What comic got you serious about "back " issues?

[DiceX]

Superboy and the Legion. I had random issues from 197 through 216 and a kid moved in across the street with a straight run. He let me read them and I was hooked and we would make a mad dash to the grocery store every month to get the next issue.

 

I had a different friend that owned a House of Secrets #81 and wouldn't let anyone touch it. He used to tell us it was going to be worth a lot of money one day. I loved the cover and wanted a copy of my own, but his was the only copy I ever saw until I was in my mid 20's.

 

That kid had a lot of cool comics.

 

 

[conditionfreak]

In "person". Iron Man #1. Went to my first Comic Con and it was the first book on a display that called my name. Top guide at the time was $60 and the dealer wanted $61. I haggled and he would not come down. He (and admittedly I also) thought it to be a NM comic. I bought it for the $61 and had it signed by Stan Lee on an interior page (way before CGC).

 

It is now in a PGX 9.0 white pgs holder.

 

That was my first foray into the world of buying back issues for more than cover price.

 

When a kid in the early sixties, I used to buy them through the mail from ads in the comics themselves. Such as from Howard Rogofsky. Can't remember which I bought from them though. They had to have been early Spideys. Nothing else much mattered when I was ten or so.

[kidcolt]

I collected mostly digest up until 1990 as that was all that was available in the small town where I lived. In 1990 I moved to an actual city that had comic stores. The first time I went I was amazed with the selection. The first back issues that I bought was Batman Death in the family (1-3).

 

The first ones that I purchased that got me serious about back issues was when I bought an ASM 129 and Hulk 181 from the same guy. After that I was hooked and started buying up older issues whenever possible.

[500Club]

The one thing that's etched into my brain was seeing blurbs in some issues referring back to a particular back issue. There would be an asterik in a word baloon and then at the bottom of the panel it would tell you which back issue it was referring to. That, more than anything else, made me want to seek out back issues.

 

This was it for me. Those asterisk notations with the panel footnotes always made that earlier issue sound like an earth-shaking event. For an 11 year old, that triggered a desire to want to have all those previous issues.

[Comicopolis]

The one thing that's etched into my brain was seeing blurbs in some issues referring back to a particular back issue. There would be an asterik in a word baloon and then at the bottom of the panel it would tell you which back issue it was referring to. That, more than anything else, made me want to seek out back issues.

 

This was it for me. Those asterisk notations with the panel footnotes always made that earlier issue sound like an earth-shaking event. For an 11 year old, that triggered a desire to want to have all those previous issues.

 

+1

[kdoginohio]

[porcupine48]

I'm so old I don't remember.

[Currin Comics]

WBN, TOD, GR, Man-Thing, Swamp Thing

[seanfingh]

 

In '87-'88 when hot artists earlier work (think Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee) started really jumping up in value, I started to get very interested in the back issue market as a way to get the hobby to pay for itself a little bit at first. Then when the Bronze Age revival of characters fueled a big surge in prices of early GR, Morbius, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lobo appearances etc. I was hooked for good.

[joe_collector]

The one thing that's etched into my brain was seeing blurbs in some issues referring back to a particular back issue. There would be an asterik in a word baloon and then at the bottom of the panel it would tell you which back issue it was referring to. That, more than anything else, made me want to seek out back issues.

 

This was it for me. Those asterisk notations with the panel footnotes always made that earlier issue sound like an earth-shaking event. For an 11 year old, that triggered a desire to want to have all those previous issues.

 

+1

 

I remember seeing some of those and wondering what mysterious stories were contained - I still remember a note in Avengers 128 for Defenders 1-3 (vs. Necrodamus) and it looked so cool (The Undying Ones? WTF?) that I hunted those issues down over a period of years.

[Hepcat]

The one thing that's etched into my brain was seeing blurbs in some issues referring back to a particular back issue. There would be an asterik in a word baloon and then at the bottom of the panel it would tell you which back issue it was referring to. That, more than anything else, made me want to seek out back issues.

 

This was it for me. Those asterisk notations with the panel footnotes always made that earlier issue sound like an earth-shaking event. For an 11 year old, that triggered a desire to want to have all those previous issues.

 

Absolutely! That really did it for me too.

 

(thumbs u

 

In very early 1962 I believe the asterisks were confined to those DC titles edited by Julius Schwartz. The very real problem was that in 1962 there were no such things as comic shops and I really thought there was next to no hope of ever finding those issues. Well I have them now!

 

 

 

 

[Primetime]

I can recall 4 books at different stages of my comic collecting career..

 

1) a NM X-Men # 121 (1st full Alpha Flight) $20 off the wall of my LCS back in 1985. Got me into Cockrum/Byrne X-mens from the BA.

