This week’s question:
What was the first comic you ever bought?
Mine was Web of Spider-Man #31 and this is my story behind it.
There was a grocery store by my house where I always went to to pick up the new issue of Mad Magazine (which I always considered to be a magazine, not a comic). This grocery store also had a spinner rack of comics that I would look at. If I saw a new issue of G.I. Joe I would normally just flip through it. On a summer day in 1987 the cover to that particular month’s (July,August?) Web of Spider-Man, which was the first part of a six part story arc that I would later find out was called Kraven’s Last Hunt, caught my eye but since I wasn’t into superhero comics I didn’t bother to peruse it.
During this time in my life I was really into collecting baseball cards. I usually bought packs from a local comic shop called Moondog’s. The day after I saw that Spidey comic I went to Moondog’s because I had gotten a flier in the mail saying that they were having a sale. Interestingly enough there was a coupon on the flier for a free 75 cent or dollar comic with any purchase. Since I was buying some packs of baseball cards I figured I would use the coupon for the free comic. As I looked through the comic racks I saw a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #293 which was the second part to Kraven’s Last Hunt. I asked the store clerk if they had the first part but he told me they were sold out. Well, I figured I would just pick out Amazing Spidey #293 as my free comic and when I got home I would just run to the grocery store and BUY the first part which I had seen there the day before. And that’s exactly what I did.
So even though Amazing Spider-Man #293 was the first comic I ever got, Web Of Spider-Man #31 was the first comic I ever PAID for out of my own pocket.
Needless to say a few months later I stopped collecting baseball cards and began putting that money toward buying more Spider-Man comics. That’s how it all started for me.
J.
The CCW*TV Companion Blog 
The first comic I ever bought was Iron Man Extremis TPB.
Still after more then a year of reading comics it’s on of the best of any series I’ve ever read.
iron man extremis was the first thing i read as well
Well my dad gave me some of his old comics to me when I was a little kid and I was really excited to read them. I read them and immeadiatly loved comics. So my dad and I went to the comic book store to get some more. I bought with my own money Marvel Tales#42 and Teen Titans Go!#1. Both issues were awesome! That’s what got me started into comics.
my first comic was a batman comic but the first comic to get me into collecting comics was Batman #667. YES I KNOW IT wasnt THAT LONG AGO LOL
everyone i went to school with was collecting and trading pokemon cards when they should’ve been buying comics…what is it with cards?
i actually don’t remember my first ever comic. there are oversized all ages comics that come out in the uk that aren’t in continuity. i had a few of those when i was little, all spider-man i think. i remember taking one to my grandparents place and cutting it up to make a spider-man pop-up book like i saw on art attack (wikipedia ‘art attack’ if you don’t know what i’m talking about).
when i got older i started getting panini reprints of marvel comics, they printed three comics per issue with glossy cardstock covers. one would collect ff, hulk and iron man; one three spider-man books; one three x-men. they’re still going, but they print everything late (planet hulk is coming out now) so what i was reading was heroes reborn and ben reilly spider-man mixed up with other stuff.
first proper american comic i bought was ultimate x-men 1, when a comic book store opened in my town. it had x-men and a number 1 on the cover, and that’s why i bought it. then i went back and i saw they were already up to issue 7 of ultimate spider-man, so i got that and started an order around then. i roped a couple of friends into collecting different titles from me and we’d all swap comics, that way we got to read more than we could afford (i’d get x-treme x-men, my friend would get new x-men, my other friend would get uncanny x-men etc.)
and that’s the end of my essay
lol, my comment’s as long as the post – hire me! 😛
Well, it would be nice to have a UK correspondent. Hmmm…
J.
I bought my first comic at a BX in Misawa, Japan. It was an issue of Spider-Man’s Tangled Web where a woman who used to bully Peter Parker to the point of nearly castrating him on the school bus with a switch blade, figures out that he is Spider-Man and that he got his powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider. She decides to recreate the accident that gave Peter Parker his powers, but ends up as a collective of spiders rather than a Spider-Woman.
Before that my mom used to get me Scarlet-Spider comics from the Texaco back in Mildenhall, England as well as a dentist promo comic she got free from her work where Spidey visits Cape Canaveral.
X-Men #1 was my first. I’d been collecting the Marvel Series 1 trading cards, and I mistook X-Men #1 for Uncanny X-Men #1. According to the trading card on Uncanny X-Men #1 that comic was worth something like $10,000. I thought I’d brought a $10,000 comic for only $2.00. I was a stupid kid!
hmmm im going to have to “date” myself well when i was a kid everyone had comics my two older brothers had a bunch i would read , the hard traveling heroes everything jack kirby did at dc and batman. the kid next door was hulk fan so i read his, the place i got my haircut harry’s pride of brooklyn lol had a nice big stack read sub mariner and silver surfer, there especially the surfer vs thor issue read that every time . but the first comic i bought myself and the book that started my fanboy career was captain america and the falcon # 174
it had a big robot that cap and falc took out with great team work and i was hooked. started going to the store every month to picking it up ever since
New Mutants #1 (The REAL Number one. Sam, Shan, Dani, Rayne and domestic abuse enthusiast Berto). My parents bought it for me cause it was the kiddy book.
