Introductions

[kHillmatic]

I don't like Dave Sim, but I find him fascinating. ha

I love american weirdos.

[BIGREDROBOT]

Sim's a nuttier than a bag full of squirrel scat, but I will fist-fight anybody who tells me that Cerebus isn't gold up through at least "Jaka's Story."

[chris graves]

I am Chris and live in L.A.
I have seen every Batman movie in the theatre except for maybe Returns, I'm a little fuzzy on that one. Also every live-action Ninja Turtles movie. I didn't collect comics until 5th grade but I still knew everything about superheroes. Maybe it was from reading the backs of the toy packages, trading cards and all the cartoons going on at the time (Marvel Action Hour!!). Then I got back into comics during Batman Hush and snowballed from there and got into a lot of Warren Ellis. And then discovered THAT Grant Morrison speech at DisinfoCon and it made me experiment with magick for a second and that changed things even moar.
Anyway, then I decided I wanted to contribute and participate in the world of comics. It is thankless and doesn't love me back but it is all I think about and it's all I want to do and it has made me some cool friends over the years!

I am a self taught artist and currently up to 29 episodes of my strip SPACE SHARK. I think after #30 I will reboot/relaunch it though

[Classy Viking]

Hey everyone, I'm Arrison, a 19 year old student of nothing in Portland, OR.

I've been reading comics off and on ever since I read my first issue of X-men in the early 90's, I can still remember what the issue what about, (Logan and Rogue were fighting in the danger room, and there was a B plot about Arch Angel and Psylocke.) Nowadays I mostly read the bulk of the Marvel line with the Green Lantern books and am eagerly awaiting the Batwoman series.

I do that whole tumblr thing poorly.

[matt.ishii]

Hi, I'm Matt. 19, Canadian, Comp Sci student.

My first comic was a weird manga anthology from maybe 2000 or before that had the first chapters of 4 comics: Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Parasyte, and not sure on the last one, but I think it was BLAME! If you know these manga, you'll know that 2 are magical girl coming of age stories with a lot of stars and bubbles in the background, while Parasyte is a dark horror manga about alien bodysnatchers that can morph the flesh of the body they snatch into gross shapes to hunt and feed on humans. Here's a picture.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CW5iuzp1bHM/SK...1+p024.JPG

I don't know how to upload pictures. So yeah, I was 8.

(I found it online. It's called MixxZine. The 4th manga was Ice Blade, and that issue was from 1997. Did I read this this when I was 5 or 6? Jesus)

My dad had a few superhero comics lying around the house, but he threw most of his away years before I was born. He loved Green Lantern though and our house has 2 Green Lantern figures (1 Hal & 1 Kyle, but I don't think he knows who Kyle is, he just thinks it's a black haired Hal) up on walls like religious symbols.

So my first personal foray into superhero comics was Green Lantern: Rebirth 2 years ago. And you know, people talk wanting accessibility in comics, but come on. Superhero comics are basically one story that's been written for almost 100 years. You have to like the sense of a vast universe, of not understanding everything to get into superhero comics. So I'm saying I loved Rebirth, with Hal as the Spectre, people talking casually about how they always come back from the grave, all the crazy stuff that made no sense, and I was hooked to superhero comics.

[cyclopsfan1]

Hello everyone. My name is Jordan. I'm 21 and live in Tennessee. I'm a Biology major with a minor in education. That means I'm going down the dangerous road as a high school teacher.

I started reading comics when I was 7 when I received a massive stack from a family friend. I remember my first comic was Superman #123, which is noted as being the first modern appearance of Superman Blue. Other list of first comics were Heroes Reborn and various Maximum Press titles. This would explain a lot about my future tastes. I didn't read many comics after that besides the News Paper Sunday funnies. That was until I started reading Astonishing X-men a few years ago. I got hooked and haven't looked back.

I now write a weekly column on http://comicbookrevolution.net/ and run my own blog here http://cboproductions.wordpress.com/. The weekly column is called XTREME Holofoil Edition and it's about the Dark Age of comics. I take a look at the darkest time in comics with a critical eye and a positive outlook on it.

[GL 2814.4]

Hello! I'm a 21 year old from Seattle. Right now I'm finishing up an undergrad in Archaeology. (Guess who will never get paid more than $50,000/year? This lady.)

I first got into Capes when I was a kid, thanks to the early '90s X-Men and Spiderman cartoons. But then Batman: TAS, Superman: TAS and Batman: New Adventures (and Batman Beyond. Fuck yeah, Terry McGinnis) came along, and I loved them more so now I'm a DC fangirl. :D Though I do still love and read X-Men.

