Topic shamelessly stolen from Michael Paciocco's thread on my own message board.

My first comic was probably some Archie or Superman bullshit, since I remember my folks getting those for me at the local Dean's Thrift Mart in Otis Orchards, Washington. Superman was always in mid-storyline when I saw it, so since we obviously didn't go grocery shopping at Dean's every single week, nor did they always have the same titles in stock, I wound up getting ahold of a lot of incomplete storylines, going WTF to myself, and caring more about Archie than about Superman (not that I cared that much about Archie, but he was at least easier to follow).

I have fond memories of other people's comics, though. My best friend in grade school, Ryan Ross, was spoiled as hell, so he had complete runs of the Transformers and Batman comics (and even the V tie-in comics - yes, V, with Marc Singer!). I remember reading the Batman issue that debuted Black Mask, whose origin story unnerved the shit out of me as a little boy, in ways that I kind of liked. My aunts, Beverly and Melissa, were in their teens when I was in grade school, so I raided their comics stacks a few times. They had the origin story of Ghost Rider, which I found chilling as a kid, and a run of Dark Shadows comics, with Angelique the witch and Quentin the werewolf.

One comic that my aunts had, which particularly unsettled me, was an issue of Superman with a cover story about "The Satanic Son of Superman!" I didn't get the whole concept of "imaginary stories" back then (or at least, how they were different from "real stories" about purely fictional characters), so I actually thought that Superman-as-widower, with a dead witch for a wife and an evil son, was in continuity (not that I knew what "continuity" was back then, but you get what I'm saying).

The first comics of my own that I distinctly remember, though, are my Ambush Bug comics, set right in the immediate wake of Crisis On Infinite Earths (which I knew nothing about at the time, so all those in-jokes just flew right over my head), and Swamp Thing #37. I loved Ambush Bug for being metafictionally aware of his own status as a comic book character, long before I knew what "metafiction" even was, and I loved Swamp Thing #37 so much that it was the first comic book I remembered the ISSUE NUMBER of. I loved seeing the Swamp Thing's perspective, as a plant, and I loved the diverse cast of characters that was introduced, and I loved the huge, looming, mysterious threat that was alluded to, and I loved loved LOVED the blonde-haired British ASSHOLE with the cigarettes and the trenchcoat.

I even remembered the guy's NAME - John CONSTANTINE - and years later, after I'd quit comics in grade school (because of the goddamn "love triangle" in Superman, which seemed even stupider to me than the love triangle in Archie), but before I started collecting comics in college, I was in the university bookstore, and I saw the cover of a comic that read John Constantine: Hellblazer, and I thought, "Nah, it can't be the same guy ... can it?" But it was, and he was having his last showdown with Papa Midnite, and as much as Garth Ennis' work has declined over the years, I can thank him (and Alan Moore, by extension) for getting me back into comics in college.

Oh, and Michael Paciocco has asked the question again, over on his blog this time. Go forth and answer him.

Tom Brevoort asked that question a few years back. Here's the piece I did for his website:

The Fantastic Four, Marvel’s first superhero team, was first published in 1970 as a hardbound annual featuring the foursome – Stretcho, the Torch, Crystal, and the Invisible Girl – plus their friend the ever lovin’ blue-eyed Thing (who couldn’t be one of the team because then there’d by five of them, and the clue was he didn’t have a 4 on his outfit; I mean, okay, Sue basically shopped for a house in sub-plots for four issues, but at least she had a 4 on her chest). In this tale they land their bizarre craft in the closed land of Latveria and encounter their most fearsome enemy, the dreaded Doctor Doom!

I was seven. This story blew my mind.

Okay, some of you Americans might think all of this is from Lee and Kirby’s FF #84-87. I’m English, and I’m telling you this is how it really was.

Not only was this the first superhero story I’d ever read apart from Super-Goof, it also featured the coolest villain in the history of cool villains. Victor von Doom ruled a whole country! His own people both loved and feared him! He had a terrible secret in his ruined face, and when he wasn’t villaining he played haunting beautiful music alone in his gothic but high-tech palace! And stunningly he always kept his word, so that even his enemies the FF trusted him when he gave it, and he let the good guys go at the end because they’d helped him.

There was more. This amazing adversary beat the team, took away their powers, and then LEFT THEM TO LIVE IN PEACE in his country! And then, when things went wrong and he had to save Latveria from the sinisterly bald Dr Hauptmann and doombots gone mad, he got them to join him and led them against his own creations.

In watching the Thing gut his way through hordes of powerful baddies against all odds, in seeing the Torch slag doombots that still attacked even though they were in pieces, in watching Reed solve complex scientific problems with nothing but incredibly long fingers, and in seeing Sue, um, worry, I realised then and there what my own future inevitably had to be.

I would grow up to be Doctor Doom.

"He's stronger than me... but I'll find some way to defeat him." - Cap's thought balloon when fighting Namor.

I really don't remember what my first comic was, because I've been reading them since before I knew what words were, but these four are burned into my brain as some of the earliest-- they were, at least, my first taste of their respective characters, that much I do know.

My first comic was "Teddy Bear's Weekly". It consisted of a series of one-page illustrated stories that were obviously written for three-year-olds. By some strange quirk of fate, that was how old I was at the time.

I graduated to the Beano, and from thence to Everyday Electronics.

Some time around then I amused myself with the black and white reprints of Marvel comics, and occasionally read some of the imports. I used to have quite a collection at one point.

I think my brother got the comic adaptation of "Blade Runner" at the same time, but mine was far better. It also had Avengers #58 in it, and the "Lady Liberators" issue for some reason.

My first books that I remember were all based off of cartoons: Tom & Jerry, Casper, Back to the Future (yes, there was a cartoon) & such. I have a number of Archie books from back there. Then there are a few Richie Rich & Felix the Cat books in that mix. The Disney comics also factor in about that time, too.

My first Marvel book might just be a Punisher book: I don't know the issue number or what the story was but the cover is forever in my mind. Frank is surrounded by babies, he's screaming & shooting a rather large gun (maybe a machine gun).

The first DC books that I remember are from 1994: a whole smattering of issues relating to The Death of Superman.

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