which comic was your gateway drug?

[rasx]

My first comic was an Inc Hulk issue where he's fighting the leader in a Murder Module. But thanks to my cousin I was reading monthly Punisher and Spider-man 2099 comics. When I was old enough to buy my own books I was reading X-Men and Valiant.
Ah! the bombastic 90's.

[Venomous Mask]

My cousin got me my first graphic novesl: Spiderman: The Return of the Sinister Six, Spiderman vs. Venom, and Spiderman: Masterworks Vol.1. The first series that I collected monthly was Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series.

[tolworthy]

My brother had this book. One of the greatest books ever published.

Beautiful cover - almost every cover today is painted, yet none of them feel so real. This cover was from a time when you could still believe that the Hulk lived in the real world. Yes, OK, it may have helped that I was 4 years old, but the early 60s stories were smaller scale, more believable.

This beautiful work of art (thanks to stevedoescomics for the scan) was hard covered, large size, black and white content, so you could salivate over the pure art. It included, amongst other classics.
* Spidey's first meeting with the Scorpion
* The Hulk versus Tyrannus
* Fantastic Four on planet X
* Barry Smith on Conan
These had to be large scale to be appreciated - particularly the FF story, with its glorious cinemascope art.

I don't think this book was a gateway drug though. It was not like cannabis or alcohol. It was pure heroine.

[Schnitzy Pretzelpants]

It was kind of a few for me:

I got Justice League 170 (original series) as part of a ‘loot bad’ at a friends birthday party when I was 8 or 9. This is the first comic I actually read, and didn’t just look at the pictures. I then was bought – probably my Dad got it for me – Justice League 171 (a JSA/JLA team up issue, featuring the death of Mister Terrific) and had to know whodunit so I actually sought out the next issue. Strangely, I didn’t continue reading after 172 though.

Micronauts was a big one for me – remember devouring the first 12 to 20 issues of them.

Ultimately though, it was me 14 birthday, when a friend’s gift to me was a huge stack – about $10 worth – of comics that included the following then-new comics:

A Byrne Fantastic Four – where Doom plots to use Terrax against the FF

An X-Men – where Rogue and Wolverine take on Yakuzza in Japan, and Wolverine is jilted at the altar by Mariko.

An Avengers – though memory fails me on which it might have been, it was from the same period as the above.

The rest in the stack, I can’t recall – but both those 3 titles had me coming back for more each month, and ate up what little money I had at my disposal back then.

After those comics, I started looking in back-issue bins for past referenced stories too and spending my Xmas money on them, and asking for comics for Xmas and birthdays too.

I have left reading/collecting a handful of times since then, but for no more than a year or two at most.

I forgot a HUGE influence for me that was in that stack – Marvel Tales. Marvel Tales, and it was just beginning its final reprint run from Amazing Fantasy 15 onwards – the sheer nutty storytelling and art of those stories left a pretty indelible mark on my imagination. Even though I knew they were reprints, I felt like I was reading something special.

[MDG]

Also this:

[Ramage]

Had a couple of Whitman sample bags (including the Superman book I use as my avatar) and a Peter Parker and a few funny comics....but it really began when I was seven years old and in the hospital with tonsils that were kissing each other, being out of school for a week, and my mom brought me a stack of books that just hooked me

Peter Parker where he battles the Carrian, Star Wars that introduced Valance the Cyborg, Amazing where Spidey takes down Jigsaw, Batman battling two face and courting Selina Kyle, ...and the amazing, awe inspiring Fantastic Four where our heroes have been zapped with an aging ray, Sphinx betrays THe Champions of Xander and absorbs their super computer, and Mr Fantastic decides the only one that can stop him is Galactus. I'm still giddy thinking about that stack. I think there was a SPidey Super Stories in there too...

[dr chimp]

fantastic four - probably in marvel uk reprints. crazy sci-fi - four very different people with their own personal issues and bizarre powers who go and sort things out in space. cant lose with that

[dan bailey]

fantastic four - probably in marvel uk reprints. crazy sci-fi - four very different people with their own personal issues and bizarre powers who go and sort things out in space. cant lose with that

But without apes.

