(no subject)

[fewermets.livejournal.com]

You know, I might actually have to thank the U.S. educational system for getting me into comics. Because this little gem was the first comic book I ever read/owned. I must have been in elementary school... I think I went through and tried to fix some of the coloring mistakes. With markers -_-;

Also, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life \o/ Thanks, Marvel heroes!

So how did everyone else get into comics/the genre of their choice?

ETA: Actual story for me is that the Batman and X-Men animated series in the early 90s gout me buying comics off the racks in the bookstore. Mad Love was the first comic I really loved, and I started buying Catwoman with issue #3, which I STILL love Balent's art in. I was SO desperate to get the first two issues... I think one friend gave me #2 for my birthday and my dad braved a comic book store to find me #1 <3

Also, I had a HUGE box of my dad's comics from the late 50s/early 60s that I used to read before I helped him eBay them. He was totally a DC guy.

Comments

[jewpryde.livejournal.com]

I remember watching the original X-Men cartoon (which was way racier than I realized) on TV and my friends (who were all guys when I was little LOL) were like LET'S READ COMICS!!! So we did LOLOL.

[meowminx]

When the X-Men cartoon came on, I was all "LOOK, IT'S STORM FROM MY COMIC BOOK! ...I like her black costume better :<" She was the only character I knew off the bat, but I was happy there were so many X-Women!

[werewalf.livejournal.com]

Oh God I mean, I was always watching X-Men and all that but I think I really got hooked on Superman first. I was about four or five when I started flipping through the pages of some issues and I was like... TRAUMATIZED BY HIS DEATH WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT ofljkasjfas.

Also. Let's not forget this excellent Marvel life-lesson:
http://captain-america.us/articles/anti-drug/anti_drug.htm

[meowminx]

I saw Superman III like a million times when I was a kid for some reason. The junkyard fight traumatized me :/

[onegoesalone.livejournal.com]

Weekday mornings before school, I'd get up an hour early to watch Sailor Moon & Dragonball. And then Sailor Moon & Pokemon.

And then I think the next anime I saw was Cardcaptors. And then something else. And then YGO.

I used to watch Animated Batman, Spiderman, and X-men too whenever it was on, but I never had a chance to get comics. ^^;

OH and the old Adam West Batman. I still love that. ^^;

[meowminx]

I watched the old Adam West Batman and loved it. And then BtaS came on the air and I was like "...Okay, this is way better." ^^;

[officerslinger.livejournal.com]

oh man this makes me so nostalgic.

When I was a little kid my father used to randomly get me comics sometimes. I think I must have preferred Doctor Strange and the Hulk because I don't remember any others.

I remember vividly the first comic I bought for myself - it was Uncanny X-Men #173 (I'm old.) and I got it after hemming and hawing in front of the comics rack while waiting for my mom or something. The cover was strikingly dark and simple, just Wolverine running out of the page, looking anguished. He was about to get rejected at the altar.

I flipped through it and was immediately fascinated by how *shiny* Rogue's and the Silver Samurai's costumes were. Paul Smith - NONE MORE SHINY.

But really comics got a hold of me just after that, when I got New Mutants #19 or something and Bill Seinkewicz made my head completely explode.
I followed UXM and New Mutants like they was Jesus until whatever the hell was going on in the 90s with the Liefeld and Image and the shouting and I'd moved on to Cerebus and Beanworld and Zot!.

Which is a whole other story and I've gone on way too long as it is.

[meowminx]

The Dark Phoenix Saga and From The Ashes were among the first trades I ever bought :> But yeah, I wasn't seriously buying comics until the 90s, when I was in middle school or so.

[shockheadedpete.livejournal.com]

Like everyone else here: I watched all the saturday morning cartoons (of mention: WildC.A.T.s and Ultraforce. Who remembers Prime, you guys? Most awwwkward power ever), but it actually never occurred to me to read the comics. Until one day, in middle school, I was browsing the magazines in Walgreen's, and happened to pick up a copy of Wizard. And it totally convinced me to read comics. First I tried Spider-man, but it was a really confusing point in continuity to try to start reading Spider-man (Clones. ...clones.), and I picked up any X-Men book that had Beast in it (<3 Beast), but I didn't really follow anything on a regular basis, because my mom wouldn't drive me to the comics store (or buy me vhs tapes of Red Dwarf), so I had to wait until I was out somewhere with just my dad.

