First Comic(s) You Read Before Collecting?

[PovertyRow]

I was born in 1950 and was about 4 or 5 years old when I discovered a small box of comics in the cellar hidden by my oldest brother, who would have been about 14 at the time.

 

Inside that box were some EC horror comics. My reading skills were not really up to EC in those days but the art alone was enough to draw me in. (I was a sci-fi/horror movie fan even back then.) But I had never seen images like this!

 

I do not remember the titles but I DO remember The Old Witch because I was plagues by nightmares about a witch chasing me up the cellar stairs, which moved like a down escalator always keeping me almost within her grasp.

 

I am sure this memory ultimately led me to my collecting pre-code horror decades later.

 

Many years later, and still having no real interest in comics, my then best friend gave me some comics he said were "really good!". Thinking back, after I knew more, I realized amidst the Superboys, was an FF#1 and a JIM 83. To this day I clearly remember the image of Donald Blake finding the cane in the cave and the Big Monster from FF1. I also clearly remember The Thing and feeling bad for him.

 

I was fascinated by the Letter Pages and was intrigued to see letters from college students.

 

So anyone care to share their memories of reading comic books before they became collectors?

 

PS - as regards the FF1 and JIM 83. I hid them as comic books were frowned on in my house. When I started actively collecting I looked but there was no sign of them. Thanks Ma!

[kav]

I was the only kid I knew of who read comics in 1966 when I started with Action #350. I believed I was the only kid who read comics even though I knew there must be others because of the letters page. I remember the story where Superman's robot dissolves his hands and has to keep covering it up and hiding them-that story really struck me. Then years later I blew up my hands and found myself always trying to hide them from people.

I also remember when I first read Mad-Mickey Rodent and Starchie-the stories made me feel really weird seeing those characters like that.

[Davenport]

As a sixties kid Superman and Batman comics were a given. But other non-superhero covers would almost force you to buy them. They'd grab your imagination and you had to know, had to.

 

Two really stick out for me. One was House of Secrets #14. So much going on with that cover. First is that masthead. What kid can resist secrets? And a house of secrets? Oh yeah. And that face pressed to the window was a childhood fear , clashing with imagining having tiny desktop aliens in your room.

 

Another was Brave and the Bold #47 "Strange Sports Stories". I couldn't take my eyes off that fighter's arm going through that other guy. Fighting went with riding bikes and roaming neighborhoods, so the thought of being un-hitable was just too irresistible.

 

[kav]

Yep the silver age DC covers really captured kid's imaginations....

[rjpb]

My earliest comic reading memories are of Harvey books, probably shortly after I learned to read, around 1964. Sad Sack was my favorite.

 

It was four or five years before I got into superhero books, probably because the first few I looked at were parts of a multi-issue story arc and I found the incompleteness frustrating. Once I did get into them though, that same sense of continuing continuity is what turned me into a collector from just a reader.

[makeminemego]

Marvel Collectors Item Classics #8. Found it at an antique store, along with a TOS #65 with a duct taped spine.

 

The MCIC #8 had reprints of FF #10, TOS #45, Strange Tales #118, and Hulk #2. Read it about a hundred times........

[Unca Ben]

Lots of Gold Keys: Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Tom and Jerry, WDC&S, PT109. Charlton - Gorgo and U.S. Air Force Comics. Some Dells as well.

[kav]

This was the 2nd comic I ever read. Like the first, I can remember exactly where I was when I read it, what the weather was like, everything.

[Unca Ben]

It's funny how memories stick with us.

 

I read a Challengers of the Unknown (#44, to be exact) while I was sick at home with the flu, I had been throwing up all day.

 

To this day, when I look at or re-read this issue, it makes me feel a little nauseous.

[Crimebuster]

There was no "before collecting" for me. The first comic I ever read was Blackhawk #269, which my parents bought for me to keep me quiet while they were at their bowling league.

 

When I got home, I took out a folder, carefully put the issue inside and then wrote out a checklist of Blackhawk issues - crossing out, of course, #269.

 

I don't know why, but I became a collector as soon as I read my first comic.

[rjrjr]

 

I definitely remember reading comics before Star Wars 26 (which was the first issue of the first title I collected.) My earliest memory was of reading a Gold Key comic with Mickey Mouse and the Beagle Boys. My dad let me buy one of those 3 packs on they way to a fishing trip in New Jersey. I don't remember what the other 2 issues were. When my dad was stationed in Germany, I distinctly remember getting House of Mystery 254 at the airport for the flight to Germany. I loved DC's anthology horror titles.

[01TheDude]

ASM 77

(used, not sure who owned it but the cover was impossible for me to forget) around 1973

 

started collecting 2 years later

[HighStakesComics]

Captain Carrot and the Byrne X-Men set the proverbial hook for this guy.

[miraclemet]

Before collecting (Fall '82 with Green Lantern 159) I remember reading lots of Gold Key 3 packs (usually picked ones with Uncle Scrooge, Beagle Boys or the nephews on the outside comics) bought at the Goodie Barn down in central Florida which was kind of a discount, overstock store (like a Woolworths, but with overstock)

 

I also remember reading lots of Archie Digests which were an easy get in the checkout line at Publix when my mom was buying the weeks groceries.

 

Also I remember rifling through my dad's old toy chest at my grandparents house when I would visit. He and his brothers had maybe a dozen old comics, mostly westerns and war comics from the 60s. Rawhide Kid and some TV properties.

 

once I read that Green Lantern, which also exposed me to the spinner rack/shef at the 7-11, and coupled with the release of the GI Joe comic book, which dovetailed into my love of cartoons... and that's all she wrote.

 

before that Green Lantern 159, comics were a semi-disposable form of entertainment to the 7 year old me.

[Buzzetta]

[mystrymachine]

My mother would buy Harvey books for all of us kids. I read those before anything else. When I started buying my own I wasn't into Marvel books. They were too mushy for me with Spiderman having a girlfriend etc..

The earliest books that I remember buying were war books like Our fightin Forces or Horror books like The twilight Zone. I was living on an Air Force base and I would get them at the nearby Hospital. I remember they had a spinner rack with nothing but digest size books and I would buy a lot of those too.

[Jordysnordy]

The first comic book I ever remember reading was Godzilla # 2 at a friend of the family's house.

I was so captivated by the book that I HAD to have it and would no go home without it!!

This title has always had a soft spot for me and I now have the # 1 set in the registry.

It took a few years to complete but I couldn't be happier!!

 

 

[jimjum12]

Turok, Son of Stone circa 1964...... the dinosaurs drew me in GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[Jeffro.]

My earliest memory of comics is Richie Rich and Sad Sack, Uncle Scrooge, and bronze DC war.

In the 70s, my family had a summer cottage about an hour away and one of the highlights of going there was to re-read the stack of comics that we had there.

 

When my family sold the place in the early 80s, I took the comics home and still have them

[Montezuma]

Still have it, though it probably doesn't make even e-bay NM any more. My Grandmother would have given it to me around 1960, so it probablly belonged to one of my cousins before that.