I was born into a house of readers. There was always books, magazines, and comics around when I was a kid. My mother made sure we all learned to read as early as possible so we would escape into books and leave her alone for a while, having five kids one right after the other will do that to a woman I guess. One of the ways she made sure we all could read was to make us read aloud to one another. I remember being made to read aloud from one of my little story books while my older siblings squirmed around waiting for me to get done.
One of the first things I remember reading avidly, besides the comic strips and the sports section of the Detroit Free Press, was comic books. They were always around and I loved them from the first minute I laid eyes on them. They were really cool and best of all they were in color. My brother Charlie bought most of them in those early years, he had a paper route and he blew most all his earnings on books, comics, and monster magazines. My taste in books did not line up with his, he dug mostly sci fi books but I liked sports stuff at that age, but when it came to comic books we were all on the same page.
We dug the
Fantastic Four,
Thor,
Spiderman, Sgt. Fury, which would later become
Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. We loved the Marvel heroes because they seemed more like us in that they were flawed people, which I've heard Stan Lee say was exactly what they were trying to do. Superman and Batman seemed too perfect, too invincible, too heroic, there was no darkness there, at least in the mid 60's to the mid 70's there wasn't. Superman always beat whoever he fought and he was so damn clean cut while doing it. Yuck. I always thought, and still do in fact that Superman is a fascist dick. For more examples of Superman's dickishness and other unintentionally funny comic covers and panels click
here.
After our Mom died and we went to live with our crazy rageaholic control freak aunt and her offspring we practically doubled our comic collection overnight. One of my cousins was a comic book reader too so we pooled all our comics in a big box and we'd all root through that box when we wanted to find something to read. I know, I know, if we had taken care of those comics then they'd be worth a small fortune today, well we didn't so there.
It was during this time, the early 70's when my favorite comic of all time came out. It was called Kamandi and it was drawn and written by comic veteran, nay, comic demi god Jack Kirby.
I loved this comic because it was set in a Planet of the Apes like world, the hero was blond like me, it was action packed, and because I could imagine myself doing all that fighting and heroic stuff. I lived for the day each month when this comic hit the stands. I'd have scour the racks with a quarter in my sweaty little hand waiting and dreaming of what was going to happen next in Kamamdi's world. Looking back on the comic now I see why I really liked it, it was because it was a fish out of water in a hostile environment story with a hero who was anti authoritarian and rebellious. I devoured Kamandi until the dark day Jack Kirby left the book, when he stopped writing and drawing it, I stopped reading it.
Then in the mid 70's found Deathlok. He was half computer, half human and all pissed off all the time. I loved this one. This dude took no crap, kicked ass, and just wanted to mess up the people who made him the killing machine he turned out to be.
I kind of stopped reading comics when I hit high school and found out I could make the pretty girls hang out with me if I made them laugh. I also found out I liked to smoke pot and drink beer and cheap wine. I didn't make time for comics when there was a joint to be smoked or a stray bottle of Boone's Farm to be had. I still read novels, Rolling Stone, High Times, and National Lampoon but not many comics.
I read a few in college but after I left school I really got back into them. I started collecting them hot and heavy in part so I would not have to deal with my shyness around women, it was easier to read a comic than to make conversation and try to make time with a woman. During this time, the mid 80's, I was into
American Flagg,
X-Men and it's spin offs,
Thor but only when they were following Norse mythology kind of closely,
Wonder Woman but only when George Perez was drawing her, and a bunch more.
I quit collecting cold turkey in the late 80's because I decided that I had to be a part of the real world instead of sitting stoned in my bedroom reading comics and because I left my aunt's house and moved to Roanoke, VA. When I got my own apartment I had no money for comics and money got tighter when my deadbeat room mate John C. flaked out on me and moved out. I eventually sold my comics to help pay the rent but I did save some of my Thor's and a few American Flaggs, unfortunately they all got water damaged in an aquarium accident and I had to toss them. About the only time I read comics now is when I check a graphic novel out of the library but I think it's really cool that more and more folks read them and that women are not only reading them they are also writing and illustrating them.
I learned a lot from reading comics and I used to hate it when a "grown up" would see me reading one and they'd say, "Oh so you like funny books huh?" I wanted to shout at them, "Have you ever read a comic book? Not all of them are mindless crap like Archie and Jughead and talking animals like Scooby Doo!" It was from comics that I learned about issues like hand gun violence, drug addiction, racial intolerance, cloning, rape, child abuse, and different mythologies (It's not like I didn't already know something about all those things but I paid more attention when the information was in comic book form.).
I loved reading comics but some of the movies they've made from them you couldn't pay me to see, for instance Daredevil, or The Punisher or The Hulk, despite the fact Jennifer Connelly is in it. I've got mixed emotions about the up coming Watchmen adaption and I'm praying they don't dumb it down for the masses. And I fervently hope they don't make a movie out of Kamandi, because knowing Hollywood they'd hire someone like David Hyde Pierce to play the lead role. If they did something stupid like that, then I'd might have to get a blow torch, a pair of pliers, and some pipe hittin' brothers and get all medieval on their asses.
When independent comic book companies finally broke the grip of DC and Marvel in the independent comic book shops across the country some gave us really interesting titles. But most gave us variations on the same shit that Marvel and DC had been doing to death for years, such as the title above for instance. The premise of that title is that the chick in the skimpy outfit is an immortal being who just happens to decide to go to work for the US Government and in the course of that work she runs afoul of evil people in the government who want to use her for their nefarious purposes.
It's just gratuitous. And the story sucked too. And yet, shit like this rules the comic book world.
I know what you're saying, "That chick is in skimpy clothes too. That's just as gratuitous as as the other one." Nope. In this case the story is a noir tale full of twists, turns, betrayals, and a femme fatale. All the characters in this graphic novel are grounded in reality and are variations on criminal archetypes.
It was self contained in about 6 or so issues and the art and story line blew my young mind. It was where I first learned the word "Gotterdammerung." I didn't understand what it meant but it sounded so cool, since it had "damm" in it I thought it was a swear word so I used it as such. When I found out what it really meant, it means 'twilight of the gods,' I thought it was an even cooler word than before.