The first book ever in my "pull pile" was Gen 13.

[atoningforsin.livejournal.com]

WILDCATS HECK YES. /flails

I just. Ahh I miss it. I need to get the actual comics past the first volume thing that I have.

[darkprophecies.livejournal.com]

It was actually a joke when I was younger that brought me into Teen Titans, which was my actual first comic. I had mentioned in a group of guy friends that I thought Batman was overrated and they were like "lol well his sidekick has his own team", and I mentioned how "now see that's more like it". They bought me about twenty of them the next day.

It evolved into a love for DC after that, and didn't actually cross far into Marvel until I came here.

[jonocalypse.livejournal.com]

Uh. I watched X-men Evolution back in the day, hurr. Then I wrote fanfiction, and got recruited from ff.net to an X-men Evo roleplay. Oh, teenagerdom.

Anyways, a friend of mine from another rp (which was Harry Potter, incidentally) recruited me to this awesomefun new roleplay she was in, which was based on Marvel comics. And I was like "Um I don't think I've ever read a comic besides Archie in my life" and then she sent me ALL OF GENERATION X.

So yeah my life was changed forever basically. I joined scans_daily, found out what I liked, started to torrent things, and the rest is history.

ETA: Oh yeah, somewhere in there were the X-men movies. And the Spiderman movies. But neither series prompted me to go pick up the comics, for some reason.

[yippiekiyay.livejournal.com]

I had underoos. I watched Superfriends. But I very rarely had actual comic books around my childhood self, save for this one SUPER GIANT SIZED issue of "The Rampaging Hulk" that combined four issues of old Hulk comics and blew 'em up all huge. I read that 400 times, partially because Betty Ross was naked in it, partially because a lot of the art was very arresting, partly because MODOK IS AWESOME and partly because I was fascinated with the Bi-Beast and the Harpy and amused with how the Hulk talked.

I had maybe two issues of Iron Man floating around my house, one issue of Spider-Man where he fought the Puma and had a black costume made of goo for some reason.

Then I started collecting Marvel's Transformers comics. I got 1-50 and then stopped, because PRETENDERS SUCKED THAT BAD. I collected X-Men for about 10 issues around the Inferno era (giving me X-Factor crossover, too) and then stopped because comic shops were hard to get to and I had friends collecting stuff I could just borrow. Or I tried to draw my own X-Men comics for a while (I also drew a shitload of Transformers comics, and I remember being excited at the prospect of co-opting the plot of "Action Jackson" and put Jazz in the Carl Weathers role - and the Craig T. Nelson evil villain role of Mr. Delloplane was going to be Mr. Dell-OCTANE I AM CLEVER).

Settled for Tim Burton Batman movies until I got to college. I had no money, so I decided I was going to collect ONE COMIC BOOK. Spider-Man, at the time, was going through CLONE SAGA INSANITY and I had no idea how to follow it. X-Men was all cross-over happy, too. But then I saw Spider-Man 2099. One comic, no crossovers, starting from the beginning. That was awesome. I just kept with that until it fell apart. Left comics alone.

Graduated, moved to California. Stopped in Jeffrey's Comics in San Francisco and picked up Deadpool #4, having no idea who he was. I saw him leap into the air, stab the Hulk and call him a "jolly green mouthbreather" and I was sold immediately. It was all downhill into giant boxes of comics since then.

I DON'T CARE IF IT'S TOO LONG, READ IT, YOU TURBO-RUNNIN' YOUNG PUNKS

[oww-myhead.livejournal.com]

As far as comics go, when I was a kid, I started off mostly collecting random ass comics. Like Sonic the Hedgehog, Catwoman, or ElfQuest. I didn't really get into the major names (unless Catwoman counts!) due to the fact that my folks gave a big no no. It wasn't really until I was in my teens I got into DC Comics, mainly.

Honestly, as far as the comics go, I was influenced mostly by the Justice League cartoon. I was already a fan of the Batman animated series and like Superman okay. After I saw the JLU cartoon, I really got into the Question, and bought all of his old comics and crossovers. So JLU caused me to be one of the biggest Vic Sage nerds you'll ever meet. If it wouldn't cause some major conflict with my characters, I'd totally play him here.

