This Trip Down Memory Lane Is Brought To You By The Direct Market
With the demise of Speakeasy, commentators are again noting how difficult it is for a new company to get readers interested. Better to start small, they say; because even DC and Marvel's mighty superhero lines each began with just one book. This got me thinking about how my own buying habits developed gradually.
Yes, that means a post filled with misty water-colored mem'ries of the 1980s. Your groans say more than mere words ever could. Still, as a guy in his mid-thirties, I am pretty representative of the mainstream-superhero-reading demographic, so who knows -- these may sound familiar to you too.
(Or not -- but that's what the comments are for....)
Onward!
My first Local Comics Shop was The Comic Connection, pretty much a hole in the wall across from the University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington. It was about ten feet wide by thirty feet deep, not counting a closet-sized office and bathroom in the back. I didn't mind, having gotten used to a similar setting in the form of the local D&D shop. The Comic Connection was cramped and dark, and it looked like a basement corner the remodelers rushed, but it had a few advantages over the local Kroger stores: comics came out a month earlier, always on a Friday, and in a lot better shape.
I went to the comics shop for the first time in the winter of 1984, looking for DC's Star Trek #12. I had found Treks #9-11 on newsstands, but #11 had ended on a cliffhanger and I only cared about finding out what happened next, as quickly as possible.
Why Star Trek? Well, when I decided to stop reading comics in 1982 or so, I was in junior high (7th grade) and concerned with more adult pastimes, like girls and Dungeons & Dragons, probably in that order.
Appropriately enough, then, it was while buying snacks on my way to a D&D session that I saw Star Trek #9 on a spinner rack. In the fall of 1984, my jaded high-school sophomore self didn't consider buying a single issue a full-blown return to comics. Instead, it satisfied a massive Star Trek jones brought on by the cliffhanger ending of Search For Spock. Besides, it was a badge of my new "outsider" status: I no longer cared what effect reading comics would have on my social standing.
Of course, DC at the end of 1984 was filled with ads for something called Crisis on Infinite Earths, and from there my troubles began. At first it was just Crisis, Who’s Who, and Star Trek, each of which came out different weeks. That left the fourth week (and sometimes a fifth) without a reason to go to the comics shop.
Being an impatient sort, the thought of going a week or two without new comics became too much to bear. By the fall of 1985 I was getting at least two titles a week, and I was content. The next big expansion came in 1986, when DC relaunched all its post-Crisis books -- but that is an essay for another day.
Although it might just have been teenaged ennui which drew me back to the comics shop every week (and sometimes more often), part of it was the same kind of college-town hipster appeal as Cut Corner, the campus-area record store. (Both these shops are long gone, in case you were wondering.) At the time the two shops shared at least one employee, which made the comics that much cooler. It also didn't hurt that the mid-1980s brought the great indie-comics boom, and well-stocked back-issue bins allowed me to catch up on Cerebus, American Flagg!, Nexus, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My guide back then was the middle-of-the-road fanzine Amazing Heroes and its twice-yearly Preview Specials, each of which forecast six months' worth of upcoming comics from every publisher who would talk to them. (With the indie explosion, that was really saying something.)
So, to sum up: early on, I started modestly, adding titles as my curiosity and interest in the world of the direct market grew. Nostalgia was a factor in the titles I read, but (misguided as it may have been) part of it was trying to be hip, especially through the independent books. For me, having missed at least two years' worth of comics, there was also a great desire to get caught up. Going along with that was the realization that comics were more than just impulse buys at the grocery -- the shop was a symbol of a whole subculture. It all seemed very structured, and for an impressionable kid, that was not unattractive. It sucked me in and has held onto me ever since.
That's my story, or at least the start of it. What's yours?
Yes, that means a post filled with misty water-colored mem'ries of the 1980s. Your groans say more than mere words ever could. Still, as a guy in his mid-thirties, I am pretty representative of the mainstream-superhero-reading demographic, so who knows -- these may sound familiar to you too.
(Or not -- but that's what the comments are for....)
Onward!
My first Local Comics Shop was The Comic Connection, pretty much a hole in the wall across from the University of Kentucky hospital in Lexington. It was about ten feet wide by thirty feet deep, not counting a closet-sized office and bathroom in the back. I didn't mind, having gotten used to a similar setting in the form of the local D&D shop. The Comic Connection was cramped and dark, and it looked like a basement corner the remodelers rushed, but it had a few advantages over the local Kroger stores: comics came out a month earlier, always on a Friday, and in a lot better shape.
I went to the comics shop for the first time in the winter of 1984, looking for DC's Star Trek #12. I had found Treks #9-11 on newsstands, but #11 had ended on a cliffhanger and I only cared about finding out what happened next, as quickly as possible.