I know, right?
good topic btw
Thanks. I am really enjoying all of the stories you guys are leaving on here. They’re pretty awesome.
J.
The first comic I own where I had to deal with a cashier… Batman #436. It was the first issue of the Year 3 story arc. I remember I didn’t like Year 3. (Too many details for me to follow, but I haven’t read it in 20 years so don’t get too angry.)
I don’t remember the first comic that I ever bought, but I know the first I ever read. I had been really into the Spider-Man cartoon (the one from the 1990’s) when I was about 8 and a family friend gave me a copy of Kraven’s Last Hunt (the 1st print of the trade, I still have it but its really beat up now)!
It was pretty deep and dark stuff for an 8 year old but I liked it and then my parents got me the occasional Spider-Man issue. I don’t have any floppies from that era (I was 8 or 9, I used to wear them out pretty well) but I have vivid memories of crazy stories like Carnage bonding to the Silver Surfer.
I have a step-brother who is a few years older than me who collected comics, funny enough i was in to hockey cards at the time (being Canadian and all) and one day we were at a shop that sold both hockey cards and comics. My brother INSISTED that i buy a copy of X-Men #1(Jim Lee x-men) and Spider-Man #1(McFarlane spidey) because he was sure as all hell that they would become collectors items one day that I could sell and put my kids through college with (HA!). I think i was around 6 or 7 years old at the time and have been hooked ever since. I went through phases where i wouldn’t buy comics for months, maybe years at a time, but i have always maintained an interest that over the years has developed in to an obsession.
Batman the long haloween trade paper.
great first comic!
no story from E yet?
My first american comic was Uncanny X-Men 232 with a big picture of the Brood on the cover. We didn’t get american comics in my home town so it was on a visit to Dublin and the shop Easons where I saw a very small rack of Marvel comics, Avengers 292, Thor 392 and a few others but the X-Men was the first I read and it hooked me. The story and art were great plus Claremont did a great job in making the story accessible to a newcomer despite a shitload of things going on.
The first comic I got though was an issue of Battle in the summer of 1979. There was a corner shop selling comics 3 doors down from my house so very early on I was attracted by the comics laid out on the countertop, looking back Battle was pretty savage and profound for a child but in a lot of ways I think people molly-coddled childred a lot less back then.
My favourite strip (Battle was an anthology like every british comic then) was one called Johnny Red, the story of an english pilot fighting for the Russians on the eastern front during ww2 http://www.falconsquadron.sevenpennynightmare.co.uk/story/1979/pages/121.htm
Hmmm that is a great quetion. Going back 20 years when i was 6 so its a bit hazy for me what was the very first. Possibly Superman vol 2. no. 26. I def have great early memories where every fri night my dad would stop in the local comic shop by his work and pick me up a superman or batman comic on the way home for me. Good times (God knows what happened to them comics my mum prob just chucked them out!). The first stuff that really made an impression on me was the Batman death in the family tpb, prob circa 1990. Made me love batman. Then the x-men animated series came along and blew me away. Loved it. That got me into comics in a big way. I first got an x-men adventures tpb (which was basically the stories from the tvs how) which then led on to the main x-men and uncanny series. Thus the addiction begins! Great post man. I’m gonna have to go searching for some back issues now to bring back the nostalgia.
The first comic book issue I ever bought was BPRD Killing Ground #1 in the summer of 2007. It was the first of a 5 part mini which I bought the rest of. I had seen the Hellboy movie and liked it, but the dvd I bought came with a mini issue of Hellboy: the Corpse. It was the second comic I ever read after Wolverine #93(Along Came the Juggernaut). Wolverine didn’t get me into comics, but the Hellboy comic i found got me interested. I had a new friend who was really into comic books and I started asking him about them. I tried out the Kingdom Come tpb which was in my school’s library which my friend recommended. After reading it I decided I’d go full on into comic books and I started with that first BPRD issue and haven’t stopped buying BPRD minis ever since. I’ve also picked up All Star Superman, Mouse Guard, Batman: The man who laughs, Superman: For All Seasons, Astonishing X-men (only Whedon), Kingdom Come, Umbrella Academy, Invincible Iron Man, and many more. I’m only 2 years into comics but I love them.
Good Grief, these folks have got some damn sharp ass memories. You might as well have asked me; what my favorite sleeping position was as a fetus. Anyhoo, as I scroll back the ol’ memory rolodex…while I can’t be exactly sure what my 1st comic was, I will say that in all likelyhood that it was an issue of the Curt Swan drawm Superman.