The Comic Book Thread

This may be another one of my legendary "like a lead balloon" threads, but

Who here either still collects or still reads Comic Books?

Sure I'm creeping up on 40 years of age, but there are still some great books out there that I collect. Some people smoke crack regularly, I believe I'm ahead of the curve.

The only title that I religiously collect every month is Catwoman, but I am always looking for new issues featuring my favs. Like The Spectre (Jim Corrigan NOT Hal Jordan), Dr. Fate, Grendel, etc.

Since when was Hal Jordan the Spectre? I thought he was a Green Lantern.

Anyway, I don't collect comics anymore but I was a rabid comic book geek for about fifteen years, at its peak my collection must've been somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 books. I started somewhere around 1979 when I was nine years old and collected till about 1994, when I bought my first new car and suddenly didn't have as much $ to p*ss away on comics. I sold off the bulk of my collection in bits and pieces throughout the late 90s but I still have two boxes of old favorites in the closet that I pull out and read every once in a while. My favorite character was (and still is) Spider-Man. I bought anything with him in it...

Of my "keepers" I still have a big wad of Spidey books, but also a lot of Batman, John Byrne's late-80s run on Superman, the first five or six years of New Teen Titans (George Perez is the greatest comic book artist ever by the way), and some oddball stuff like "Ralph Snart Adventures," some "Groo The Wanderer" (I love Sergio Aragones), and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (I got my "Fat Freddy" screen name from a character in this book).

So you're not the only geek here, Spec. Feel better?

Fat Freddy wrote:

Since when was Hal Jordan the Spectre? I thought he was a Green Lantern.

Yeah Jordan is Green Lantern to me, so I never bought any of the comics with him as the Spectre.

From Wikipedia:

Quote :

Eventually, Corrigan's soul found peace. He relinquished the Spectre, and went on to the afterlife. The role of the Spectre was later assumed by Hal Jordan, the spirit of the former Green Lantern, during the Day of Judgement storyline; the Spectre chose Hal as his new host because Hal sought to atone for his actions as Parallax. In a series written by J. M. DeMatteis, Hal Jordan was able to bend the Spectre's mission from one of vengeance into one of redemption, also making other appearances through some of DC's other storylines, such as advising Superman during the Emperor Joker storyline (Where the Joker stole the reality-warping power of Mister Mxyzptlk) and erasing all public knowledge of Wally West's identity as the Flash after his terrible first battle with Zoom. After this series was cancelled, Jordan was forced to return, temporarily, to the Spectre's mission of vengeance, following a confrontation between the new Justice Society and the Spirit King, who had managed to 'resurrect' the ghosts of all those the Spectre had damned to Hell. After the Spectre was able to purge the Parallax from Jordan, he departed in order to move onto the next recipient of the Spirit. Jordan admits that the knowledge he gained from being the Spectre's host has faded, but if he has any greater knowledge of the Universe, he has not revealed it to anyone else.

Hmmm, I had no idea. I guess all that stuff must've happened after I dropped out of the comic book scene.

J.M. DeMatteis is an awesome writer, by the way. He did a great run on Ghost Rider in the early 80s and did a lot of stuff for DC's horror line ("House Of Mystery," "Weird War Tales," etc.) around that time too.

I had never heard of DeMatteis before. John Ostrander who did the 90's version of The Spectre was a kick butt writer.

Those John Byrne Supermans have always been on my "to buy" list.

spectrefate wrote:

Those John Byrne Supermans have always been on my "to buy" list.

I was already a huge Byrne fan at that time from all his Marvel work (X-Men, Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, etc.) so when he jumped over to DC it was a no brainer for me to start picking that stuff up. The six-issue "Man of Steel" mini series he did to start his Superman "era" off (1986) is the best re-telling of Supe's origin that I've ever read.

Who is worse in your opinion?

Aquaman or Namor the Submariner?

spectrefate wrote:

Who is worse in your opinion?

Aquaman or Namor the Submariner?

I never had much use for Aquaman, but Sub-Mariner was just about my least favorite character in the Marvel Universe, so I'd say Namor.
One time I was flipping thru a bunch of old cheapies at a comic convention and found an issue of Sub-Mariner's short lived early 70s series that had a Spider-Man guest appearance in it. As previously mentioned, I used to buy anything with Spidey on it, but man, that was a tough decision for me. I struggled with it for several minutes before finally biting the bullet and buying that comic!!

I bought Aquaman back in like 1994 when they "reimagined" the character due to this cover:



Big mistake. Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay.

So based on that I have to pick Namor as the cooler of the 2. Plus he gets to feel up on Sue Storm.

Aquaman was the lamest member of the Super Friends. Even Zan and Jayna ("Wonder Twin Powers, ACTIVATE!") were cooler than him.

As for Namor/Sue Storm, well, hell, I can understand her reasoning...ANYBODY would be cooler than Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. He's always tinkering away with his scientific crap in his lab and forgetting all about his hot wife... A woman has NEEDS, y'know.