Why Star Trek? Well, when I decided to stop reading comics in 1982 or so, I was in junior high (7th grade) and concerned with more adult pastimes, like girls and Dungeons & Dragons, probably in that order.
Appropriately enough, then, it was while buying snacks on my way to a D&D session that I saw Star Trek #9 on a spinner rack. In the fall of 1984, my jaded high-school sophomore self didn't consider buying a single issue a full-blown return to comics. Instead, it satisfied a massive Star Trek jones brought on by the cliffhanger ending of Search For Spock. Besides, it was a badge of my new "outsider" status: I no longer cared what effect reading comics would have on my social standing.
Of course, DC at the end of 1984 was filled with ads for something called Crisis on Infinite Earths, and from there my troubles began. At first it was just Crisis, Who’s Who, and Star Trek, each of which came out different weeks. That left the fourth week (and sometimes a fifth) without a reason to go to the comics shop.
Being an impatient sort, the thought of going a week or two without new comics became too much to bear. By the fall of 1985 I was getting at least two titles a week, and I was content. The next big expansion came in 1986, when DC relaunched all its post-Crisis books -- but that is an essay for another day.
Although it might just have been teenaged ennui which drew me back to the comics shop every week (and sometimes more often), part of it was the same kind of college-town hipster appeal as Cut Corner, the campus-area record store. (Both these shops are long gone, in case you were wondering.) At the time the two shops shared at least one employee, which made the comics that much cooler. It also didn't hurt that the mid-1980s brought the great indie-comics boom, and well-stocked back-issue bins allowed me to catch up on Cerebus, American Flagg!, Nexus, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My guide back then was the middle-of-the-road fanzine Amazing Heroes and its twice-yearly Preview Specials, each of which forecast six months' worth of upcoming comics from every publisher who would talk to them. (With the indie explosion, that was really saying something.)
So, to sum up: early on, I started modestly, adding titles as my curiosity and interest in the world of the direct market grew. Nostalgia was a factor in the titles I read, but (misguided as it may have been) part of it was trying to be hip, especially through the independent books. For me, having missed at least two years' worth of comics, there was also a great desire to get caught up. Going along with that was the realization that comics were more than just impulse buys at the grocery -- the shop was a symbol of a whole subculture. It all seemed very structured, and for an impressionable kid, that was not unattractive. It sucked me in and has held onto me ever since.
That's my story, or at least the start of it. What's yours?
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 5:45 PM
1 Comments:
I started reading comics at about the same time as you did, though I was much younger. At first my parents bought be funny animal stuff...Uncle Scrooge, Junior Woodchucks, Richie Rich, Casper, stuff like that. My big sister was into Archie and I read all of those. It was a pretty casual thing, relatives would pick them up for me here and there.
It all changed when my aunt came to visit, and to be nice, brought me a bunch of comics. One of them was an issue of Amazing Spider-Man, featuring Spider-Man (in his black costume!) and Silver Sable versus the Sinister Syndicate. It ended on a cliff-hanger, and was filled with intrigue. The mystery of the Hobgoblin's true identiy! The Rose versus the Kingpin! Flash Thompson, suspected of being the Hobgoblin, on the run from the law! The Sandman, trying to go straight and swooping in to help his web-spinning former enemy! Needless to say, I got hooked on Spider-Man pretty easily.
One comic I got around that time was a "Web of Spider-Man" annual that had Spider-Man meet Warlock of the New Mutants. Guess which comic I got next? New Mutants, which led to X-Men and X-Factor...right in the middle of the Mutant Massacre! My whole family was intrigued by the vast backstory and interconnectedness of the mutant comics, and we began devouring back issues, including the various mini-series (Kitty Pryde and Wolverine, Magik, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, etc).
This all dovetailed with a family friend who was really into the Avengers, as well as the X-Men. We read her comics and thought they were pretty neat. This led to us picking up the Avengers, during the "Under Seige" epic. I never really got into Thor, West Coast Avengers, or Iron Man (outside the first and best 'Armor Wars' story...still one of my most favorite of all time), but I began collecting Captain America, who was beginning his "Cap No More" storyline.
And the rest is history! But what a great period of discovery...all those interconnected characters, the mind-blowing concept of a shared universe of comics and characters whose events spilled over into each other. The Avengers mansion is destroyed? It's referred to in X-Factor. Morlocks being murdered beneath the streets of New York? Daredevil, Thor, and Power Pack get involved. Captain America has to turn his shield into the government and gets a new one from Iron Man, only to find out Iron Man is breaking the law? You bet he shows up in Iron Man's comic, demanding Iron Man turn himself in. The New Mutants and the X-Men live in the same school, so you bet we saw them cross paths repeatedly.
Ah, those were the days! Those memories will always be fond ones, discovering the Marvel Universe and having my young imagination electrified.
Post a Comment
<< Home