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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2022 10:33:08 GMT -5
Pre-1999, I barely did any research and was just a happy-go-lucky comic book reader who read almost everything out of sequence. Most of my knowledge was restricted to what I gleaned from tv (The Sci-Fi channel especially, there was a programme that featured new books, that's how I learned about the Death of Superman when I was still in single-digits). I discovered Wizard Magazine around the same time I began to tinker on-line....but that's when the knowledge really started to flow....wow....we have it so easy now....
Despite how badly Wizard is viewed these days, it was a gold mine for discovery. I remember in a specific issue first learning about Japanese Manga that was for sale in the US. And I'm talking about legit manga tonkobons here, not the frankenstein's monster that was the VIZ output of that time where it was printed like a regular floppy, but was still read like manga Yes!! Do you remember before manga/anime really broke big (at least here in the US) how Wizard had a small "manga corner" section in each issue? I absolutely loved Wizard. And ToyFare. And Nintendo Power. Those were some good times.
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Post by Batflunkie on May 29, 2022 10:41:17 GMT -5
Yes!! Do you remember before manga/anime really broke big (at least here in the US) how Wizard had a small "manga corner" section in each issue? Sort of, most of my issues of Wizard were hand me downs. I still fondly remember picking up my first issue of Shonen Jump in 2003 and not being able to put it down. Early 00's is where I think Manga and Anime really started to hit their stride
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2022 7:00:10 GMT -5
The aforementioned card catalog was of course a library staple back in the day, but if you needed to go "next level", this is where the hardcore research happened:
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Post by badwolf on May 30, 2022 10:11:21 GMT -5
I concur with Supercat. Things may be more accessible now, but I think something has been lost as well.
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Post by MDG on May 30, 2022 10:47:55 GMT -5
When we were in college in the 70s, my friends and I could drop incredible amounts of information about comics and (mostly monster) movies without any kind of structured research. I'm still not sure how we picked up and retained all of that up.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 30, 2022 18:30:30 GMT -5
I concur with Supercat. Things may be more accessible now, but I think something has been lost as well. Frustration. Wasted time on research paths that led nowhere. Anxiety at the things you needed not being available.
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Post by spoon on May 30, 2022 19:11:37 GMT -5
I don't think I would really write stuff down or compiling notes. At most maybe write down some issue numbers I wanted to buy. We had one copy of the Overstreet Price Guide that I'd flip until it was falling apart instead of getting new ones each year. Another thing I would use to research comics I wanted to get was Wolverine Saga. It combined panels from old comics (Marvel Saga style) with text describing the stories. A page at the end of each had a list of the issues that provided the source materials, but it didn't correlate the issue numbers with specific panels/stories, so I had to piece it together myself. Since it was like a Wolverine biography it would focus on certain issues in detail and ignore big chunks of X-Men issues that didn't have what Peter Sanderson might consider important bits of Wolverine's history.
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Post by badwolf on May 30, 2022 19:45:49 GMT -5
I concur with Supercat. Things may be more accessible now, but I think something has been lost as well. Frustration. Wasted time on research paths that led nowhere. Anxiety at the things you needed not being available. I had better luck with the card catalogue than I do with their computers.
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Post by tonebone on May 31, 2022 15:40:53 GMT -5
(...) Who was Kite-Man? I need to see him. Of course, at the time, I had no way of knowing who he was, and he wasn’t be easy to track down . Short of writing to DC, there was no way of finding out about Kite-Man. (...) Every kid in the Pacific Northwest knew who he was:
I have questions. Were there really enough kite related injuries to warrant a PSA from the power company? Were there really kites made from metal? Or metal string used on them? If your $1 kite got wrapped around a power line, would the power company really come out to rescue it?
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Post by tonebone on May 31, 2022 15:43:53 GMT -5
The aforementioned card catalog was of course a library staple back in the day, but if you needed to go "next level", this is where the hardcore research happened: MICROFICHE! A lot of the first wave of golden age comics that were available digitally were scanned from Microfiche, and were terrible quality. Most have been re-scanned from paper sources, now.
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Post by tonebone on Jun 8, 2022 10:30:06 GMT -5
When I was a kid, I had a copy of a Comics Buyer's Guide that I would thumb through religiously. I would check who appeared in back issues and create my own versions of the stories using G.I. Joe figures. I was also heavily into the back pages of Marvel Age where they would recap a particular year in comics, and I also liked those saga books they put out for popular characters. I remember pouring over the Spider-Man series they put out in 1990 even though they were expensive books for me. I had a subscription to the Comic Buyer's Guide during the first half of the 80's, it was in a weekly newspaper type format back then and looked like this: I totally looked forward to it showing up in the mail and learned SO much over the years reading it. Again, this is where I think I found more happiness. Anticipation of something new each week, what interesting things would I find out about, etc. And because it would be that whole week before the next one, there wasn't this "next click, next click". Variety is the spice of life, and the pre-Internet days inherently imposed that. Now everything is an all-you-can-eat buffet which seems amazing at first, but tends to leave me feeling bloated and unsatisified at the end. I subscribed about the same time (mid to late 80's), for several years. It was the best, and I wish it still existed, in that format. My wife resubscribed many years later, as a gift for me, and it was a magazine, and was awful. It didn't last long after that. I was so excited for each and every issue, and couldn't wait to read it. I would go to the post office every morning before school, and would begin reading it in my high school homeroom. I was *that* guy.
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Post by badwolf on Jun 8, 2022 11:08:27 GMT -5
I had a CBG newspaper subscription too. Loved it.
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Post by james on Jun 10, 2022 11:01:24 GMT -5
Was the best Christmas present I got in 1985. God I loved this book. Looking at the cover brings back memories
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Post by codystarbuck on Jun 11, 2022 14:39:26 GMT -5
Was the best Christmas present I got in 1985. God I loved this book. Looking at the cover brings back memories I can't recall if I bought that at the student union bookstore or the local Waldenbooks; but, it was while I was in college. Bought the super-villain one at B Dalton. Got the rest of the series while working at B&N, later (Monsters, Robots & Spaceships, Adventure Heroes), except the cartoon character one (Waldens or B Dalton, while in the Navy). Rovin had a way higher opinion of the Atlas/Seaboard material than anyone else (wonder why.....) and crapped on some pretty good stuff, like Mike Gustovich's Justice Machine (the Noble Comics issues, and likely only the 2nd one, which was illustrated in the book)
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