Diary of a Comics Noob

[crimsonfire]

Well I used to collect 2000AD in my teens but was very on and off with it. Didnt get into comics proper till I met a certain outspoken Aussie. Just thought this would be a cool idea for a thread. Maybe wax nostalgic about your first forays into comics, what books you first read and get a general noobie perspective on things (and no chanting of "Fresh meat" please, its creepy).

 

Thus far ive read Preacher, Cap: Winter Soldier (first book anyway, im told theres more), Transmetropolitan, The Authority, Ultimates 1 & 2, starting on Avengers: Disassembled and making inroads into Watchmen. Only bad thing with reading someones elses books (apart from Preacher, got my own) is that whenever i look at starting my own collection i wont be as compelled to buy the books ive already read.

[Jables]

FISH! FISH! FRESH FISH!!

 

Ahem. Welcome and all that. I abhorred comics with a fiery passion and dismissed them as the opiate of reading 'tards despite growing up on a healthy dose of Asterix, Adam West's Batman(and idolising Batman thusly), and Mad magazines until I read the novelisation of Batman: Knightfall, and then a couple of random issues which were... an old issue of FF(vol 1) involving the Dark Raider(evil Reed Richards), an at-the-time-current issue of X-men during the Zero Tolerance arc, but I pretty much credit Spectacular Spiderman #250 as my first comic not only for easy-to-remember milestone value(it was the official return of Norman Osbourn since that unfortunate glider incident), but because aside from being the first comic I actually bought retail as opposed to reading mates' or finding in a random grab-bag, it's what hooked me into the medium.

[Arnah]

It was a warm winter of 2005, and my then boyfriend handed me a copy of 100 bullets and advised me to "Put that shit down and read something interesting". Being that I was reading a copy of Thats Life at the time (Real people - real stories) I thought 'eh.... why not'.

 

Cut to one month later, on a Friday afternoon when Jay started me on Preacher. He told me I would be reading it as he had, in installments sectioned by the release delays he had fought through. I remember taking issues 4 and 5 to work with me on Monday, and hiding them under my keyboard so I could keep going. I also remember Jay holding issue 9 ransom, and me begging for him to cut the shit and let me finish it. To punish him, he had to sit through all 6 seasons of Sex in the city. (Dont be fooled by his bravado - he LIKED it).

 

Ive since read a bit of transmet, all of She hulk, most of Fables, all of Y the last man, most of The Runaways, and Ultimates. Jay has since tried every tactic available to get me to 'read more fucking comics woman'. He actually wanted to make it a condition of our marriage.

 

Yay comics!

[MetalHeart]

I met Cj over a long discussion of anime and music. I had finally found another man who liked Tori and Bjork that wasn't gay! It was really refreshing, and after dating a month or two, he took me home to meet his roommate. Enter Logan.

 

When it comes to anime, Cj knows EXACTLY what you'll like. He knows what series will get you hooked, or if you like one kind, he'll know another one that will go great with it. His memory is amazing. Well, Logan is the same way with comics (and they are both the same when it comes to games lol).

 

I don't remember what it was exactly, but I guess (I hope) he didn't think I was some irritating teeny bopper (I had literally just turned 17 at the time, and these were like, cool older dudes! haaa) and was willing to share and let me borrow some of his comic collection. I think I had read some Clowes and Tomine, then he dropped what was going to be for years my favorite read of all: The Sandman. That was what made me all fangirl for Neil Gaiman. That and the fact that he and my favorite musician of all time were friends, haha. After that I got immersed into Alan Moore, From Hell, V for Vendetta, Watchmen... I had a taste for thick graphic novels and long running stories. He also immersed me into Dame Darcy, and Boswell's "Reid Fleming: World's toughest milkman" which I think is amazing, hahahaha. I'm sure I'm missing titles in here somewhere... He then lent me Preacher. Which replaced Sandman as my all favorite, hahaha. I went through a comic dryspell after that and read regular books for a bit. Then we came to visit three or four months ago before the move (before now) and he lent me 1602 and the first three issues of Transmetropolitan. I read the Transmet first and it left me jonesin' for more! hahaha. So gooooood. Then read 1602, which I thought was great, and Comic Book Tattoo followed after and I finished it in three days. It's a wonderful marriage between music and comics (once I get my copy back I'll go through song for song and give my opinions and praise for each story).

 

I'm rambling.

 

Anyhow, currently wet over Transmet... read up to issue 7 and I'm hooked so bad.

[Lorelei]

back in 2001/02 i started

 

was buying comics for years until i realised it was a waste of money, so i got TPBs instead. some comics (single issues) work out to nearly $5 each (1602 cost £2.50). really isn't worth something like that when you think you enjoy it, and the book just goes to shit. 90s comics were so much thicker and more value for their money

[The NZA]

haha, crim's list was solid until Disassembled. Anyway, fun thread idea.

