I’ve been reading and collecting comics a long time. It doesn’t feel like it, but 30 years have gone by in a flash! I started collecting and reading for real when I was about 9 years old in 1991. What a time to be reading comics! I was mainly reading what I call the core 4: Spider-man, any and all X-Men, Batman and Superman. Of course, I read a ton else of your usual Marvel and DC stuff, but those titles were a must (and more than enough as it is with at least 4 titles each: Amazing, Spectacular, Web of, and plain ol Spider-man; X-men, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force; Action Comics, adv. of, Man of Steel, regular Superman; Batman, Detective, Shadow of Bat, Legends of DK. But thats nothing compared to the amount of titles out every week from these guys today!).
One of the first comics I remember getting from the grocery store that made me say,”This is it, comics will now be my life!”
I continued to read and collect everything I could until around 2001, when I started to focus on foolish things like school, career, and relationships (spoiler alert, waste of time). I took a break from comics for nearly 7 years! Then, around 2008, my roommate got a library card and started bringing home all these trade paperbacks. He started showing me new stuff he was liking, stuff like Brian K Vaughn’s Ex Machina, Fables, and a little book called Invincible! And that’s all it took. When I thought I was out, Invincible pulled me back in! I was right back to reading everything I could get my hands on, and it was all Robert Kirkman and Ottley’s fault.
I mean, look at this awesome stuff!
From there, it was a landslide. I delved deeper into DC comics than I ever had. I got all of the 2000’s era Geoff Johns stuff, from JSA, to JLA, and of course Green Lantern! Couldn’t get enough of the Johns era Green Lantern. I read the event books that I had missed from my younger days like Crisis on Infinite Earths, and new ones like Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night. DC was firing on all cylinders. In 2011 the New 52 began, and I was reading every title. I was at my local Graham Crackers Comics in Edgewater so much that I was given a job there. And I never left, taking over as manager there, and now being the manager of our Andersonville location. The world of comics is so huge, it has become my entire life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
