This is the second in a series of guest posts I'm going to run over the summer. I asked folk to write on any topic at any length - as long as it's comics related. Next up is David Wright...
Until about 5 years ago, comic books were a huge part of my "escapism" along with tabletop games. I say until about 5 years ago as that's around the time that I stopped reading comics. At least reading them for fun.
Some background to help shape this.
I was introduced to comic books around the age of 6 or 7 through a variety of sources.
My eldest brother Leslie had started getting 2000AD from its
release. My brother Allan was reading
the Beano (which I would borrow) and shortly after that started to get my own
comic - The Nutty, which was the home to Bananaman.
Alongside all of this though the 3 Wright Brothers had been
introduced to American Comics thanks to a collection previously owned by my
Uncle John. Now these were reprints of Marvel
titles under the banners of Fantastic and Terrific and so began my connection
with Superhero comics specifically.
Throughout the 80s my relationship with comic books grew
through picking up "holiday packs" of DC Comics from newstands when
on family holidays. These would be where
I'd learn of such superhero teams as the Legion Of Superheroes and All Star
Squadron and also get to know about titles like Camelot 3000. The DC titles stretched my imagination yet
further and this overlapped into my tabletop gaming hobby when Mayfair Games
released their DC Heroes RPG in 1985. I
think I got the Marvel RPG around the same time but it's less clear.
Anyway it was in the late to mid 80s that my comic book
reading really started to kick off and a lot of it was Marvel based. I think some of that was due to the Secret
Wars storyline that was being printed in magazine sized format comics in the
UK. I had all of them and from there I
was able to determine the books that I wanted to read.
Amazing Spider-man was one such title and in particular the
emergence of Todd McFarlane's re-imagined webhead in 1988 was for me so
refreshing that for the first time I was bagging and boarding my books. Up til then comics had been consumable, now
they were to be treasured and to a certain extent to be collected. I had been buying Amazing Spider-man prior to
McFarlane's first appearance on the title but it was only once 298, 299 and
then 300 hit the shelves that I really got into the title.
This development of my interest in comics continued to grow
through those hey days of the Pre-Image crew working on flagship Marvel titles
with Jim Lee slowly becoming my favourite artist of that time and indeed he
remains one of my favourite artists to this day.
My comic book interest during the 90s peaked along with my
spending on comics. Lots of Image
(Spawn, WildCATS and others) and Dark Horse (specifically Star Wars) titles
with the ever present Peter David on Incredible Hulk and a variety of other
titles. Nothing really stands out from
that time other than the Incredible Hulk run that Peter did. The early 90s also saw the creation of the Glasgow
Comic Art Convention (GlasCAC) which enabled my younger self to meet some
seriously famous comic book creators including Peter David, Charles Vess, Bryan
Talbot and Alan Grant.
It was also during the 90s though and into the early 2000s
that my interest started to wane. This
was at the same time as my gaming hobby hitting a complete lull and "real
life" really taking a grip on me.
Whilst this only lasted a couple of years (thankfully) I'd say that my
comic book interest really only started to restart again through the discovery
of 3 books -
Mage: The Hero Defined.
Matt Wagner is perhaps my favourite writer/artist and his creation of
Kevin Matchstick is fabulous. I've
consistently recommended this title to people over the years and I will
continue to do so.
Queen & Country - Greg Rucka's spy series of comics
which blew my mind. It was the first
non-superhero comic that when I read it I knew I had to have all of it.
Atomic Robo - Easily my favourite comic for light hearted
ACTION SCIENCE fun.
There have been other comics such as Pride Of Bagdhad and a
number of the iconic Batman books but these 3 titles (none of which are DC /
Marvel in case you hadn't noticed) are without question the comics that have
helped define my interest.
So why then do I find myself uninterested in reading comic
books?
As with my tabletop gaming hobby, my interest in comic books
suffered when my games & comic shop "Kingdom Of Adventure" closed
down just over 2 years ago. It wasn't
just as a result of the closing of the shop though, it was more (I think) in
part down to my associating the comic books to sales and seeing them pretty
much as products and commodities that if I didn't sell I didn't make money.
I'd extend that a little by saying that the ordering
process and reliability of the deliveries was painful. Diamond Comics have a monopoly over the
distribution of comic books. This has
its benefits as it's just 1 distributor to deal with whereas in the tabletop
gaming space I had 5 regular distributors and another 5 or so secondary ones.
It also however means that you end up not getting stuff if
your order levels are low. Essentially a
pecking order exists. With hindsight I
should have looked at other options for distribution, e.g some of the bigger
retailers offer a "sub" service where you buy through them which
actually makes it more likely you get what you order but also takes a slice out
of your margin.
The struggle I have now is finding something that actually
interests me. I'm expecting that through
my purchase of the Atomic Robo RPG that I might be drawn back to reading the
Atomic Robo comics and who knows maybe some other stuff too. I've tried to read stuff over the past 2
years but they end up being half read or in some cases sit on the shelf
untouched...
I'm sorry to say that right now I'm not interested in
reading comics. It's something that
gnaws away at my core in many respects but that is offset by my recent
recapture of my tabletop gaming hobby (chronicled on a2ndchapter.blogspot.co.uk
if you're interested). Who knows, maybe
I just need to find the right book?
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