Comic book geeks

JimmyPage

When I was a kid me and my friends collected comic books. Not only that, but we wrote and drew our own as well. All of us emulated the artwork of John Byrne. Some of our favorite writers are now known for their influence on movies. For example, Alan Moore is responsible for "V for Vendetta" and "Watchmen". But back in the day he was scaring the pants of me with his run on the horror comic "Swamp Thing". Frank Miller is familiar to fans of "300" and "Sin City". But he used to work wonders before that on "Daredevil". Any other geeks of the genre out there?

JimmyPage

Also, do you remember Awake! articles like "Comic Books- Should Your Child Read Them?" or the life story of a comic book artist who gave it all up for "the truth"? They took the fun out of everything!

sacolton

I've got two steamer trunks full of comics I collected growing up. One is full of Richie Riches. The other Archies. Currently, I'm reading The Walking Dead series (zombie apocalypse and survival horror comic). Don't recall reading that comics were bad, but I would have ignored it anyway.

Satanus

I loved the superhero, gi joe and caveman type comic books, like turoc. Once somebody gave us a couple of boxes full of them. My dad wouldn't allow us to read em. It was something to w jws. Anyways, i snuck em out from under the bed, where they were stashed, a few times.

S

CaptainSchmideo

You and I must be about the same age, because I was quite the collector back during the time period you talk about. I still keep tabs on the characters today, but I had to give up collecting due to space and money!

I liked Miller's run on Daredevil, except I think when he teamed up with David Mazzuchelli (sp?) he made two of the best storylines I have ever read:"Daredevil:Redemption" and "Batman:Year One" . Unfortunately, in the past few years, Miller's ego is starting to believe all the press he's had about "genius", "trend-setter" and "innovative" and now he's started making swill like "The Spirit" film from last Christmas. Will Eisner must be spinning with enough locomotive force to power all the tenements on Dropsie Avenue...

John Byrne was also pretty good. I think his Fantastic Four run that he did in the mid Eighties was phenomonal. But, once again, the ego generated by all that fan press swelled the head and shrunk the talent, and when he was given the job of "revamping" Superman, he fumbled the ball.

One guy I liked a lot was Walt Simonson. I thought his "Thor" storyline was pretty interesting (remember 'Beta Ray Bill?').

Another comic book writer that I thought made a surprisingly excellent jump to the screen was Harvey Pekar and his "American Splendor". I'm glad to see him get his continiung small portion of 15 minutes of fame.

sacolton

I've always loved the Warren magazine comix of CREEPY and EERIE. Thankfully, in this day of PDF, I've downloaded all the scanned issues.

Seeker4

Stephen Bissette, one of the other artists on Swamp Thing, is a friend of mine, as is Rick Veitch, another very well known graphic novelist. Rick and I went to high school together.

The second college for comic artists was established a few years ago in White River Jct, VT.

Frank Miller is also from Vermont, and grew up about 20 miles from Stephen!

I think the graphic ovel and comics are an incredible art form. Anyone interested should google some of these names.

S4

Big Tex

I loved John Byrne. I thought he saved the Fantastic Four and Captain America and he took the X-Men to a new level. I remember the Swamp Thing, at one time I had the first issue up to ??? (can't remember now). Actually I had a huge collection at one time, first issues of the FF, Avengers, Defenders, Iron Man, Spiderman (but not Amazing Tales #15), X-Men and others. I was a huge Marvel fan.

Anyone remember Neal Adams and some of the work he did on X-Men and the Avengers? And John Buscema on the Silver Surfer, although Kirby did okay, I preferred Buscema.

Unfortunately I listened to my dearly departed evil mother who used to ridicule me for reading them when I was 20 (that was summer of 1982). So I sold the whole lot. Once I priced out what I had and I quit when I got up to $10,000. It was too depressing.

The real shame is my son, now 13, is a huge comic book fan and I would have loved to have those books back just to give to him. Ah well.

Chris

Seeker4

Graphic ovels are cool, but graphic Novels are even better!

S4

Big Tex

Oh geez, I just realized, I was talking about the original Swamp Thing created by ??? (Len Weiss? I hate having Alzheimers). I had quit by the time the new one came around.

Comic book geeks

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