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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 8, 2022 19:23:45 GMT -5
No. Not remotely. I turned twelve in November of ‘79. I’d been buying my own comics for slightly over four years at that point. While I have a certain nostalgia for that period it’s very far from my “Golden Age.”
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 8, 2022 20:18:01 GMT -5
I was reading from age 10 , At 12 It was 1973 and I was enjoying Avengers, Kamandi, Spider-man and some 100 page DC books at the time. But I will say that from 1980 -1986 it was truly the golden age for comics. The best books were being produced in that period and I had enough disposable income that I was buying huge amounts of books.
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Post by berkley on Jan 8, 2022 21:02:47 GMT -5
I think there's something to the idea but only in the very general sense that the things you encounter for the first time or at a young age often leave a deep impression, no doubt about it. I don't think you can pin it down to the specific age of 12, but that's just a detail that might vary form person to person. Perhaps it's more a matter of those years when you're first beginning to be aware of yourself and your tastes, to form opinions, to begin to feel strongly about your likes and dislikes in a conscious way, even theorise about it in a childish kind of way. The age when your individual aesthetic consciousness is geginning to take form, if that isn't too pompous a way of putting it.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jan 8, 2022 22:28:52 GMT -5
Yeah, it was definitely mine, 1972. In my Golden Anniversary thread last year, I only had the prelude to that magical year of deep immersion that was 1972. If I could, I'd love to collect every comic published in 1972 and recreate those trips to the spinner rack!
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Post by spoon on Jan 8, 2022 22:56:00 GMT -5
I started reading comics in 1985 at age 6.
Hard to say, because one's personal golden age is so amorphous. If pushed to make up my mind, I'd said age 9 or 10, but anything from 6 to 13 would have an argument. Age 6 was discovered a new art form and the initial rush of excitement. Believe or not, I've never read as many new DC comics as I did when I was ages 6 to a little after I turned 9, so that was my DC golden age. Around 9, I started getting significantly more into Marvel, in part because my school library had new Marvel Comics. That was period where I had a much broader understanding of the Marvel Universe than I could've from just the comics I was able to buy, so it was sort of a golden age of being intrigued by a bunch of different titles. Ages 10 and 11 were the period of getting really focused on X-Men and X-Factor. I wasn't reading as broad a set of new comics, but this was probably when I started to really get into back issues, digging into older issues of X-Men. The Wolverine Saga mini (a text history with various panels of old comics interspersed, a la Marvel Saga) was crucial in developing a sense of history and collector's spirit. Age 12 or 13 was a continuation of my X-Men interest, but getting back into a broader array of new comics; I think I had more spending money. Also, age 12 was the mania over adjectiveless X-Men #1.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 9, 2022 1:05:42 GMT -5
I was reading comics from about the age of 4 and was a fan, from day 1; but, by age 12, I had better access to my own money and more frequent access to comic books. I ended up getting a whole book full of comics from my cousin, of the same age, whose interest waned, as fantasy and sci-fi novels took on a greater hold. We would have been about 13 or 14. I also acquired a bunch of Whitman bagged sets by 1980. So, yeah, age 12 gets me bigger access, which kept me interested, in my teen years, though my interest was waning, by age 16, as only a handful of books were really good and a lot had gotten mediocre. I was reading only X-Men, New Teen Titans and Legion, regularly, by 1982. By 1983, I was only reading X-Men, consistently and thought DC's printing was terrible (they were using the Flexo-graphic process, which looked horrible, in many of their comics); but, I discovered Jon Sable and found different comics to keep me interested, as I dropped X-Men before finishing high school.
So; 12 was a golden age, but, it would have ended at 16, had the independent market not blossomed.
