As a child, my mother used to purchase many comic books as my father was in the Navy, she often had to work and by the time she got home, she was sleeping. So, she wanted to keep me occupied.
Raised by my grandparents during my young life, my mother used to purchase me comic books every week to keep me busy, to keep me reading.
And sure enough, I was hooked.
I would amass a good size collection from my childhood years to my teenage years, but when I was 15, my life came crashing down when my father said I had to sell my comic books, because comic books were for kids and I had to grow up.
I ended up selling my comic books to a friend’s brother for $200 and to make things worse, as they delayed payment, they moved away with my comic books and I got nothing in return.
I was bitter for the next few years, refused to read any comic books or follow them. It was too difficult for me to read a comic book.
So, I moved onto video games to keep me occupied. And back in the late ’80s, I wanted to sell my NES, because I decided I rather play 16-bit games than 8-bit, so I traded my Nintendo video games to a neighbor and in return, he traded his comic book collection. It wasn’t much and I knew I spent way more on the video games compared to the comic books I received but nevertheless, it opened a whole new world of comic books and because I had my own job and I could drive to the local comic book store, I became a comic book collector once again. And eventually, nearly purchasing everything that I had lost when I was a young teen.
I would continue to collect comic books through the end of my college years, by then, it was becoming too expensive.
Trying to read every Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and X-Men related comic book, there were too many comic book titles and for crossovers, you had to get every issue to know what’s happening. And to make things worse, I would miss out on certain titles as it was first come, first serve. And if you didn’t have the money to purchase a certain title, you were literally screwed.
And with variant covers and the price of comic books starting to skyrocket, I had to make a decision. And by 2000, my hardcore comic book purchasing had come to an end.
I must emphasize that I haven’t quit comic books cold turkey. In fact, I still read comic books, but primarily a lot of Japanese comic books (manga) which I have reviewed for a very long time and continue to do so until this day. But for American-based comic books, it’s been a long time.
Recently, I started reading comic books again to see what people are raving, so I purchased a few trade paperbacks and omnibus to read but as I was decluttering from the storage, I saw boxes upon boxes of all the comics I have accumulated throughout my life. I know I haven’t read all of them and I was looking through them, I remember telling myself as a kid that I would read these comic books.
So, I decided to accomplish that goal and go through my comic books, read and post about them of my thoughts and feelings about them. And I’m sure my feelings of certain stories may have changed a lot since I was a child/teenager, so it’ll be fun to revisit these comic books once again. But also reading stories written recently and chime in on my thoughts about them.
This is “My Comic Book Journey”…
We’ll see how things go! 🙂