Except, I guess, for #s 13 & 29, thanks to the Red Ghost.

[dan bailey]

I don't think this book was a gateway drug though. It was not like cannabis or alcohol. It was pure heroine.

That would be She-Hulk, surely.

And yeah -- that's one of the best covers I've ever seen.

[dan bailey]

As for me ...

Several fit the bill, starting in the spring of '67 & continuing through that summer (I turned 8 in September & started 3rd grade), pretty much in chronological order --

Superman #197 -- My first 80-Page Giant, & for that matter almost certainly my first Superman comic (&, somewhat crucially to my development as a burgeoning comics fan, the next-to-last giant to feature Go-Go Checks).

Jimmy Olsen #104 -- My second 80-Page Giant.

Lois Lane #77 -- My third 80-Pager.

Ripley's Believe It Or Not #6 -- I'd actually bought #5 as well, the second & final issue of the series to feature "True War Stories," & I found it downright thrilling ... but #6 was the first one I saw that promised "True Ghost Stories," which is what reeled me in hook, line & sinker. The purchase made this the first comic I know I bought consecutive issues of (may've also been true of some Archie or Harvey series or other, but if so, those details were long ago lost in the mists of memory), & I bought issue for often than not for probably the next 4 years.

Sgt. Fury #48 -- The first issue I read of what became my favorite series ever, featuring my favorite character ever, unmistakably inked by my favorite artist ever. To coin a phrase, 'nuff said.

The handful of comics bought for me (Spider-Man #29, either #2 or #3 of Gold Key's Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, Dell's Combat #19. Green Lantern #42, GI Combat #119, a few others I can't quite place) &/or that I plucked from the spinner racks (Brave & the Bold #69, Plastic Man #1, Detective #359, Teen Titans #7, various Harveys & Archies) didn't exactly make me hate the format, but the ones enumerated above really lit my fire.

[tolworthy]

fantastic four - probably in marvel uk reprints. crazy sci-fi - four very different people with their own personal issues and bizarre powers who go and sort things out in space. cant lose with that

That was me, times a hundred. My first experience of the FF was those Marvel annuals, then I got sidetracked to IPC, then I discovered the Perez FF. And knew that I had to have every issue. No other superhero came close for me.

But without apes.
Except, I guess, for #s 13 & 29, thanks to the Red Ghost.

And don't forget Gorr the Golden Gorrilla! Wonderful Perez art, a lovely morality tale (he was not a villain, just wiser than most humans and misunderstood; and it gave Sue a chance to shine). Then there is War Head (FF137 if memory serves), then Ben was mistaken for an ape more than once, and those Yetis were ape-like. But Gorr was the high point. Comics at their best. :)

[dan bailey]

No comic. Re-runs of the Batman television show.

Which reminds me to cite the importance of the Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon segments (Iron Man, Thor, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Incredible Hulk) in captivating my imagination as a 7-year-old when I caught them after school during 2nd grade. Along with an issue of Amazing Spider-Man #29 bought for me before I could read, these would've provided my intro (muddled as it was ... not because of the cartoons, but because I was 7) to the Marvel Universe, even though I didn't really start poking around it for another couple of years.

[Angilas-Man]

In '97 I was 9 years old and read the Star Wars trilogy tpb adaptations. A year later I was raiding the back issue bins for Marvel and Dark Horse Godzilla comics. That and a few Cartoon Network Presents issues were my first forays.

[CromagnonMan]

I don't think this book was a gateway drug though. It was not like cannabis or alcohol. It was pure heroine.

i just 'got' this. very droll

[The Confessor]

Batman pocket books!? That sounds great!

Yeah, they were great...there was a whole range of DC and Marvel ones on sle here in the UK between 1978 and 1982. They were made up of B&W reprints, but they had a nice card cover and therefore were much more robust than regular UK comics (most of which were newsprint), so they were perfect for little kids. I definitely had some Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four ones.