The comics that defined me.
These are the comics that defined where I became as a reader. This is an ongoing list.
List items
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This was the first issue I ever bought. The cover is crazy with Buzzer going after the dog with a chainsaw.
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This issue was owned by my cousin and would have been the first X-Men comic I read. It was the beginning of a sordid love affair which would lead to me spending way too much money on issues of X-men.
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The other issue my cousin owned and let me read. The story was crazy to me, as I had no idea what was going on with all of these characters, but I wanted more.
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This was the first issue of Flash that I bought while at my grandparents, shopping at a small corner store. They had a spinner rack. And then, a few years later, I found out how this was actually a pretty important issue as it is the introduction of Bart Allen.
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This was one of the earliest issues of Batman I bought, from the same spinner rack that had Flash #92. I was able to find the whole four issue arc there, as they had older comics. The story was great, and really the whole run by Alan Grant was some awesome Batman storytelling and more than other issues I had read this is what hooked me on Batman. And then they redid this story for the animated series, which I thought was great when I saw it and recognized it, including Batman being haunted by Jason Todd's death.
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I found this at a Walmart, again in small town Pennsylvania. The story was fairly adult and I was enraptured by the fact that someone wrote a story starring Catwoman.
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There were a lot of comics at that Walmart, and this was there as well. 13th printing of the trade, the story was insane and great. And I bought every other Batman trade I found there, including Batman vs Predator, Shaman, and the next on the list.
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The last Batman trade found at Walmart in the early 90s. A first printing of the collection of the Legends of the Dark Knight storyline, it featured Batman in his costume without the stupid yellow oval on it, and was my first taste of Grant Morrison. Morrison would become someone I would look out for far into the future, but here I would have no idea.
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And then there was Watchmen. Again, found while at my grandparents', but this time at On Cue next to Walmart. This was an early comic I read, and was mind blowing.
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And the last trade from the time period, although several years later. This was found at On Cue and was my first comic outside of Marvel or DC. Just a crazy comic.
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Back to 1992 from the brief trip to the future for the first issue of Uncanny X-Men I bought, back home in Charlotte. Found at the newsstand in the mall closest to our house, I picked up this issue and 292 soon after or at the same time. My movement into X-Men began here, as I never missed an issue of Uncanny after this, and began back issue shopping soon after.
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When I started buying back issues of comics, this was one of the first I bought. I went back until the comics started getting too expensive and then began buying from this issue and up. Although there were still too many expensive books for me to buy at the time. But this began my hunt for every issue, and the issues before this seemed far out of reach.
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A few years after starting my back issue collection with the last issue, I jumped into going further back, as this became my new starting point. Of course, the issues before this are Days of Future Past, and then the Dark Phoenix Saga, so those were way out of reach at the time for a just barely a teenager with no way of making money. 137 would become my holy grail, but I would finish off every issue from here up before moving down.
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I bought a few of the second printings of the issues, including Superman 75, but this told the whole story, so I was able to figure out what was going on. And the ending was still as powerful. A few years later I would stop collecting Superman, the comics just weren't interesting and I used the money from these to snatch up the other X-comics.
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