 

I was a young'un when shit like Simonson's nod to norse mythology was going down in Thor, and Venom was being introduced and kicking the shit out of Spider-Man. i was broke and only read my friend's brothers books, and traded Marvel Series 1 cards (with the power meters onna back).

 

Years later, id read some of Ario X/Panch's books, round the time Wolverine lost his metal. For my birthday, a school friend gave me a few issues of Morbius (...) that Panch longed for like a bare teet, but oddly enough, playing the mediocre Maximum Carnage on SNES made me think he was the coolest thing evar, and thusly i read all of Panch's spidey issues on him and went out & bought them myself, searching all over town for the entire arc of Maximum Carnage (which should never be done). Thing was, the Clone Saga was just starting around this time, and i was in on the ground floor & loving the ballsy shit they were doing - making new villains and offing classic ones. I was on Amazing Spider-Man's nuts after that for a while.

 

Kid i knew from my $4.25/a fucking hour grocery job got me more into X-Men, though, and the timing was right: when you're 5 foot nothing, weighing a buck ten when wet, and somehow playing for your small school's football team against seemingly titans, any david vs goliath story like vs the Hulk is bound to inspire you, so i ran with it. It fit like nothing did for years, up till i found out Daredevil was both irish, blind and enjoyed hitting things.

 

Though neither'd fit as well as what was to come....years later in college, Jumbie and his brother would try to sell me a bit more on DC, though i would have little of it outside of Green Lantern. Jumbie raved about Books of Magic, Hellblazer and the works of the newly created Vertigo line where "anything went". He was echoing what id read in the few sections of Wizard (between the "Bad Girls" shit) about indie books or anything not in tights. Id found a sole issue of Sandman, # 74 at a store and loved it despite not knowing entirely what was transpiring. That was as close as i got for a bit.

 

...Until one morning in some freshman euro civ class, i sat between 2 chicks. the one to my right was pretty cute, and putting makeup on in her desk before the teacher showed up. I was tired and already figured she didnt have a damn thing to say...the chick to my left, however, was openly reading a Sandman trade at her desk. I talked to her, found out she lived upstairs of my dorm and was all about Vertigo - lent me her first 2 preacher trades, and i was done. I had to have her drive me to a local shop id not know about then to pick up everything to the current issue (while i was catching up on Jeff Smith's Bone book too, as only that store had). I literally missed classes to snipe auctions on ebay to get the entirety of Preacher, Sandman, Transmet, Ennis' run of Hellblazer and such. Good times.

 

In '03 i went bankrupt, and had to sell all of that to get by. i made nearly 5k one summer off my books, spent another $500 replacing my favorites in trade, and often have to download books lately now to stay afloat, though i still buy the trades of my favorite ones.

[the division of joy]

As a comic book noob, i can only lay claim to reading preacher and some daredevil. I'm yet to be bowled over so much by comic books but am still open to suggestion.

[Jables]

haha, crim's list was solid until Disassembled. Anyway, fun thread idea.

 

Oh I'm sorry Nick, Baytor seems to have hacked your account.

[The NZA]

Oh I'm sorry Nick, Baytor seems to have hacked your account.

 

oh, this should be good. please, skeet: justify Dissasembled for me.

im amazed that's the bit you commented on, and not say, my 15 year old fixation with Maximum Carnage.

[crimsonfire]

As a comic book noob, i can only lay claim to reading preacher and some daredevil. I'm yet to be bowled over so much by comic books but am still open to suggestion.

 

Wait...what? When was this? You sir need to get to the preacher forum. thread.

[Jables]

oh, this should be good. please, skeet: justify Dissasembled for me.

im amazed that's the bit you commented on, and not say, my 15 year old fixation with Maximum Carnage.

 

I didn't read the rest of that block of text. Disassembled hate set a terrible tone for the whole piece and I wanted no more, sir. Although, Maximum Carnage was fucking great(played the game THEN read the comic) and should be remade, panel for panel.

 

Diassembled set the stage for HoM. I don't know what kinda springboard you'd use but I can think of no better way than taking an anniversary issue of a major team book, and proceeding to literally destroy everything. Sure the only death that mattered was Hawkeye's but the art & dialogue were great, and the whole book had a terrible overtone of doom and reminded me of Moore's 'Whatever became of the Man of Tomorrow?'

[the division of joy]

Wait...what? When was this? You sir need to get to the preacher forum. thread.

 

It was some time ago, when i relented to nicks pimping. Unlike everyone else here, i wasn't blown away by it.

[The NZA]

I didn't read the rest of that block of text. Disassembled hate set a terrible tone for the whole piece and I wanted no more, sir.

 

...you skipped the "how i got into comics" rant for that? weak.

We can agree he needed to tear shit down before building it back up, but somewhere between the avengers talking like characters from "friends" and chaos magic, i think most of us had better ways it coudlve been done in mind.

