The first comic books I read were Archie Digest books over at my grandparents’ place that had probably belonged to my mom and her siblings. There were also a lot of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books, but as far as comics went? Old Archies. They weren’t terrible, even if they were constructed only of the finest corn, and I still think about the property with a certain nostalgic fondness.
When I had the money to buy my own comics, though? Marvel. All the way. Spider-Man, Daredevil, X-Men. Occasionally an Avengers or Captain America, but I never found them as interesting. Through the late 80s and early 90s I bought whatever the comic rack at the local convenience store had to offer, watching as the cover price rose from 75 cents to a dollar to a buck and a half.
Why Marvel and not DC? Marvel felt more grounded to me. DC felt… arbitrary, in certain ways. And I felt – as I had with my C64 instead of an Apple IIe, or with my Sega Genesis instead of a Super Nintendo – that you had to take sides in this kind of thing. You had to have brand loyalty. Sega did what Nintendon’t. I was a Marvel Zombie.
Anyway, I came of age during the speculation boom, when baby boomers started to see how much all those old comics – inherently a disposable media that their parents had disposed of when they moved out – were worth. Comics were an investment. You had to keep them carefully bagged, with backing cardboard. You could track their values in regularly updated trade magazines like stocks.
(Aside: At the Six Flags amusement park near my house there was a skiball game whose prizes always included a copy of an Incredible Hulk comic with the first appearance of some minor character; I could spend a dollar to win a copy to turn around to sell to the local comics shop for $25. I would spend this on more comics.)
Over time I gradually shifted away from the Big Two (Big Three after the advent of Image) and more towards indie comics.