As far as Ted Kord himself goes, I got into him because of ladymoondancer, who used to post hilarious stories and comics of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold on some forums we were both part of. I didn't know the characters AT ALL and this was long before I saw the JLU episode with Booster Gold in it. So I was confused, but terribly entertained. Eventually, I buckled down, and read back issues of the JLI, and I fell in love.

Then Ted Kord got shot in the head.

Later on, Vic Sage died of lung cancer, even though I was convinced he'd be kooky enough to tear cancer out of himself and punch it in the damned face.

I kinda gave up on comics for awhile after that. :[

Marvel I don't dig into as often as I'd like, but I did watch many of its cartoons and movies; I tended to read Ultimate Spider-man if it was any comic because comic continuity is such a mess, so I decided to start semi-fresh and with something semi-new.


YEP THAT'S MY BORING STORY.

[meowminx]

CATWOMAN COUNTS and that wasn't a boring story :|

[allshock-notalk.livejournal.com]

Now as far as Transformers goes, I actually watched Beast Wars first as a kid. I got pretty obsessed with it. I loved the damned show. I was completely unaware of the G1 history. So after Beast Wars was done and Beast Machines was too much of a pain to keep watching, I dug into G1 history and started to get into it.

At first, it was so 80s that it was hard to get into it at first until it kind of wormed its way into my heart. A lot of the episodes still run together for me, but some are memorable and I cherish those in particular. The movie in particular is memorable with its pains and loves I have for it. I've never actually really read any of the comic continuities, however, save for some semi-recent ones, like Shattered Glass or All Hail Megatron. I would love to get my hands on the Dreamverse series, though. (Notably, I have read some Beast Wars comics, but they're kind of meh -- although they do show that Rattrap offs two more of Soundwave's kids, Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. Sucks to be Soundwave!)

More recently, I got into Transformers: Animated. Admittedly, when I saw the pilot, I was unimpressed at first, but when one watches a particular episode... and you guys know that one. It kind of wins you over, despite its flaws.

So yeah. That's my equally boring tale of how I got into Transformers. Derp.

[easytochop.livejournal.com]

i........ read death note in high school because someone whose journal i stalked wanted to read it.........................

[taughttolisten.livejournal.com]

oh

honey

[reactionary.livejournal.com]

Honestly I never really got into comics, as in, the actual TPB aspect until I read Watchmen, like... two years ago. I always loved the movies that were made from them, though; I especially loved those terrible Batman films they made in the late 80s/early 90s when I was a kid and watched them all the time.

But yeah, after I read Watchmen I was intrigued, started reading more Spidey stuff initially (he was always my favorite of the really well-known superheroes) and blah blah THEN WHEN I JOINED C&C I GOT INTO A SHITLOAD OF OTHER COMICS. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME.

[hotforbabyleg.livejournal.com]

IT'S WINTAH FOREVAH HERE IN GOTHAM

[beargodjunior.livejournal.com]

I'm a bad comic book collector.

I loved Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men Evolution AND Justice League when I was a young one. I'd follow X-Men Evolution like almost every damn Saturday and caught B:TAS sometimes when it was one. Oh, and Justice League. Loved catching that every Saturday too.

I tried getting into comic book collecting a few years ago when I asked for Harley Quinn issues around Christmas. I only got Mad Love and after that, I managed to get some Supernatural, Fable, and random Nightcrawler issues. I couldn't really walk or drive to a comic book store since I live in the country and always feel bad asking my parents for stuff.

I bought Watchmen a few years later when I was supposed to be school shopping. I wasted like half my school money on it, but I wanted to read the novel before the movie came out. I LOVED it and got into fandom a little bit. Then at an RPG, Jill played a fantastic Deadpool and I discovered torrents. I downloaded Cable and Deadpool and fell in love. After that, I began downloading even more comics and then capeandcowl just made me want to expand my collection.