 

2) a G/VG FF # 8 $40 (1st Puppet Master and Alicia Masters). I traded about 10 SA Marvels (much more than the $40 asking price) to a dealer back in 1988 at a local hotel con..got me interested in SA FFs. The "big" 12 cent price was really "cool" to me at that time.

 

3) took a break from collecting from '89-'92. I was at a local mall show in summer 1993 and came across a low grade Hulk # 3. I bought it and got back into SA comics.

 

4) My first Timely--Human Torch 4(5)..traded like 20 SA Marvels (FF 5, Hulk 2-6, ASM 2, etc) for a VG/F copy of a Torch 4(5) from Mike Carbanaro (circa Wondercon Oakland, CA 1996)

[Tsimanga]

I was a bronze age subscription baby... getting ASM and X-MEN...

 

...then I started hanging out at the local comic shop and each time I would hold an early Journey into mystery with Thor in my hands it was like holding some old, rustic, antique... the good ones were expensive back then, like 5 bucks a pop so I never got too many... but just the look and feel, and smell and weight of those early JIM's was so different than the flimsy bronze agers I was hooked.

[That Ron Dude]

For me it was Strange Tales. I wanted to collect Marvel (about 15 years ago) and the only run I could afford was Strange Tales. I already had several. Once I got #101 I knew I was going to be able to complete it.

[Mr 9.8]

The 3rd volumes of Flash & Green Lantern (this was back in 96)

[jbud73]

I think like most people the, "story that I hadn't read" got me interested in back issues. The titles were Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans. If you were reading new comics in 1982 those two titles were probably consistently putting out the best stories and art. Of course if you started reading in them in '82 then you missed some important story arcs to make sense of the things you were reading.

 

After getting a beat to heck NTT #1 that I read over and over again from one of my friends I bought 12, 13 and Tales (Cyborg origin) off the rack and then wandered into a comic shop that my dad told me about (he passed it on his way to work everyday) to see if I could get the issues in between.

 

X-Men 152 (the Storm-White Queen Cover) will forever be imprinted on my brain as the first X-Men comic I bought. The brood saga followed as did the Dark Phoenix references and I desperately tried to find out what all the hype surrounding issue 137 was about. Of course X-Men was tougher than NTT, I remember saving my pennies to buy 120 and 121. I don't think I actually read GSX 1 until it was reprinted in Classic X-Men like 6 years later.

 

But back issues got serious because I was serious about reading a story and understanding the editor references, I used to hate it when Louis Jones and Len Wein as all they did was come in to reference issues I hadn't read yet which did me zero good at understanding what transpired in those issues. Little did I know that the pursuit of "the story I hadn't read" would be a life long one.

[GL1]

For me it was Silver Age Green Lanterns.

 

 

[rodan57]

I got into Spidey well after Gwen Stacy died, but I kept reading about her and seeing her clone during the Clone Saga, along with Marvel Tales (of which MT 49 was a real fave of mine). Then a friend gave me a copy of ASM 124, with Peter totally losing control because of her death, and in one of the seminal moments on my collecting career, I was gifted a pile of old ratty BA books, which included:

 

ASM 121 and 122

 

Talk about being floored and at that point I had to get all the ASM issues from 123-up (I think I got all except ASM 127 - tough to find around those parts), of which most (except for 122 and 134) were lost in the Great Camping Trip Incident.

 

 

This is interesting. I stopped reading with her death. I accepted the death of her father --- calling Spider-Man, "Peter", was a remarkably fine touch --- but 121 was, to me, the swan song of a company that was expanding faster than its writer/artist talent base should have allowed. Why kill a character that the vast majority of the fans simply loved?

 

To discover Gwen in "retrospect" seems to be a unique entry into the Spider-Man ethos.

 

When I read of those who favour Mary Jane as a character over Gwen -- all I can think is that they have not read many issues from 31 to 121.

 

 

[Ken Aldred]

- Fantastic Four 20. First UK mail order catalogue purchase, 1977, a grubby-looking VG copy.

 

- Marvel Two-In-One Annual 2. I had a copy of Avengers Annual 7, but this second part of the storyline just seemed impossible for me to find in the UK. Took me ages, but eventually I got one at a Manchester comic mart, 1980.

 

- Savage Tales 1. Collected the Savage Sword b/w's, but I couldn't find this book in the UK, and it was my first US mail order purchase, 1980.

 

- Avengers 4. Read this first in the British b/w reprint comics published in the early 70s. Don't know why but, at that age (9), I thought it was absolutely brilliant, the most exciting SA Marvel book I'd ever read. Took me until 1987 to finally purchase a high grade copy.

[joe_collector]

When I read of those who favour Mary Jane as a character over Gwen -- all I can think is that they have not read many issues from 31 to 121.

 

Nah, even then I thought MJ was a flighty skank and would have preferred Gwen's clone over her.

 

Plus, I had scenes like this from the old MT reprints to go by: