My Comic Book History Pt. 1

Picture it.

A wee lad of about 4 years old; a precocious young fellow at that - one who could read two years prior. A fan of the
Transformers, the
Go-Bots,
M.A.S.K.,
Thundercats, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Each summer, this boy (WHO IS ME BY THE WAY!) would go down to Cape Cod for a few weeks - sometimes with his parents, some with his grandparents. The daily highlights of this day would be the trips to a little general store, Pace's Place. While Dad or Granddad would buy his papers in the morning, and a coffee in the evening, young Bill (ME ME ME) would be treated to some penny candy, or perhaps an ice cream.

One day, for whatever reason, it was decided that instead of spending my allowance on rotting my teeth, I should devote it to worthier pursuits. (Sorry...it's hard to keep consistently writing in the third person). In the back of that store was a wire rack containing a vast selection of Marvel comic books. Having been a fan of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (the cartoon), the only character of whom I was aware was Spider-Man, so my first comic book purchase was Marvel Team-Up #144, featuring Spidey and Moon Knight (who was completely beyond my comprehension, but he had to be cool if he was teaming up with Spider-Man!) I subsequently spent the rest of that summer wearing an old camera around my neck pretending I was Peter Parker taking pictures for the Daily Bugle, becoming Spider Man whenever the situation called for it.


For my formative years, comics were a summer-only habit. Because of this, I tended to purchase limited series (I notable remember purchasing West Coast Avengers and the issue of Questprobe featuring the Hulk. I stayed away from DC books for the most part (with one notable exception which I will mention shortly), I think in part because of the Super Powers/Superfriends and Plastic Man cartoon programs, which struck me as mostly campy. I also stayed away from the X-Men books until about 1990, mostly because any time I picked up a book, I couldn't follow what was going on - too many characters doing too many things. However, I do remember buying Uncanny X-Men #189 - don't ask why that stands out, it just does. The one DC exception was "Who's Who" - I think it appealed to my nascent OCD, with all the characters alphabetized, all their statistics, origin stories and powers nicely organized. For whatever reason, the Marvel equivalent just wasn't interesting to me. Perhaps it was because I actually read those stories.


The last summer of purchasing comics for a while was 1991, which culminated with the Shadow King/Muir Island Saga. The book that stands out more than any other from this era was X-Factor #70, the first issue of the run by Peter David. It was an issue devoted solely to character development, with nary a punch thrown. This was a revelation to me, as previously I had only been interested in books that had BIG fights with BIG casts and lots of firepower. Reading this book, I realized for the first time that comics could be more than just knock-down drag-out brawls; they could be literature, with substance. And Polaris made me feel kinda funny.

Unfortunately, after this, other interests intruded, such as girls, sports, girls, school and girls. Such is the life of a junior high school student. But my life in comics was far from done.