Where and How Did You and Do You Read Coms etc.?

[BDiogenes]

Reptisaurus!, I had many bathrooms '66-'76 but few if any with furnishings on which I could place a comic. I would bring in outlines or notes with me and maybe put them on the sink or side of the tub.
___________Aaron Kashtan, there's a red x in a box below your post. I presume there's a story behind your avatar, of which I'm unaware.
___________shaxper, now that you raise it there was a brief interlude in the earliest days when I might've read a few sitting at a coffee shop counter eating late supper after buying some at night.
___________Rob Allen, do you mean "abbreviation" or "comics"? Abbreviation is long due to the double 'b', then the suffix iate, and then the additional suffix tion. Comics isn't any longer than Robert turning into Rob. Coms would in analogue with mags. It's a coinage, and if original from me, consider me the next FJA!
___________Aaron King, I couldn't read while walking even when agile, not where I would walk. For those now in big cities, can you read coms on the subway or do you risk a snatch by youths seeking to score?
___________dupersuper, I once used a library copy of "Media Sexploitation" as a Frisbee because the tome maliciously lied about Simon and Garfunkel and other rock artists.
___________destro, I wasn't offended, but it was a drag yesterday when my topic got off to a slow start with replies. For anyone disadvantaged by anyone's text configuration, I note that if you click to quote the difficult text you will get larger type and a narrower column and you yourself can break a long paragraph with the cursor and enter key; hen finished you can click "reply to thread" and it will be as if you never clicked to quote. I was going to mention all this even if you hadn't posted again. See more below.
___________dan bailey, I pleasantly had taken note of your hiatus. Too affected for me means disabled by an autoimmune disorder affecting my connective tissue caused by a toxic exposure; it might be treated with certain biologicals, but it's very hard to obtain care for an individualized malady not fitting into ready clinical boxes.
___________Because I know your point is entirely well-intentioned I shall remember it. But I do prefer long paragraphs because it is a hallmark of good writing to dovetail seamlessly from one subject to another; if one abdicates that a priori with short paragraphs, one forfeits even the chance to segue. I also prefer being able to indent, as you can tell. Posters should bear in mind that I typed my opening elsewhere, where it did not look as cramped and upon bringing it here I debated reconfiguring as I now have.
___________It bugs me, too, when I waste waiting time not reading anything, but I try to contemplate or at least relax. On reading, I trust you did get my one pm.

Everyone, if you were collecting '66-'70, you might recount when plastic bags came into your world or even a standardized grading regime. It occurs to me that it's hard to buy coms without falling into collecting...if you find them compelling, i.e..

[Aaron King]

For those now in big cities, can you read coms on the subway or do you risk a snatch by youths seeking to score?

Minneapolis/St. Paul isn't a giant metro area, but it's pretty sizable, and I've never worried about my books being snatched. I would assume that, if you're a thief, grabbing things like cellphones and computers (which are in use much more than books on public transit) would be more profitable than comics.

[icctrombone]

Nowadays I read comics sitting in my living room couch. Whenever I read lying in bed I fall asleep usually resulting in the comic falling on my face or the floor. I used to read while eating at the dinner table but it has been replaced by the computer while at the dinner table. I have to admit I'm not a person that will read comics in public, but I will read a TPB in public.
"coms" is a really weird word to use for Comics but I'm not fond of the word "floppys" either.

[Roquefort Raider]

On the crapper.

I do not do all my reading on the crapper, but I never use the crapper without a comic. And it's good to keep a few Rob Liefeld comics around, just in case.

The living room couch is also a favorite spot, especially when the cat takes a nap on my lap. Then I have an excuse for not getting up and continue reading!

[dan bailey]

___________Rob Allen, do you mean "abbreviation" or "comics"? Abbreviation is long due to the double 'b', then the suffix iate, and then the additional suffix tion. Comics isn't any longer than Robert turning into Rob. Coms would in analogue with mags. It's a coinage, and if original from me, consider me the next FJA!

I'm pretty sure it's original with you. If conventions can be "cons," no reason comics can't be "coms," though of course there's no particular advantage in using it -- with "cons" one is shaving off 7 letters, & with "mags" one is shaving off 6. I, for one, miss Infobroker & his (I presume) Al Capp-derived "comical books" usage.

___________dan bailey, I pleasantly had taken note of your hiatus. Too affected for me means disabled by an autoimmune disorder affecting my connective tissue caused by a toxic exposure; it might be treated with certain biologicals, but it's very hard to obtain care for an individualized malady not fitting into ready clinical boxes.

Damned sorry to hear that. As if the ravages of age & (in my case, at least) weight weren't disadvantageous enough ...