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Post by commond on Jan 9, 2022 1:30:43 GMT -5
I started reading comics in 1985 at age 6. Hard to say, because one's personal golden age is so amorphous. If pushed to make up my mind, I'd said age 9 or 10, but anything from 6 to 13 would have an argument. Age 6 was discovered a new art form and the initial rush of excitement. Believe or not, I've never read as many new DC comics as I did when I was ages 6 to a little after I turned 9, so that was my DC golden age. Around 9, I started getting significantly more into Marvel, in part because my school library had new Marvel Comics. That was period where I had a much broader understanding of the Marvel Universe than I could've from just the comics I was able to buy, so it was sort of a golden age of being intrigued by a bunch of different titles. Ages 10 and 11 were the period of getting really focused on X-Men and X-Factor. I wasn't reading as broad a set of new comics, but this was probably when I started to really get into back issues, digging into older issues of X-Men. The Wolverine Saga mini (a text history with various panels of old comics interspersed, a la Marvel Saga) was crucial in developing a sense of history and collector's spirit. Age 12 or 13 was a continuation of my X-Men interest, but getting back into a broader array of new comics; I think I had more spending money. Also, age 12 was the mania over adjectiveless X-Men #1. I used to love those Saga text history books, as well as that feature in Marvel Age where they recapped each year of Marvel publications.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 9, 2022 9:59:35 GMT -5
I started reading and buying comics regularly when I had a job next to a comic book store, I was 17. Before that, I had only a passing knowledge of comics as something that existed, as neither my parents, nor anyone I knew were into them or had any. Though I had a love of comics since about as long as I could read, I'd say I'd go with your age of 16-17 as well because that was the time when I had a job, my own car...but no other real responsibilities or bills to pay so I could buy comics to my hearts content.
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Post by crazyoldhermit on Jan 9, 2022 12:45:58 GMT -5
Other than the occasional issue found in a bin at Eaton's, I never had access to comics as a kid.
However, when I look at the comics being published when I was 12 - Ultimate Spider-Man, Bendis' Daredevil, Ennis' Punisher, Gotham Central, New X-Men - it really was a Golden Age.
Go figure.
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Post by dbutler69 on Jan 9, 2022 15:58:19 GMT -5
12 is my golden age for life in general, so I voted yes. It is quite possibly also my golden age as a comic collector, tough to say. I discovered my LCS at age 10, in 1979, which I think (in retrospect) was the best year for comics, but 1981 (when I was 12) was also a great year, and I would have had more money and more autonomy at that point, so that could be my golden age too, or perhaps even a little later. Tough question to answer!
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Post by MDG on Jan 9, 2022 17:50:25 GMT -5
My golden age was a little later, 14 or 15. I'd been reading comics since I wad 7 or 8, but around '72 or '73, I discovered Led Daniels' book, leading to EC and it went from there. I became obsessed w EC, undergrounds, fanzines, Warrens--pretty much everything besides color superhero comics. Attended my first NYC con in July '74.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 9, 2022 20:12:48 GMT -5
I think there's something to the idea but only in the very general sense that the things you encounter for the first time or at a young age often leave a deep impression, no doubt about it. I don't think you can pin it down to the specific age of 12, but that's just a detail that might vary form person to person. Perhaps it's more a matter of those years when you're first beginning to be aware of yourself and your tastes, to form opinions, to begin to feel strongly about your likes and dislikes in a conscious way, even theorise about it in a childish kind of way. The age when your individual aesthetic consciousness is geginning to take form, if that isn't too pompous a way of putting it. Yeah I don't think it's meant to be that literal. In essence it's true that nothing you read later in life is going to be as good as what you read at That Impressionable Age.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jan 9, 2022 22:40:12 GMT -5
I think the decade in which you grew up is a huge factor here. If you grew up in prior to the 1970s, most books were accessible to young readers. After that, the market moved more and more towards courting (first) high schoolers, (then) college-aged students, and (finally) adults. Growing up in the '90s, comics were no longer being written for my age group, so while I was into superheroes at the age of five, and finally started buying at the age of ten, it was the back issues that kept my interest far more than the new stuff. Oh, I bought, bagged, and speculated on the new stuff (it was the '90s, after all), but I wasn't actually into most of it (Harbinger being the major exception).
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Post by Batflunkie on Jan 9, 2022 22:45:24 GMT -5
8-10 was mine. My mom was dating a guy at the time who was heavily into comic books and he got me and her into them by proxy (honestly late 90's/Early 00's was an interesting time to be getting into comics in general). After they parted ways, I still read comics, but it was mostly from my mom's stash of older books or whatever I could find in the quarter bins at various LCS, most of it was older material
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Post by speakerdad on Jan 10, 2022 3:08:50 GMT -5
Another "no" here...started reading comics ~6 or so (my folks brought home random comics) and found my uncle's comic stash when I was 8 (he collected in the mid 60's - mid 70's). I was hooked and never looked back!
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