(Two key comics in Tom Spurgeon’s comic reading life. One he bought, one he didn’t. Yes, January 1984, a series of dodgy Assistant editors month Marvel Comics or Chaykin’s risqué looking American Flagg, what would any reasonable 15 year old boy choose?)
Tom Spurgeon is one of the better writers on comics and his The Comics Reporter weblog should be essential reading for anyone with an interest in comics. This recent entry; Why I Started Reading Indy Comics looks back to his teenage years in 18984, he analyses the moment when he first discovered Indy comics, specifically American Flagg:
“In January 1984, I was 15 years old, we didn’t have the Internet, my friends and I were counting the days to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, our HBO watching was monitored, the woods where my older brother’s generation had hidden an Alexandrian library’s worth of dirty magazines was becoming condos ……… And these were my choices at Bright’s Book Exchange: Sorry, Batman. Sorry, Spider-Man. Sorry, Mainstream Comic Books. You never had a chance.“
And it made me think back to my own childhood and how my love affair with Marvel comics changed to a love affair with all comics. My own moment came when I was about 14, about a year and a half after I first discovered that comics actually had their own shops and that Birmingham had one of the biggest, a mecca for my young teenage mind; Nostalgia & Comics.
(My own pair of important comic moments – the first comic I bought in a comic shop, circa 1983 and my first step outside Marvel & DC, during Cerebus’ time as Pope, circa 1984)
One of the comics I can remember getting on that first visit was New Mutants #1 (March 1983). After that, I was back every couple of months. I’d carefully save my pocket money and would usually have about £20 to waste on comics. (As Mom would always put it). Back then my tastes were very very strictly Marvel only. X-Men, New Mutants, Alpha Flight, Rocket bloody Raccoon and many more. The occasional DC Comic slipped in but it took a while for my tastes to change – and it all happened on the day the owner, Phil Clarke gave me a copy of a Cerebus poster and a copy of the comic – for free. I still have no idea why he gave me that copy of Cerebus 67 (Oct 1984), but it opened my eyes to everything outside the narrow little boundaries I’d set for my comics reading. And after that, I never looked back.
What about you – what made you more comics aware?
March 6th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Love & Rockets 1
March 7th, 2010 at 9:24 am
don’t remember the first but i remember what i was caught shoplifting at Odyssey 7 which brought an abrupt end to my comics life until i started making them; Predator and Terminator tie-ins (sorry) and Wolverine #50
March 7th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Fantasy Advertiser (circa 1985).
£20 was two months worth of pocket-money for you in ’83, Richard?? My pocket-money back then didn’t even cover the cost of the Spiderman weekly. (Thank god for Confirmation money!)
March 7th, 2010 at 11:52 am
The first Titan Books collection of Heartbreak Soup.
March 7th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
John – yep, every couple of months I’d collect together all the available cash I had, pocket money, grandparents money, birthday and christmas money, car washing money, paper round money – anything to make the trip to the comic shop worthwhile!
March 7th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
My comics reading started in the good old days of there being a fine array of comics on the local newsagents shelves for weekly Brit comics then found newsagent near the grandparents had boxes full of DC titles in no particular order that I worked through whenever I could. Second wave in adulthood was sparked by Sandman and Hellblazer late 80s and early 90s and being able to go into Glasgow regularly to FP and AKA and browse.