Bleep (EDIT: Gleek) was cooler than Aquaman. But really the big Indian guy (Apache Chief I think) was the lamest superfriend. Oooo, you can grow to 100 times your normal height. Scary.

I love comic books...as an artist by trade, I think their dynamite. Ultimate X-men is fantastic, all Dark Night and the entire batman ones. Silver Surfer, Ultimate Spiderman. I don't have any hardcopies but a few years back I subscribed to an online comic book thing, where I could look and read entire books through a flash program. Very cool. Hmmm, this is something I could get into with my boys. I think I should start.

Brian, any good g-rated mainstream heroes (that aren't cheesy in the art department) for my 8 and 10 year old. And I'd like to get something really brutal for myself. Is Punisher any good? Any good dark Viking stuff out there?

Troy,

Unfortunately, I'm a DC comics guy so I'm not sure about The Punisher.

For your kids I would recommend The Batman Strikes! or The Teen Titans. Superman books would work for your 10 year old.

For you, give (it sounds silly) Wonder Woman a try. The new series looks great.

I personally recommend Catwoman. David and Alvero Lopez are doing the art for that book now. I like their style alot.

I don't know much about it, but DC's Vertigo Line is meant for adults. They have a new book series out this month about Vikings titled Northlanders. Check it out here:
http://www.dccomics.com/comics/?cm=8538

The Punisher was pretty bad-ass during my collecting days, that was one of my "monthly buys," but as I said before it's been years since I was into "the scene" so I don't know how he's doing these days.

I do know I wish I'd sold off my Punisher collection earlier because in one of my few fits of "speculation buying," (i.e. buying stuff to sell later), when the first issue of the Punisher's regular series (following an extremely successful mini series the year before) came out in 1987 or so, I bought about fifteen copies of it and stashed'em away. Of course the Punisher back issues blew up BIG time for a while and at one time those first issues were going for $25 or $30 a pop. Like an idiot I didn't sell when they were high, tho, and by the time I started selling off my collection, the bottom had dropped out of the back-issue market completely and those Punishers were only worth a couple of bucks each. Granted, the cover price on'em was only 75 cents, so I made my $ back on each of'em, but when I think of how much beer money I COULD have raked in if I'd only sold'em a few years earlier...Ouch.

Speaking of which, what's the cover price of the average comic book nowadays? When I got out in the early 90s the going rate was $1.25 I think, for a regular newsstand book anyway... of course, a lot of the independent publishers and special issues were priced higher... quite a change from when I started back in the day and everybody was the same cover price, which was 40 cents!! If they were still that cheap I'd probably still be collecting today.

The comic collecting industry is so fickle. Those books could be back to collectible in 10 years.

I never bought them to sell. Everything I have I bought to read. Now if I just knew HOW to read.

what about fantasy, any good elves, dwarfs LOR type comics. I dig that too.

spectrefate wrote:

I never bought them to sell. Everything I have I bought to read. Now if I just knew HOW to read.

I rarely, if ever, bought stuff thinking "this is gonna be worth money later" either. That Punisher episode I described was probably my first and only attempt at it, and obviously it didn't go very well. The people who ran the comic book shop I frequented liked me cuz as they put it, "You're one of the old school guys who actually still READS these things," haha.

My Dad used to say I should've asked for a job there, but I probably would've gotten fired within a week... I could just imagine all the little pre-teen nerds coming up to me going "Is this going to be worth money?" and I'd be like "Who cares? Just read the damn thing." Or they'd ask (holding up some generic super hero crap) "Is this a good comic?" and I'd say "No, it sucks. You should be reading Ralph Snart Adventures and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers."

Northlander looks pretty sick, must check out further! I think I am going to go with Punisher, always been intrigued with that one, especially after the movie which is a favorite of mine.

....well, nevermind....I ONLY read/collect Christian comics.

T-Roy wrote:

what about fantasy, any good elves, dwarfs LOR type comics. I dig that too.

There was a pretty cool series in the '80s called "ElfQuest" that I had some issues of. They were originally self published by a husband and wife artist/writer team (whose name escapes me now) but Marvel picked them up and ran them for a couple of years too.

Of course, Marvel has had a long standing tradition of fantasy/barbarian comics like "Conan," "Kull The Conqueror," etc... all good stuff...

I don't know of any comics with that kind of stuff Troy. For that stuff I just read Forgotten Realms books.

T-Roy wrote:

....well, nevermind....I ONLY read/collect Christian comics.

I had a whole mess of THESE in my collection back in the day. I loved the Archie ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spire_Christian_Comics

....no pictures though...must have pictures......ADHD......kicking.....in......can't........focus......AHHH, pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spec, that creepy little bug on your sig....is making me itch all over!!!

http://www.carpsplace.com/spire/spire.htm


The bug is gone now.

In case the word balloons are too small to read, the police officer is saying "Do you know this is ONE WAY?" and Betty is saying "This is cool! The officer is WITNESSING to Archie!"

.... yea, that's about as clever as those Archie Christian Comics got. I loved'em anyway though. They used to pass'em out in Sunday school when I was a kid.