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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 30, 2023 10:45:14 GMT -5
(...) From what I hear here and on podcasts, it seems like the biggest ways kids got into comics after '76 or so were: - An older sibling (or parent) who had a bunch of comics
- Star Wars
Thoughts? Like Slam_Bradley, I also had my start in 1975, and to add to his point, comic books could still be found on spinner racks in some convenience, drug and grocery stores into the late 1980s (at least they could in the wider San Francisco Bay area, where I was living at the time).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2023 13:35:11 GMT -5
(...) From what I hear here and on podcasts, it seems like the biggest ways kids got into comics after '76 or so were: - An older sibling (or parent) who had a bunch of comics
- Star Wars
Thoughts? Like Slam_Bradley, I also had my start in 1975, and to add to his point, comic books could still be found on spinner racks in some convenience, drug and grocery stores into the late 1980s (at least they could in the wider San Francisco Bay area, where I was living at the time). I was already well into comics (started in earnest in'75/76 as well, though had a few from '73/74), and had already discovered a comic shop by this time, but in '86 when Hurricane Gloria hit and we were without power for 3 days, we were running to 7-11 everyday for quick pick up of perishables, and they had a full rack of comics where I would buy 2-3 every day we went to read that night-stuff I wasn't already getting, so I got issues of stuff like Crisis on Infinite Earths, Savage Sword of Conan, DC Comics Presents, and others there. In college I would hit the Walden Books in the town where our dorms were freshman year to check out their spinner rack (I was ordering my books via Westfield at that point, so it was more to preview stuff or grab the odd title I wasn't buying, but they were available in the mass market). Even after college, there were newsstands I would haunt for copies of books that sold out at the lcs since newsstands got their books about 2-3 weeks after the lcs did (I remember looking for the first issue of the Waid/Garney Cap run in the 90s at newsstands because I hadn't been reading the Gruenwald Cap and it wasn't on my pull list so I had missed it, but I found one at a 7-11 (a different one than the one we went to during Gloria) I stopped at. So there were still newsstands out there, but they were nowhere near as prevalent. So there were still some places to discover them (but nowhere near as ubiquitous as they were in the 70s. But yeah, in the mid 90s, when even places like Barnes & Noble and Walden Books were shrinking comics footprint and places like 7-11 decided there were more profitable uses for the floorspace than comics, Discovery became a real issue. It had been getting harder since the mid-80s, it got near impossible then though. -M
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Post by badwolf on Mar 30, 2023 15:14:40 GMT -5
I remember Waldenbooks had the more modern version of the spinner rack, sort of clear-front cubbies rather than the wire frame.
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Post by commond on Mar 30, 2023 16:17:44 GMT -5
I started buying comics in New Zealand in 1988 and they were in every stationary shop and corner dairy in the country. There were a lot of secondhand bookstores at the time which also sold comics, as well as school fairs and garage sales. I had to go into the city to visit comic book shops, which I could only do during the holidays, so I collected a mix of up to date issues from the comic book shops and six month old comics off the newsstands. Comics didn't really disappear from the newsstands until the late 90s by which stage stationary shops were struggling in general.
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Post by Farrar on Mar 30, 2023 16:50:13 GMT -5
My cousins had a huge collection of late 50s-1960s DCs that I loved reading whenever I visited them, so I was very familiar with many of the characters and series, but the covers below illustrate the first issues of various series that I owned. These issues were bought for me by my mother--she would buy my siblings and me either coloring books or comics to keep us busy as she took us along on errands, and I always opted for a comic book--or bought for me by my grandmothers (visiting them always resulted in a trip to the candy store!). Distribution being what it was back then, buying new comics--DCs at least--was always hit or miss for me, so I missed a lot of the subsequent issues for these series. The only DC title I had a lengthy string of consecutive issues was Adventure, and that's because I eventually had a subscription. I loved the Legion and was always bugging my mom for a subscription as a birthday or Christmas gift--and one day she finally relented. Of course, soon after the subscription began, the lead switched to Supergirl I still remember the shock I felt that day I read in the Adv. Lettercol that the lead feature was being changed and that my beloved Legion would no longer appear in Adventure. So while finding new issues was always a problem, when I finally got an allowance I had much better luck buying back issues from the collectibles store that was right on my block
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Post by Farrar on Mar 30, 2023 17:09:04 GMT -5
And here are my first Marvels. The candy stores in my neighborhood seemed to stock the FF, Avengers and X-Men (first-run series) on a consistent basis, so back then I had more or less complete runs up until the time when I stopped reading comics; I was able to buy as new issues FF #68-117; Avengers #45-#106; and X-Men #40-66.
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Post by james on Mar 30, 2023 18:53:39 GMT -5
Roughly I read my first comic around 1977-1978. My best friend in Elementary School had a huge steamer trunk of comics. and we would hang out at his house and just go through the trunk. He actually was the first person to ever get me a subscription. It was maybe my 12th birthday and he and his mother made a collage from XMEN comics. I even remember that I could't wait till my first comic came in the mail ( please allow 10-12 weeks for first issue to be mailed). At that time everything was Byrne Xmen and I couldn't wait to get my first Byrne issue , because at 12 years old you think he'll be on the book forever. I remember when after everyday checking the mail, my first issue 145 arrived in the mail. Needless to say I was disappointed because Byrne was replaced by some upstart named Cockrum
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