My history: Comics

As a young kid, I was too busy with Star Wars and video games to give much thought to comic books. I was aware of them in only a very basic way. I pretty much only knew about Superman because of the Christopher Reeves movies, and I knew about Batman because of the old Adam West show. I was a fan of both of these things, but I never gave a thought to the actual comics. On the Marvel side of things, I was aware of the Hulk because of the Lou Ferrigno show, and aware of Spider-Man and Captain America just because of how big they were. But still, I had no interest in their comics. I didn't have any friends who read comics, and, like I said, with video games dominating most of my time comics just never entered into my mind.

It wasn't until the eighth grade that I started making some friends who read comics. And then Fox started airing the X-Men cartoon. The Batman cartoon was great, but because of the Adam West show and the Tim Burton movie I saw Batman as something separate from comics. The X-Men cartoon was my first exposure to something that came purely from the world of comic books. I knew who Wolverine was, mainly from seeing him in a few video games, but other than that the X-Men were a mystery to me. But the show captivated me from the very first episode, and I started learning everything I could form my comic reading friends about the X-Men.

One day a friend came over to my place after just picking up some comics from the gas station across the street from me (remember when you could buy comics at a gas station?). He asked if he could leave them at my place, because his mom didn't like him buying comics. I said, "Ok.", so he left them with me, and I read them and enjoyed them a lot. It wasn't long after that that I bought my first comic, X-Men #30, the wedding of Cyclops and Jean Grey.

After that I started going to the comic book shop every Wednesday for new comics. I stayed with the X-Men books all through the Age of Apocalypse storyline (still my favorite arc ever) and a little beyond, and even started reading Spider-Man for a bit before I had to stop. It was at that time that we moved out to Indiana, and the comic shop was now just too far a drive to get my dad to make every week. Since I didn't have my license yet, that meant no more comics for me. It wasn't until years later, when a friend started buying mass quantities of comics on eBay, that I started seriously collecting.

He bought so many comics that he didn't have anywhere to put them all. He knew I liked comics too, so he asked if I would help him store some for a while. He gave me like four or six longboxes full of comics to look through, all '80s era Marvel titles. While looking through his X-Men books, I noticed a really large amount of doubles, enough to make up a full run of Uncanny X-Men from '83 to '94! I asked him if I could buy them off of him, but he just gave them to me as payment for helping him store his books. Thus I had an instant collection.

I've been working on it, slowly, ever since. I mainly only collect X-Men comics, but I also have a good handful of Spider-Man titles. Lately I've been considering Batman and Superman as well. I'm also receiving current issues of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. I have four full longboxes, as well as a shortbox I use to hold my Age of Apocalypse titles. I currently own 999 comic books. I plan on getting a copy of Gambit vol. 3 #1 for my thousandth book. He's always been my favorite X-Man.

Just like with my video game collection, I use Collectorz.com's Comic Collector software to keep track of my comics. I plan on writing a review of Collectorz.com's stuff eventually. I like it, it does the job quite well.