Life

How and when were you introduced to comics?
Have you been into them non-stop ever since, or were there breaks?
Do you see yourself still reading comics 5, 10 years from now?


I'll start...

The origin and brief (I'll try) history of my rollercoaster relationship with Comics: [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I was reading manga as a child... this was back in the early 80s. I read many, but there's only one that I remember clearly...Kinnikuman (muscle man)... which is now a cartoon airing here in the US called "Ultimate Muscle" [img]smilies/lol.gif[/img]

My mid-80s were spent reading Archie, the occasional DC/Marvel issues that were passed around in school, and Mad Magazine-- Spy Vs Spy was awesome!

then I grew out of comics (or so I thought)...
it was late 80s to early 90's... my teen years... no interest in comics whatsoever. I was too busy trying to be cool and rebellious with my glam-rock/metal phase. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] Music was my one and only obsession. Then
1993 came and so did my first TV obsession, The X-Files. Still, no care about comics...

...not until 1996 (I think) when my friend (a bigtime comic freak) surprised me with a couple X-Files comics. I geeked out and started looking for every issue available. Even though that was the only title I was getting, it was only a matter of time until something else got its hooks in me. Like, Buffy - my next major TV obsession. That eventually lead to Buffy comics. Trips to the
comic shop started to be like a trip to the Candy Land... so much yummyness... new stuff every week... who knew there were so many... and not just your basic Superman and Batman stuff... but a wide range of stories.

The big trigger to my comic habit was when my friend (who got me the XF) let me read a couple of his Darkness issues. I liked it and started looking into other Top Cow titles... Witchblade, Ascension, Spirit of the Tao, Fathom-- I couldn't get enough of TC. Soon, I was branching out to titles from other publishers... fell in love with Ramos's art in Crimson, J. Scott Campbell's Danger Girl, Joe Mad's Battle Chasers. My taste in artwork started to broaden as I went nuts over Jae Lee's Inhumans... I was mesmerized by Warren Ellis's Planetary and Alan Moore's Promethea... it was official... I was in love with comics.

then it all went to hell...
I became frustrated and disappointed... seemed like it happened over night. My favorite titles were ending, the ones still around were late or had disappeared into limbo, Ellis no longer wrote Authority, Quitely's art was poo (imo [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] )... and so forth. I wasn't happy with what was going on in my little comic realm... so I got rid of most of my collection. Sold them, gave them away, threw them out (Gah!!!)-- I didn't care. I was done, it was a wrap. And I stayed out of comic shops for close to two years.

It was my ongoing Buffy obsession, and word about a new slayer by the name of Fray that lured me
back.

ALL of this leads up to Today... me and my expensive addiction... my once a week fix...

I blame it all on Topps for making the X-Files comic, and my friend for bringing it into my life. [img]smilies/mad.gif[/img] [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]


Ok, I probably wrote WAY more than you wanted to read, but there it is.

Your turn, people. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]