Forum Overview :: Short Dumbledores :: A Brief History of Comics (unf)

[quote name="Bill Dungsroman"]1970 And Earlier (The Gold and Silver Ages) Action Comics #1 introduces Super Man, Detective Comics #27 introduces Batman, and The Amazing Spiderman #1 introduces The Incredible Hulk. Got it? Good, because I don’t have much else to say about this period. Who really fucking cares? Old comics are stupid. Oh, alright. Thanks-to-the-groundbreaking-efforts-of-Stan-Lee-Bernie-Wrightson-et-al-modern-comics-would-never-have-evolved-as-they-have-AMEN. 1970s I was born and learned to read in the 70’s, so my personal exposure to the granddaddy of dorky pastimes began thus. I co-opted (and later inherited) my older brother’s scattershot collection of funny books. My pop used to call ‘em funny books, but they didn’t seem at all funny to me. They were a magic gateway to blah blah and such, you know? For better or worse, though, my brother was the gatekeeper, since they were all his; I had a modest collection of Richie Rich and Archie comics. But he, he had Spiderman and The Avengers and whatnot (mostly Marvel stuff, a trend I upheld for awhile). While I was clowning with Richie in his impossibly big mansion or cruising Riverdale in Archie’s jalopy looking to score off Veronica, my bro was defeating Attuma’s oceanfront attacks and dodging the Green Goblin’s (I and II, and the Hobgoblin’s, for that matter) pumpkin bombs. Cool, and all that, I thought. Perhaps you don’t remember the first time you ever read the immortal anomotopiec THWIP of Spiderman’s webs. I don’t either, but there I was, flipping my imaginary webs at the furniture and yelling “Thwip!” like a moron, my hands screwed up in those lazy Evil Eyes that Spidey did. I loved reading about Spiderman, but not so much that I didn’t get confused as hell at the fact that he was in Amazing Spiderman and Peter Parker the Spectacular Spiderman simultaneously. Or for that matter, how Captain America was fighting crime (usually, the Red Skull or A.I.M.) in his stupid ass solo effort while leading the Avengers as well. I’ve always found it amazing (even spectacular) that Marvel, a company who was so anal about continuity with its characters, had them doing two different things in the same month in different books. I did until I got older and realized they were money-grubbing whores, that is. [/quote]