My First Comic

i also recall a story i assume wz in "treasure" abt another squirrel, called "nutty noddle", who thought it wd save time to plant the potatoes ready mashed/boiled etc

first american comic book = peanuts book (i won £50 on the pools aged abt 10 and spent £40 on a near-complete set of peanuts paperbacks)

first indie comic book = i had a friend at college who had a lot of underground comix, eg w.crumb and spain and the checkered demon and all that, also fabulous furry freak bros

First American comic was probably Peanuts too. First superhero comic had Hawkman in it, but I can't remember much else about it.

First indie comic would have been the Titan reprints of Love and Rockets.

http://www.toonhound.com/shshcomics.gif

The first American comic was an issue of The Inhumans - don't remember much about it other than it having Black Bolt, The Chick With The Hair and That Dog With The TV Ariel On Its Head in it, which doesn't really narrow it down. Obviously there must have been strips before that, Peanuts probably.

First indie comic was probably Warrior, although if that doesn't count then Escape.

Then the Beano and Dandy, and the first comic I bought regularly was Jackpot, from issue 1.

My first American comics - I'm not going to count Peanuts for some arbitrary reason - were sent to me when I was about 12 by my cousin Nick. They were all Marvels, from the month which was the lead-in to Secret Wars. The one I remember most vividly had a massive fight between Spiderman and a Hobgoblin ending up with a van driving into a river. It was very extremely exciting.

First indie comics were probably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which a friend of mine had bought, shortly after that. I read a few random issues of other titles during the black-and-white boom but they was always borrowed from friends. At school an older boy collected Cerebus and Redfox (!! - a forgotten comic) and I read those.

My first Indie Comic (does Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation count? no. But the Captain Canuck sort of does.) that I bought was probably a Jon Sable Freelance, maybe Ralph Snart (all my friends were into Ralph Snart in Grade 7) (oh nuts, that reminds me of the time in Gr. 7 when my friend Mike handed in a plank sheet of paper for art class. "It's Sue Storm," he said. The teacher didn't get it.) or possibly Reid Fleming. I remember leafing through a Yummy Fur and totally not getting it around age 12.

The first American comic boo I can remember reading was an early Daredevil, the one that introduced Mr Fear. So issue seven, or thereabouts. My dad brought it home for me one evening, and I remember sitting at the kitchen table and reading the whole thing there and then. It probably explains why I love Wally Wood's art, him having drawn that issue. I even managed to get a restored copy of it at a convention a few years back, and I bought the Daredevil Masterworks that reprints all of the Wally Wood issues.
Oddly enough, despite that, I've never much cared for Daredevil.

As for first Indie comic? A Charlton sci-fi comic back in the mid-sixties sometime.

David

First indie: probably some garbage like Ex-Mutants. Or one of the Adventure Comics titles. Shatter #1 from First?

I know that wasn't the first comic I read, because I had a lot of Richie Rich and Hot Stuff comics, but it's the one that got me "interested in comics."

Those Harvey comics would be my first indie comics, I guess, although there wasn't yet any reason to distinguish between "the two big publishers" and "everyone else."

My first indie comic that was actually a comic people thought of as outside the mainstream was either TMNT or Dreadstar -- I don't remember if I first read Dreadstar before or after it moved to Epic.

maybe an issue of The Dandy, maybe a 1972 Magic Roundabout Annual, or maybe an issue of (er) Twinkle.

Bonus question for non-US bods: what was the first American comic you can remember reading?

depending on definitions... I read a Marvel UK reprint of some Spiderman comic when I was small. Spidey was up against The Shocker (who fired electric blasts from his hands - wow!). Or maybe it was the issue where he was up against some big thuggish non-costumed guy (Man Mountain Marko (?)) who used to engage in DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

I think the first proper American comic I read was an issue of Moench-Sienkiwicz era Moon Knight which featured some woman who lived in a church who went around in a long red dress shooting bad guys with a cross-bow. But maybe before buying that I acquired my Epic magazine habit.

Bonus question for everyone: what was the first indie comic you can remember reading?

amazingly, I think it might have been a run of Cerebuses that someone lend me... kind of like 92 to 100 or something.

A supplementary one from me: I stopped reading comics sometime around age 12 or 13, as so many do, and only restarted when I was 15 or 16, when a good friend insisted on lending me some Gerber Howard The Ducks and Defenders, to prove how good comics could be, so HtD was the restart comic for me.