In the recent Fanexpo, I actually bought more comics and have a little collection going finally. :)

[liverletdie]

;_______________________; ♥

[hesafairylol.livejournal.com]

Honestly...I think the first comic that I actually started buying for myself were those small Runaways digests. Kates was a late bloomer when it came to comics. However, my Dad had and still has a TON of comics from the 70s and 80s. Like...he has the first 50 Alpha Flight (before it started getting shitty) and at least 200 UXM. Oh, and all 100 of New Mutants up until Cable shows up and fucks everyone's shit up. Ever since like...last year, I've started up my own little comic collection-mostly some graphic novels but a lot of limited series (damn you C&C! I spent waaay too much money on Nyx but it was sooo worth it).

So yeah. I got into comics like that.

[liverletdie]

So I'll go with two of my little fandom stories. The first is, of course, Star Wars! I uh, kind of liked sci-fi stuff when I was a kid, but I have two very distinct memories about the movies. The first was when I was really tiny, and my dad was watching Return of the Jedi on TV, and I walked into the room right around Jabba's palace, when Leia frees Han from carbonite, and I thought that Han was her dad. My dad tried to explain that they were ~*~IN LOVE~*~ but my tiny kid brain couldn't comprehend this. This has no meaning to anyone but me, but I still really remember that. SO. A few years later when I was in the first grade, I remember breaking into my dad's cache of old VHS, and lo and behold, there was a tape with "Star Wars" on it. It was super late at night, but I skipped over Terminator and all kinds of other good, classic Sci-Fi movies for a taped from TV copy of Star Wars. In that week, I think I watched it every day. I'm not even joking. So yeah, that was how I found Star Wars and I'm not even going to go into the following years in which I am proven time and time again to be a huge fucking nerd.

SO THE ONE THAT ANYONE MIGHT CARE ABOUT. Comics.

I actually...didn't get into comics very much when I was a kid. (lol as I said. STAR WARS~) Although I did watch things like TAS, Batman Beyond, and my personal favorite: Lois and Clark. So anyway, when I hit about Middle School/Early High School, I got into manga, we're not going to talk about that, but eventually I started slowly being introduced to comics, mostly through geek culture, movies starting to come out, et cetera. I wrote a huge research project on comics for my AP history class, and that pretty much cemented my love for them! I started reading some TPBs, but I really couldn't collect any actual issues, due to there being no comic store in my tiny podunk town! :( When I moved to college, I found a comic shop that was selling them (right around Civil War) but I was still too busy buying Star Wars comics to actually care about Iron Man taking over shit. No lie.

Yeah, anyway, tl;dr cutting short. Eventually I started going back and reading back issues and then started collecting a bunch of comics! I uh, go through phases between Marvel and DC, although I certainly prefer Marvel!

FFFFFFH LONGER THAN I WANTED.

[meowminx]

LOIS AND CLARK!

[ascending_angel]

I'm so predictable. 90's X-Men got me sold. My first comics were X-Men Volume 2 #1-10, X-Force #54 & 55, and X-Men Vol 2 Annuals #2 & 3. I was originally just a whore for the Brotherhood, but I eventually fell in love with Gambit, Cable, and Iceman and just went from there.

[notsoloyal]

I got into comics when I was really little. Before I could read little. I liked the pictures. Got a bit older, saw a comic shop at the mall and pretty much dragged my mom into the store to look at the PRETTY BOOKS WITH THE PICTURES. I think the first thing I started collecting was Sonic The Hedgehog. It didn't take long for me to get sucked into Marvel comics though, since two of my older guy cousins collect them, and my mom reads Spider-Man. So I kind of just ran off with their comics (the ones I was allowed to touch). Started collecting Marvel comics a bit later, then slowly learned about the DC universe (only knew what DC was because of the cartoons) when my cousin was like "READ THIS!" It was some Justice League comic. Then he kind of just kept throwing DC comics at me. I don't know why DC hasn't stuck to my brain yet. Clearly I have too much Marvel stuffed in my head.

Discovered Spawn first when I saw Spawn and Violator figures, and was like "OH THAT LITTLE MONSTER VI THINGY IS CUTE!" and I wanted to hug it. I thought weird things were cute as a child. The comics were a bit too dark for me at the time, but at some point in my teens (once I remembered what Spawn was) I went and tracked down the comics. FELL IN LOVE WITH THE OLDER STUFF. Or that may have just been me squeeing over the cute demons. Whatever. Once they had gotten up to 170something issues I spent about 48 hours without sleep rereading the entire series. I still do not know why. I just know I somehow got hooked on Spawn. Even the crappy movie and the very mature cartoon they put on TV at very late hours, that took me years before I actually went back and watched.