I dabbled in manga for a while and when I grew bored of that, I returned to American comics. So I guess I didn't really start reading comics until high school.

I love Kyle Rayner and Wally West (is Wally still MIA in DCnU..? D:) and I would say nasty things about Hal Jordan and Barry Allen and how Kyle and Wally should be back on the Justice League, blah blah blah, but it's all been said before. It's not going to change anything, sadly.

Uh, what else... Besides what I've said already, I love Sandman, Y: The Last Man, Fables, the Serenity comics and other things I can't think of right now.

[Nerd is the Word]

Hi I am a 24 year old British person from the North West of England. I am a big comic book fan and gamer. My life is games, comics and my fiancé. I am currently studying for a BA in Game Design and my hopes are to become a big time game designer and or a comic book writer. The writing thing is very slow moving at the moment as game design takes up a lot of my time!

I also run a little tumblr blog called The Nerd Is The Word which can be found at: http://thenerdistheword.co.uk/ where I ramble about comics, games and all things nerdy!

As for how I got into comics I will share this with you through the magic of copy and paste from my blog because I am lazy like that!

While I had read many an issue of the Beno and Sunday Newspaper Comic Strips as a small child. I consider this my first “proper” comic.



Astonishing Spider-Man #18

For those not in the know. Astonishing is the UK reprints of Amazing Spider-Man and the various other Spidey books. Each issue contains two to three modern Spidey reprints and one classic reprint story in the back. It runs about a year and a half to two years behind the original American prints of the Spidey books. While available in comic stores in the UK it is also, more importantly, available in newsagents like WHSmiths. Which is where I came across this issue of the book and a life long obsession with comics.

My Grandma had taken me and my brother into town shopping one day (in the wretched hive of scum and villainy know as Burnley for those interested in such things). During the excursion we ended up in WHSmiths. Usually Grandma would treat me and my brother to a magazine each but this week things changed forever as after being in the store for five minutes my brother walked towards me and handed me the comic in question because he knew I was a huge fan of the Spider-Man cartoon.

The cover shocked and surprised me because I had no idea who Gwen Stacy was or why she had died previously and I was curious as to who this new Green Goblin was. All I knew was that this was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. So instead of getting a magazine that week I walked out of WHSmiths the proud owner of Astonishing Spider-Man #18.

Once I started reading it however confusion set in because the Spider-Man in the book wasn’t the one I knew, it was Ben Reilly, a clone of Peter Parker, and it turned out Gwen Stacy was a big deal (she isn’t in the 90s cartoon apart from an alternate dimension storyline). Yes that means that the first comic I read was set slap bang in the middle of the Clone Saga with this guy as my hero:



And yes 10 year old me thought the costume was cool. I was ten give me a break!

After reading the comic cover to cover several times I was hooked. This was the best comic I had ever read and it made the Beno look like shit! From that point on I was addicted and Spider-Man was my dealer.

From reading Spider-Man in the crazy days of the Clone Saga I developed a love for the character Ben Reilly because to me he is my childhood. A reminder of a time when anything was possible, a time when there were two Spider-Men. I was truly sad when he died at the hands of the Green Goblin. I am kind of liking the flaming hoody teasers Marvel is putting out at the moment. (PLEASE DON'T HATE ME!)

It may not be the best way to get into comics but the Clone Saga did it for me!

I wondered into the manga wilderness in my late teens but eventually saw the error of my ways when I saw how shallow it is as an industry (the irony of that statement is not lost on me, don't worry). Around 18 I got into DC via 52 because I liked the idea of a real time comic and it started me going to the comic store every week. The result is that I ended up buying a lot of comics every week. I have never looked back since!

My favourite books are: Amazing Spider-Man, Batman by Grant Morrison, The Walking Dead, Invincible, Y The Last Man, All Star Superman, 52, Booster Gold, The Avengers by Bendis (New, Dark, Plain, Technicolor, whatever!) among many other comics. I read a lot of them.

[Wolter]

(08-23-2011 12:36 PM)bigredrobot Wrote:  Sim's a nuttier than a bag full of squirrel scat, but I will fist-fight anybody who tells me that Cerebus isn't gold up through at least "Jaka's Story."

Hey, I'm willing to give it credit up until somewhere around Guys. And I'll even admire the artistry inthe "Going Home" stuff.

Cerebus's first third was one of the greatest comics of all time. Shame about the whole batshit crazy starting to bleed onto the page.

[malpertuis]

I'm Kim - Betty Felon vouches for me.