No idea of my first indie comic, I'm afraid.

Not sure about the first US comic I bought. I gave up comics after TF UK ended, before being sucked back in a few years later when I saw a comic that claimed to contain Death's Head inside (bah, Marvel UK. you sucked). I found a newsagent that still sold US comics, and I think the first one I bought was Iron Man #307. Something to do with Thunderstrike, the Hulk, and Iron Man in a very big suit of armour.

First indie comic would be the first Cerebus phonebook. I was reading Comic World (my first exposure to Warren Ellis), and they kept going on about it, so I thought I'd give it a try. I still haven't got beyond High Society, although I'll probably pick up Church & State when I come into money again...

The first US comics proper were a handful of Wonder Womans that we got from a car-boot sale. I remember being fascinated by the advertisements - Sea Monkeys! Body building kits! - but didn't understand that they had to be read in order and wondered why the plot subsequently made no sense. My favourite was the one was about Devil worshippers which had Diana Prince in her bra.

First indie comic was something called Brain Damage, which may or may not've been a lame knock-off of Viz. I don't remember much - I think my mum threw it out for being too rude.

after TREASURE i took WORLD of WONDER every week until it wz absorbed by the more famous but more fubsy Look and Learn (WoW = super-secret attempt at dutch cultural imperialism, i believe: certainly no issue went by w/o a feature on a dutch scientist/explorer/painter being lauded) (this is also where i learnt that napoleon and cardinal richelieu were BORN WITH TEETH)

WoW wz more consciously futuristic than L&L: its central story - its answer to the trigan empire - was a science-fictiony bubble-city under attack from androids, and it was v.pro atom power, cue scientist in coveralls holding a big rod of plutonium, w.,the whole city it would power twinkling in the distance over his shoulder)

american comics were available as piecemeal tasters in brit comics from the mid-60s to the early 70s at least

!!

(ok not cavemen then)

(also trigan empire = yet more dutch cultural imperialism hurrah)

first indie comic probably teenage mutant ninja turtles but i can remember reading about love and rockets in spin and deciding to check it out.

Earliest indie was Cerebus #30 or 31 -- "Chasing Cootie."

First-ever comics: either Asterix or else Peanuts paperback collections (closely followed by Footrat Flats collections, a New Zealand newspaper strip about a sheepdog, which is much better and darker than that makes it sound).

First American comics (Peanuts aside): In Australia there was this company called Murray Comics, and they did cheap newsprint reprints of DC stuff. It was a Justice League story where there's a seven-headed statue which turns out to be a bunch of imprisoned old gods, and the love goddess escapes and turns all of the male JLAers into her slaves, and they beat up their girlfriends and wives. And one of the JLA got married, but I can't remember who. The other one of these reprints I especially remember is a Superman/Batman story with what were, in retrospect, startling homoerotic overtones - the two of them weep and hold hands while a bunch of slug-like aliens have sex and die. I hope somebody else out there remembers this story, because I'd hate to think I made it up.

First indie: maybe (ahem) TMNT, which I got into via the (ahem) role-playing game. Oh dear.

some pixie and dixie (the cartoon mice) thing bought whilst holidaying at butlin's minehead.

the usual slew of dandys and beanos. and later whizzer and chips and Krazy. then 2000ad.

first american format (although i don't think it was actually american):
judge dredd, eagle comics reprints, specifically the one with fink angel in it (#16?)

first america proper:
swamp thing #46
(cousin had a bunch of old marvels that i'd read some years before this, this was first purchase though. and a spectacularly bad place to start - middle of american gothic, middle of crisis crossover. it ends with the invulche chasing the nun in mornington crescent station. now signed.)

First indie: probably Ed the Happy Clown, which my dad misguidedly got me as a present when I was 12 or so.

First US comic - Issue 399 or something, of the Amazing Spider-Man! Or 398, something like that. Where Spider-Man and the Scarlet Spider go and see the Jackal, or something. I found it intriguing and then read THE ENTIRE CLONE SAGA THING. It was GREBT.

First indie comic - Eightball 22? Wow, I think it actually was. After that was Summer Blonde, in 2003. I think I got a TMNT graphic novel once, when I was young. I was dissapointed with the art, but pleased with the extra violence that wasn't in the cartoon. But I didn't know that counted.