[Jables]

... And that's all I had to say about that

 

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

... And that's all I had to say about that

[Jables]

...you skipped the "how i got into comics" rant for that? weak.

We can agree he needed to tear shit down before building it back up, but somewhere between the avengers talking like characters from "friends" and chaos magic, i think most of us had better ways it coudlve been done in mind.

 

Hey fuck you son, Chaos magic was cool. Seriously, as a fan of the Avengers for years and SW having these crazy powers that couldn't be controlled(including things like Bringing back Wonderman), and then having it explained thusly, was such a payoff, and physics aside, was a lot more plausible than 'So he nearly killed Fisk, revealed his ID publicly, married a blind woman and declared himself Kingpin of Hell's kitchen because of Karen Paige.... It takes an especially devoted fan to even know who Karen Paige was since Bendis drew a whole other crowd to DD who probably didn't care enough to read anything earlier. I'm just saying, Chaos magic was no more a stretch is all, and both paied off quite nicely.

 

And D'you remember Ultimate Spiderman? Powers? Alias? When Bendis started plying his trade all he did was have his characters talk like Sienfeld(that's who you're thinking of) and we all ate it right up. On a team book where there's a dynamic it makes a lot more sense than say, Christian Walker talking to Savage Dragon or someshit.

[the division of joy]

... And that's all I had to say about that

 

Drinking paint again?

[Jables]

Hah, no just loved you paraphrasing yourself and gave me the feedback thoughts.

[the division of joy]

Mine was accidental, yours was silly.

 

mind you i'm all for the silly

[Silent Bob]

I picked up single issues from time to time when I was a kid if the cover interested me and I happened to see it in the grocery story (it's sad that they don't sell comics in the grocery store anymore). They'd usually be Batman, Superman, and the occasional Spiderman or Green Lantern. I also read a lot of reprints of old Carl Barks Disney stories and the later Ducktales-style comics that were inspired by him. As I got a little older I got into the big character events of the early 90's like The Death of Superman and Knightfall (which, despite some clunky writing and art, I still consider to be a completely badass and ballsy story). But as these events started selling well, the publishers started getting greedy and soon you couldn't couldn't follow a big event story without having to buy a dozen different books a month (most of which would have crappy writing and art, but important plot points you shouldn't miss). It was somewhere around Zero Hour and Batman's huge Contagion/Cataclysm/No Man's Land/What The Fuck Is Going On In Gotham arc that I gave up on DC. Meanwhile the Clone Saga and the dozen or so X-books that cluttered the shelves at the time made me give up on Marvel.

 

It wasn't until freshman year in college that I got back into it thanks to two writers. The first was Kevin Smith. I had become a fan of his movies and when I heard that he did a run on Daredevil - a character that I had liked visually and conceptually (but let's face it, he had crap stories between Miller and Smith) - I decided to pick it up and give it a try. Guardian Devil got me hooked on the continuing adventures of Matt Murdock and I went out and read Mack's contributions before, finally, picking up the then-current Bendis run. I fell in love with Bendis' work on DD and I've stuck with the book ever since. When I heard that Bendis and "some guy named Mark Millar" had basically started a reboot of the Marvel universe, I decided to check that out too. It was just what I needed - great Marvel comics heroes without the 40 some-odd years of crappy convoluted continuity. I was hooked on Ultimate Spidey and The Ultimates (not so much Ultimate XMen which I didn't think was too great) and to this day it takes a lot for me to care much about anything that happens in the regular Marvel universe. DC, on the other hand, aside from the occasional Batman story, New Frontier and Identity Crisis, has yet to win me back.

 

The second writer was Garth Ennis. It was in this same freshman year that someone handed me book one of Preacher and I couldn't put it down. I'd heard about it before thanks to the controversy but reading it was entirely different. Unfortunately, this was the year before the final trade came out and it was a month or two of painful, painful waiting before I could read the end. Preacher was my gateway drug and it sort of lead to me taking a graphic novel class for my Lit credit, which then introduced me to other more fringe books like Ghost World, V for Vendetta, Blankets, Transmet, Maus, Watchmen, Jimmy Corrigan, Bone (which I realized I had read earlier as a kid since the first couple issues were serialized - in color! - in the Disney Adventures magazine), and everything from my idol Will Eisner. I ended up taking the class twice, just for fun, and found a ton of great books I would have probably never read, otherwise.

 

These days I still follow Daredevil. I check in on the big events in trade if I hear good things about them (1602, Civil War, New Frontier). And I try to keep up with great fringe stuff like what Vaughn's been doing (Y the Last Man, Deus Ex, Price of Baghdad). Other than that I don't read a whole lot anymore. With Bagley off Ultimate Spidey and Millar and Hitch gone from The Ultimates, I consider the Ultimate universe closed - it's starting to get just as annoyingly convoluted as the regular Marvel Universe anyway.