As far as Transformers goes. I watched G1 when I was little. I REMEMBERED NOTHING. Was too young to know what the heck was going on. I YET AGAIN BLAME MY FAMILY FOR THAT. So then when I was actually capable of understanding what the heck goes on in a TV show, BEAST WARS started (mmmmm Beasties). And me and my cousins used to sit down and watch it, and play with our little toys and battle and stuff. Beast Wars lead to Beast Machines, which lead to me going "heeeeeeeeeeeeeey I remember a cartoon about these guys" so later found G1 and watched it again. Actually understood what happened in the episodes. Loved it. Fell in love with Shockwave and Blurr. Went looking for the comics. Later DREAMWAVE started. Shockwave is pretty much responsible for EVERYTHING in the Dreamwave universe, so I immediately got addicted to it. Dreamwave went out of business. I was sad. IDW came out, I clinged to it for dear life. Not enough Shockwave. Then was happy that they're rereleasing the Marvel comics and some of the Dreamwave comics. WHICH BRINGS US TO TODAY.

As for Grim Adventures. I was up late one night, and saw a show called Grim & Evil. That was it. One episode and I was SUCKED IN. I then dashed to the computer when it was over to find out when it was coming on again. Watched as many episodes as I could, then they just stopped (WHY CANADA WHY) so I went on the internet. Discovered it was turned into The Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy. Proceeded to download every single episode.

[asphinxiated.livejournal.com]

My progression is vaguely convoluted. I watched the shows as a kid: Spider-man was fabulous, the older X-Men (and later Evo) and the dark allure of the nineties B:TAS. Then came Justice League ad JLU (skipped the Batman and Robin phase, what can I say?). There were a few characters that I really took a liking to (guess, just guess which ones) but I became pretty obsessed with the Flash for awhile. Which got me curious. First graphic novel I ever picked up belonged to X-Men.

Then I fell in love with Marvel: 1602. I investigated, started from the backissues, later learned all my favorite X-Men had died and fell into some dismal despair, which distanced me from this glory we call comic books. Sometime after, well, that's around the time I happened upon DC. Actually, my first single issue was given to me by a dear friend. It was part of Geoff Johns' run on FLASH and, frankly, Johns revitalized Flash mythos. I just. Fell in love all over again. Read IDENTITY CRISIS. That still... still gets me emotional. I read back in canon concurrently with the new stuff at the time and just, took in whatever I could find. Really got into DC, with Flash acting as my lodestone (hell, FLASH comics was one of the original companies that merged with ACTION COMICS and DETECTIVE, together forming DC. Want to get into DC continuity? All of it? Follow Flash from Jay to Bart.) SO in the months to come I was very familiar with the DCU. And I had found Gotham.

[taughttolisten.livejournal.com]

hurf the very first movie I can ever remember seeing is Return of the Jedi. My mom actually used the metaphor of the Force to teach me about how not to lose my temper, and being patient with people, and basically I had an awesomely nerdy childhood.

I'm... still kind of on the fence with comics. If I see something in a store that really appeals to me, I'll pick it up, but I'm reluctant to get into things with a long/ongoing run because of a limited budget and a school schedule and a wiffle brain. With Batman, if it's got Scarecrow in it, I jump on it. (And yes, I'm a DC girl, and have been ever since I was very little and watched too many reruns of the 1960s Batman on TV after school. NO WONDER I TURNED OUT SO GAY, DEAR LORD)

I do have some CrossGen TPBs that I adore (the art in Meridian and Ruse makes me all happy inside), I own the first TPB of Fables (which I LOVE the premise of but am still a little reluctant to dip into because of length), and there are a whole crapload of amazing one-shots (like Mignola's The Amazing Screw-On Head and something called How To Pick Up Girls If You're A Comic Book Geek), but... mostly I'm just like HURR IS ARTS PRITTY OR CAN HAS JONATHAN CRANE, I WANT RAED IT NAO!

Also sometimes I buy Old Republic comics just so I can look at the costumes. /o\

[easyopentabs.livejournal.com]

....ohgod my dad did the exact same thing with me. I used to know the whole Jedi motto by heart.