First comic I remember reading was an issue of KAMANDI that was thrust in my hands at the age of five or six (one of the undersea issues with talking dolphins and giant radioactive bees on the surface world).

First book of comics was ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, followed not too long after by SON OF ORIGINS and BRING ON THE BAD GUYS, which made me a Marvel zombie for a good long time.

First habitual purchase? MICRONAUTS, around issue #22 or so. Just before things got REAL FREAKY in that book and it went all space opera.

First indie comic? TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #2. I was late for the boat.

It was more than likely an issue of Marvel Two-In-One actually, as my cousin had tons of them.

First indie: I'm guessing ELFQUEST #8 or so.

First non-American comic: whichever issue of 2000 A.D. had that "Oxygen Board" Judge Dredd story--got it in a package of 10 British comics for $2 from Mile High Comics and was mightily impressed.

First non-US comic: 2000AD, which inspired me to grab the available Judge Dredd albums (The Cursed Earth 1&2). Also led to an appreciation of Marshal Law, also the subsequent and vast psychological scarring as a result of said appreciation...

What was the first comic you can remember reading?: Some issue of DC Comics Presents guest-starring Robin; some boggins about a carival and some Ringmaster-type huckster hypnotizing Supers into believing he's just some carny strongguy. Or maybe it was Teen Titans #4 - they FITE the JLA & Trigon!

Bonus question for everyone: what was the first indie comic you can remember reading?: "read" = some issue of TMNT. Actually read = probably some issue of Dark Horse Presents, tho I'm really guessing it was John Byrne's Next Men or some Image thing, which totally doesn't count. In which case - Cerebus #151, bought @ age 18.

First indie comic? This comic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft, which I bet would still be awesome upon re-reading.

Whereas the first American comic is really clear - Marvel Team Up, Spiderman & Captain Britain by Claremont & Byrne.

First comic I remember reading myself was a portuguese Disney thing, one of those thick paperbacks (everything used to be in that format, superhero comics too - brazilian imports. Man, that ruled.) It was my first reading experience (beyond just learning about letters) - I was pestering dad to read to me, he was like "you can do it yourself!" and so I tried (TO PROVE HIM WRONG) and whoa, yeah, actually I could! I remember the cover had a wasp sitting on Donald's beak, and him holding a revolver pointed to it. Whoa, that's actually quite ridicolously hardcore in retrospect, maybe it was just a flyswatter? I remember a gun, tho.

First american comic: Yeah, Disney stuff. First "big two" purchase I remember quite fondly, it was this Batman anthology printed in "Asterix" album format (I was big on Batman already because of the 60's series.) Featured: that story where Nightwing comes back (includes that "Bruce...I am..." panel that got on one of the po-faced absurdity threads), a great two page-spread of Batman vilains AND best of all, some weird "Elseworlds" thing about "the world's greatest detectives", which featured Batman, Elongated Man, Sherlock Holmes and Marlowe working at the same case through diferent eras. It didn't make me dig deeper, tho - my next DC purchase came *way later*, when I was already in Portugal...some Batman comic, I remember it just sort of disgusting me and my parents getting annoyed by the anti-commie stuff (I think it may have featured KGBeast!) I succumbed fully only a few years after that, after TMNT won me over for "super heroes" in general.

Indie comics: Parents had loads and loads of Crumb, Freak Brothers and Wonder Warthog lying around. I got my hands on the Freak Bros and WW terribly early, I think - thankfully, they kept me from Crumb a little longer.

3. I've never read an indie comic! (Actual answer: Is Maus indie?)

First American comics: I have the vaguest memory of having some US comics probably acquired at a school jumble sale. The only titles I remember were Green Lantern and Captain Britain (which obviously wasn't American but was in the American style and fit with the rest in my mind). I never really got into American comics till much later.

First indie: probably the early Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, bought out of interest for the role-playing game and before I knew anything about American comics.

As a child I would like reading any comic whatsoever, even the stuff I knew was boring like Look and Learn. Looking I can understand but why would I want to learn?

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Except in Enlgish, obviously.

Followed by Asterix, Whizzer and Chips, Beano, Oink, those manga-sized Commandos, Buster Transformers, Marvel UK's black and white Secret Wars reprints, etc.

Occasionally I would read my sister's issues of Tracy.