TVZ: For the Love of Comics...

I love comic books.  Unabashedly.  Unequivocally.  Unapologetically.  And, most importantly, while it is true I enjoy collecting them, I love reading comic books.  Sure, I have many a tattered and dog-eared comic book, but that’s because I’ve read them, most of them many times.  

Comics taught me new words, like “counterpart” and “nemesis.”  All my life I’ve lost myself in the pages of comics.  Back in the ‘70s my mother and I would make a trip every Friday night to Red’s Newsstand to get me a comic and her a craft magazine.  Well before I had even heard of a comic specialty shop or pull-lists I would have my favorite comic each week held behind the counter.  We would walk a couple of blocks to the local deli for dinner and I would tune out the world while I hungrily read my new issue, my food going cold beside me.  At first it was titles like Star Wars and Fantastic Four.  Then I met my best friend in fourth grade.  He introduced me to X-Men and Avengers and the love affair began.

X-Men in particular made a huge impact on me.  Issue 137 hit me the hardest.  I had never read a comic where they killed off a main character that stayed dead.  Jean Grey was really dead and not coming back next issue.  In fact, the next issue was her funeral!  This was in the days before the Internet and I didn’t read any comics related magazines so I actually thought that issue 138 was the very last issue of the title. I didn’t see any reason for it to continue, frankly.  Jean had died and Scott Summers, the heart and soul of the team to me, left for parts unknown at the end of the issue.  I was very surprised to see another issue the next month, but happy knowing that the adventures of the X-Men would continue.

In 1981 my mother and I moved to Gainesville, Florida and I discovered my first comic book specialty shop. I was in heaven.  There were three in town, one close enough for me to ride my bike to.  That was around the time that Direct-Sales-only titles started up, meaning you could only get them in comic shops.  To me that meant I was in a select group of people who were the only ones that could read those comics.  I would know about adventures that lots of other folks would never know about.  I went to my first convention around this time and Bob MacLeod was there showing off artwork for the New Mutants prior to the Graphic Novel being published.  This was a big deal as there had only been one 'X' title up until that point.  I stared in wonder at the character sketches and babbled stupidly to Bob about my love of the X-Men and how I wished John Byrne had never left the title.

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