Comics were the filler in the gap that was my toy collecting. I bought comics from around 84-94.
My history prior to that is filled with comics. When I was a kid (no, no dinosaurs roaming the earth) we used to go to an Aunt and Uncle's cabin at a Lake. They used to take in all the cousins and give the parents a break. On rainy days, we could either play games or read comics. DC and Marvel were present in pretty even amounts. I'm fairly honored to say I held Amazing Fantasy #15 in my hands several times. It was dog eared and the cover long since torn, but I must have read it thousands of times. I later told my Aunt what it was worth and she said considering the peace and quiet it bought her on rainy days, she never would have sold it, no matter the amount
Unlike you Thomas, I was all about Marvel. I loved Spiderman and he is still my favourite character. Peter Parker was every kid, for the most part, save the jocks (of which I was one, but never felt like one, but that's a whole different story
). He was the good kid, the nerd, etc. But for me, the reason I loved Spiderman was the morality. More than anything else, Pete tried to do the right thing, something I still try to abide by.
From there I spread into other titles like Daredevil, Ironman then on into the X-titles. I've also been a Batman and Superman fan, but the rest of the DC titles just didn't do it for me as I didn't really like their characters that much.
I recall the switch from comics based on stories to comics based on promotion and gimmick. Part of that switch involved Boobs. Female characters prior to that had been fairly curvaceous but this bordered on the absurd. Commensurate with the switch was a rapid decline in the quality of writing. Sure, the artwork was fine, but the story took second place to the graphics, the more, um, graphic the better.
I'm guessing I got out around issue 330 or so of ASM and haven't regreted it.
The stories sucked. If I wanted boobs, I could go out and buy a Playboy. The art was good, but pointless. I saved around $50 a week.
Nowadays I don't buy comics. Mostly because I simply cannot get over the cost. I realize I'm getting old, but c'mon. I was in Walmart one day and up here they display their comics in the toy section. I spied a Star Wars comic with Leia being captured by some Imperial troops. I read most of the book in the store and thought
geez, this is pretty cool, I should get it. Until I looked at the price. $10 Cdn (around $7.95 US or so). Do kids get
THAT much money these days that they can afford it?
If I bought as many titles as I used to in my early twenties, I'd be dropping over $300 a week
That's ridiculous.
I guess in part I'm tiring of the "collectible" mentality. Yeah, sure, I contribute in a huge way by buying stuff. Can't argue with that. But you know what? If they produced a billion Marvel Legends Red Skull figures or a billion R2-D2 Droids Kubricks, I couldn't care less.
Comics need to drag themselves out of that mentality or sales will stay dismal. I've got 13 long boxes of comics that say so. BTW, I was not a speculator when I was buying comics. I do have multiple copies of McFarlane's Spiderman #1 but that's about it. Spawn #1 caused me to buy all of 1 copy. I guess allowing for inflation, I would figure that comics at around $2.00-3.00 would be a fair price.