___________Because I know your point is entirely well-intentioned I shall remember it. But I do prefer long paragraphs because it is a hallmark of good writing to dovetail seamlessly from one subject to another; if one abdicates that a priori with short paragraphs, one forfeits even the chance to segue.

As indicated previously, I get where you're coming from. Carefully constructed long paragraphs are what we're taught to write (& they're certainly what we read) in composition classes ... but as noted my approach to the matter changed when I wound up spending much of my adult life (such as it is) in the newspaper field. Which doesn't make me right & you wrong, or vice versa. (Though I would note that my frequent meandering, multi-clause sentences -- any one of which I would've beaten a reporter for attempting to get by me back in the day -- mean that I can & often do segue like mad, & more than once, within the constraints of even a single-sentence paragraph. Unfortunately, that's pretty much the way I think. And, even worse, talk.)

For considerations of presentation & readability, it's also worth noting that probably a fair number of people are liable to be reading this forum on some sort of infernal hand-held device with attendant small screen.

On reading, I trust you did get my one pm.

Yessir. Meant to respond, but last week was simply insane in terms of work load. Clearly, I need to go back & re-read "The Lake," which I have to say I recall nothing about. (I doubt that I've read anything of Bradbury's since the mid-'70s, simply because, as noted elsewhere, I'm not much of a re-reader, with a select few exceptions.)

Everyone, if you were collecting '66-'70, you might recount when plastic bags came into your world or even a standardized grading regime. It occurs to me that it's hard to buy coms without falling into collecting...if you find them compelling, i.e..

'66-70 -- more accurately, '67-'70 -- happened to be my first period of comics reading & accumulating. No idea when I first encountered bags ... maybe in the early '90s, when I happened to accompany a then-gf into the first comics shop I'd ever seen, purely on a lark. Grading probably came a few years later than that, though of course I was familiar with the general concept from having collected coins as a kid.

[Aaron Kashtan]

BDiogenes, I can see the picture in my post just fine. It's a picture of a pair of husband pillows.

[BDiogenes]

Aaron Kashtan, yeah, your repro began last night as a tiny box around the red x, the next time I looked the box was many times that size but still blank, but after I posted it was as you say; I almost edited my post to let you know. My mother bought one of those circa '72 but I overlooked the utility of it.
__________Aaron King, does public transit have wifi to enable computer use? Cellphones would be harder to snatch from the grasp of a user whereas a comic might be loose. icctrombone, I might not read coms openly for security depending on which but otherwise have no compunctions. What would you expect from a militant fan? I would not use floppy.
__________db, Rob Allen mentioned abbreviation, yet "coms" is a diminutive to connote intimate familiarity and fondness like Bats for Batman, not to save letters. We don't disagree on text; you're just ahead of me in adjusting to posting. Recall that my copy of "The October Country" was borrowed so I can't reread. No worry, db, it's early Sep. '66 and I started slow. Do you recall the month in '67? It would be fun sometime for me to reconstruct which issues. I attended my first con in '72, momentous for multiple reasons; I don't recall stores having bags prior though one had some GA'ers in a binder of plastic album-type pages. Cons must've been few where you were.

[dan bailey]

Do you recall the month in '67? It would be fun sometime for me to reconstruct which issues.

Hard to say, since probably at least half of what I bought back then were Archie or Harvey titles, the covers of which are too interchangeable for me to recall at this late date, but I'll take a stab & say June 1967, simply because Mike's Amazing World of Comics' "Newsstand" feature shows that I bought at least 3 comics from that month's spinner racks -- Jimmy Olsen (#104) & Lois Lane (#77) 80-Page Giants & Ripley's Believe It or Not #6. My rule of thumb is that I very likely bought at least one Archie or Harvey for every DC or Gold Key (or, starting a couple of months later with Sgt. Fury #48, Marvel) for a couple of years there, so if I was buying 6 comics a month on a 50-cent-a-week allowance, I figure I'd contracted the bug.

I attended my first con in '72, momentous for multiple reasons; I don't recall stores having bags prior though one had some GA'ers in a binder of plastic album-type pages. Cons must've been few where you were.

More like nonexistent. I'm from a backwoods Arkansas county that at this writing contains maybe 6,000 souls; my hometown still doesn't have a single traffic light, & at this late date odds are it never will. And while I've since lived in several places of comparative size (the Phoenix area from 8/81-5/84, Little Rock/North Little Rock from 3/85-8/88 & 3/90-11/01, the New Orleans area from 8/88-2/90, Montgomery since 11/01), by that time I'd dropped comics cold turkey. I've been to a handful of sf cons, most recently in 1989, but never to one devoted to comics.

(Montgomery, as it happens, is about as likely to host the Olympics as it is a con of any variety. The census says 200,000 residents, but socioculturally the place is pretty much on par with the burg of 10,000 where I went to college, about 15 miles from where I grew up.)