I've been a comic book reader for about 17 years now. It was 7th grade and I had been a fan of X-men solely based on the animated TV show that played after school, but then my new friend Richard show me his comics collection. I remember my first comic was the "Age of Apocalypse" story arc. I was hooked. So Richard and I visited our local comic book store and we set a pack. He would by X-Men and I woud buy Spider-Man and we would swap. It was great.

But sadly those where the only two comic characters I really got into over the years. I mean sure I new who Captain America, Batman, Iron Man and Superman where, but as many of you know, collecting comics can be expensive and growing up I could only allow myself so many a month and I just had to get my favorites.

So about two years ago, I had some time on my hands and wanted something new to read. As much I love X-Men and Spider-Man, I was already caught up with them and i really wanted something new to read. So I decided to make the purchase of Marvel Digital Comics. At the time it was $75 for the year and you could get any older issue of comic up to about two years. I decided that I was going to find out what was so awesome about Captain America and Iron Man. And i was blown away.

I started my Captain America run on vol 4 with Ed Brubaker writing and was introduced to an entire new world. Still to this day, that has got to be my favorite comic book run ever. I love the introduction of Winter Soldier all leading up to the Death of Captain America and then Bucky taking over... it was awesome. Also I decided to read Iron Man and started with vol 4 on the Extremis story arc by Warren Ellis and was again blown away. I mean who knew that there were good stories out there away from my own little world?

Since then I've started catching up on some classic Batman comics and have become a New 52 reader. I've also looked out of Marvel/DC and ventured into other comic book companies to read amazing series like America Vampire, Y: The Last Man, 30 Days of Nights and Fables. Great comics, with great stories!

My point is this, comics are timeless. And you may not like a particular run on your favorite comic, but there are lots of comics out there. Some you never thought you would ever read. But don't get discouraged because they killed of your favorite character or a story just didn't make sense. There are other comics out there and I find that I like to follow my favorite writers to the different series they begin to write on. I know I'm going to get good stories out of them.

That's the beauty of comic books. It's not too hard to jump into a new series, at least not with the internet that can fill you in on any back story. I'm not a fan of the Avengers vs. X-Men event happening now, and I've been very open about this in different threads, but I can't get too made when there are other comics out there that have great writers working there butts off to come up with a great story. If I don't like a direction a comic is going I can choose to read it or not to. But there are so many books out there to be read, so I can't get to down about it, it will always go in a different direction a some point.