dad bought for me at a swap meet.
However I started actually collecting Punisher comics after my dad took me to see the 2004 Punisher movie with Tom Jane and then bought me a paper back of the Punisher's story Circle of Blood when we went to browse a comic book store.
>>83524646
Raised on Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, Superfriends, you name it as a kid.
Had a passing interest in comics for years, but my only exposure was the occasional confusing issue I got mid-series, Boof, a painfully unfunny comedy that lampooned Todd MacFarlane (came plenty of buckets to the chick characters), and a Smithsonian newspaper comics collection that started from the late 1800s and ended in the early 80s (had a shit-ton of Cegar and Little Nemo comics, and I read every one of them.)
Other than that I didn't really pick any up until I got the internet and started using Limewire for 32 MB porn and V for Vendetta, which I had a sudden interest in thanks to the movie being on its way.
Read the whole thing. Loved it. Been reading comics ever since. Still don't follow the Big 2 megaseries, but if a graphic novel or a particular run is considered exceptionally good, I'll pick it up.
>>83524646
Got introduced to X-Men back in the 80s, haven't looked back since.
My dad introduced me to Tintin, Asterix, Peanuts, and Calvin and Hobbes. After that I read the lewis trendhiem books he had in English and then got some of my own disney duck comics. Then I read his alt stuff when I was older (maus, blankets, daniel clowes, charles burns etc) I'm actually real thankful that my dad's cool.
>>83524646
>90s' Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Hulk cartoons got me interested
>Movies like Blade, Earth vs the Spider (remake), Spawn, and X-Men were like the second coming of Christ
>First comic I remember holding was an issue of Action Comics, though all I can remember was that the cover was orange and Superman was fighting someone on a rocky planet
>Local library had tons of Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, and Garfield to read, also had tons of superhero encyclopedia books
>Superman, DC Universe, Batman
>Friend in elementary school always brought in issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, got me hooked
>First comics I ever bought were an Maximum Carnage trade and the issue of Amazing where Spider-Man rapes the Kingpin
>dropped comics for like three months to get into anime/manga, specifically Ranma, Inuyasha, and Demon Lord Dante
>middle school library had a few select comics come in weekly as well as Shonen Jump, get to read Ultimate Spider-Man again
>found two thick encyclopedias in the back, one for heroes and one for villains
>Fall in love with Dan Garret Blue Beetle and the Flash
>Start mooching comics at the Barnes and Noble, get introduced to Jaime
>Ultimate Peter dies, cry myself to sleep
>Pet fish Namor dies the next day, consider ending it
tl;dr Cartoons, movies, and occasional glances at Wizard magazine kept me interested long enough for me to start reading whole comics at the library. Branched out from there and got into manga and non cape comics, though those are still my favorite. Spider-Man's the best
I was a weeb and wanted to buy some manga, went to a shop called Tokyo toys, they didn't have the volumes I wanted, the guy behind the counter told me to go to Forbidden Planet, and I found comics.
>>83524646
I knew about Batman through MotP first, the cartoon, you know, then discovered my Uncles had old collections of Detective-era Batman. I actually own the physical issue of Kane's death at the hands of Sensei and the Tiger. I got into X-Men later thanks to the Cartoon, and picked up the issue where Ramsay/Cipher first got killed off from a 50 cent store.
Between the mid-90s and 2000 I was into Spawn and Star Wars a lot more, though. I didn't pick up Hellboy until early 00s.
I was picked on for not reading Dragon Ball until 1999. True story.