[The NZA]

Hey fuck you son, Chaos magic was cool. Seriously, as a fan of the Avengers for years and SW having these crazy powers that couldn't be controlled(including things like Bringing back Wonderman), and then having it explained thusly, was such a payoff, and physics aside, was a lot more plausible than 'So he nearly killed Fisk, revealed his ID publicly, married a blind woman and declared himself Kingpin of Hell's kitchen because of Karen Paige.... It takes an especially devoted fan to even know who Karen Paige was since Bendis drew a whole other crowd to DD who probably didn't care enough to read anything earlier. I'm just saying, Chaos magic was no more a stretch is all, and both paied off quite nicely.

 

You're saying people read the Bendis run that didnt read the hugely-popular Smith run? its true, you're huffing paint again.

 

And D'you remember Ultimate Spiderman? Powers? Alias? When Bendis started plying his trade all he did was have his characters talk like Sienfeld(that's who you're thinking of) and we all ate it right up. On a team book where there's a dynamic it makes a lot more sense than say, Christian Walker talking to Savage Dragon or someshit.

 

fair point, but even by what little i knew of the Avengers, didnt really sound like them. im saying, we got a fun Hitch collage and a complete mess of 3 issues tearing the Avengers down to the point of being silly. "YOU THOUGHT YESTERDAY WAS BAD?! HERE'S THE SHE-HULK FUCKING THE VISION" meh.

read mah reply to the actual topic someday, dammit.

[Silent Bob]

You're saying people read the Bendis run that didnt read the hugely-popular Smith run? its true, you're huffing paint again.

 

Karen Page is Daredevil's Gwen Stacey. Anyone who doesn't know who she is really has no business reading Daredevil in the first place.

[crimsonfire]

Disassembled is a bit meh. You could probably blame it on my lack of insight into the events preceding it but still it just bored me to tears. Something blew up, followed by some people I havent heard of coming back to life and some people I've vaguely heard of dying.

 

Skeet said it was a fitting end for the avengers but since ive never read avengers before Disassembled i guess it was wasted on me.

[FireDownBelow]

The first comic I ever read was something horrible and I'm ashamed to admit it: Lady Death. We had off campus lunch at my high school and my crowd used to loiter at the comic shop down the street. A friend's boyfriend was a bit of an artist and he used to uy issues of Lady and Shi. I would steal them and use them as masturbation fodder.

 

It wasn't until I started posting on Hondo's that I decided to drag out the old dog eared issues and actually attempt to read them. I realized they were pure shit and so moved on to other titles. I started with Y and then moved on to V. I've since read Watchmen, parts of Fables, Promethea, and couple of Neil Gaiman's things...

 

The thing with me and comics, I don't know enough about the medium to discuss who my favorite artist or writer is. As a matter of fact, I find those discussions confusing. I suppose someone would prolly call me a dilettante but I don't really care. I pick up issues or trades based on recommendations from others. I know what I like not necessarily what's good.

[Jables]

You're saying people read the Bendis run that didnt read the hugely-popular Smith run? its true, you're huffing paint again.

 

Bendis brought this whole new breed of cinema fans & ADD monkeys to the fold, and I don't credit them with going back and reading the issues or trades. Kevin Smith's run was popular with us, but that was in the beforetime. If I'm wrong(which I'm not about Australia), then it's everywhere but here and will eat my own words.

 

fair point, but even by what little i knew of the Avengers, didnt really sound like them. im saying, we got a fun Hitch collage and a complete mess of 3 issues tearing the Avengers down to the point of being silly. "YOU THOUGHT YESTERDAY WAS BAD?! HERE'S THE SHE-HULK FUCKING THE VISION" meh. read mah reply to the actual topic someday, dammit.

Shit was incessant!! How many times do you read a book where the worst possible day literally means shit piled upon shit piled upon shit happens until it drowns the fucking fan?! Also, you didn't readdress Chaos Magic. More importantly though, you fucking homewrecker, I came home to that shit last night and had Shane all 'Hey I didn't like disassembled.'. YOU FUCKING HOMEWRECKER!! HIS DELICATE MIND CAN ONLY BE STEERED SO MUCH. GODDAMN YOU YOU HAVE YOUR OWN COMIC LACKIES I HAVE MINE. LET ME SHAPE HIM INTO THE MARVEL FANBOY I AM DAMNIT!!!

Karen Page is Daredevil's Gwen Stacey. Anyone who doesn't know who she is really has no business reading Daredevil in the first place.

Pretty sure I said that in my original rant. If I didn't, I apologise and meant to. Kinda makes my point, is all.

[crimsonfire]

Oh dont worry i'll always be your fanboy

 

Oh and I forgot that I read Batman: The Killing Joke a while back too. Awesome book.