The Changing Interests of Comics - Part 2: The "Change"
By ChrisPartin 8 Comments
When I wrote the first part of this series of blog posts my intension was to write a bit more than I did. The first post just felt like it needed to end the way it ended. SO... here we are again with the major point I wanted to make...
Reading comics for as long as I have (nearly 30 years) I started off reading every thing BUT super-heroes comics. I watched Super-Friends and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends but never really felt drawn to read their comics the first few years I read comics. I read a lot of Elfquest, Dreadstar, G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a few other off the wall books, but no super-heroes. I eventually started reading Teen Titans and Justice League of America because of my love of the Super-Friends cartoon, but it wasn't until I realized my friends at school weren't reading these books - they were reading X-Men and Avengers. So, I got curious and checked them out and became a HUGE fan of both titles.
So, I guess that was my first major shift in the comics I got interested in. It wasn't a huge shift, as I stayed reading a lot of the Comico, First, and Calibur comics I had been reading, but I was spending a lot more time reading Marvel and DC once I figured out my friends were reading them. Call it peer pressure in comics, but I enjoyed what I was reading and continued to do so until I got to college and started shopping at a shop in Boone, NC called the Dragon's Den. Talking with the shop owner and his wife I got back in to those small press and indie titles that I enjoyed as a kid and began reading more of them. I think Tucci's Shi was the first series I really got invested in and it just expanded from there. I sold off a major portion of my Marvel and DC collection (and yes, a full run of Iron Man #1 through #270 and Avengers #100 through #300 or so) to buy up tons of back issues. Looking back, I don't think that was the smartest move, but 'hey' it happens.
I would eventually get back to reading super-hero titles and then finding a nice mixture of mainstream and indie titles that I read to this day.
So, my question is this:
Have you ever had a major change in the comics that you read? And if so, what was the cause of that change? For me it was influences from other readers. What about you?
8 Comments