Remembering My First Comics

I feel like a lot of comic artists and writers are able to recall the first one. That single, fated issue that got them starry eyed for the medium. For the longest time, I thought I didn't have that story. I didn't remember it. I'm sure there was a comic, I just didn't have a clue what it was. Memories have a way of returning, though. Sometimes it's a smell or a taste, or a building you recognize or an album cover long since tucked away, temporarily. It took me some time, but I eventually did remember that first comic. And, thanks to the internet, a few minutes of research and suddenly the cover was digitally before my very eyes: Hawk and Dove #7.

Notice the date? December of 1989. I was ten years old. The circumstances in which this comic found me are still a little fuzzy. It was given to me somehow, but it wasn't like a bithday or Christmas present. It was more like, somebody had some stuff lying around and y'know what? Brandon might like these... It was a hand-me-down. Of this I'm still not quite sure. While I didn't get this comic off of a spinner rack in some K&B drugstore, I do remember seeking out and buying the following issue to see where the story went. So, how long this comic had been hanging around? Couldn't have been too long, but it eventually landed in my possession, thus igniting my love of comics.

What I do remember is leafing through this comic's pages again and again and again. One of the things that I was attracted to was the format-how thin it was. How floppy it was. How the cover had a glossy sheen and the interior pages were newsprint. I had no idea who Hawk and Dove were and I remember being confused about parts of the comic, like this panel below:

Dove and Hawk are in the middle of changing back into their alter egos and the artist was using this unconventional way of showing the transition. To me, a kid who was new to the world of superhero comics was confused by the choice. Sure, I'd seen the Superman movies by this point but, but Clark Kent wore his costume under his clothes. His costume was physical, here they're just transforming back and forth. I mean, I still don't understand Hawk and Dove's powers but only because I've never tried to find out.

Another panel that had lodged itself into my psyche was this murder scene:

It's pretty tame and completely bloodless, but I remember thinking I better not ever let my mother know this panel exists in this book. It seemed very rated R and rated R movies were not allowed. Thus the intrigue deepened for me. Here was something that clearly was not allowed, but I had managed to get my hands on it anyway and right under my parents' noses at that!

I'm not sure comics was entirely an act of rebellion, but I knew I was able to get away with something in a family dynamic where I was by nature a goody-goody. Comics was a doorway to forbidden things. And as long as I didn't drop the ball, they were allowed.

A year and half later I was in the sixth grade. During the 1990-1991 school year, I'd embark on my very first original comic. It was titled Ghost ironically enough, and was about a guy who could phase through walls, much like Kitty Pryde. An awful embarasseing copy of that comic still exists in a long box of my junior high and high school best friend. He's sent me some snapshots of it not long ago. Here's the cover.

Throughout this entire comic I was just doing my best Erik Larsen-via Spider-Man impression. There's even a scene that I copied basically panel for panel from the Spider-Man Revenge of the Sinister Six miniseries (it's either issue 20 or 21, not quite sure). Amateurs that we were, we used regular old copy paper, ballpoint pens and markers that would bleed and fade throughout the years, but we were making comics! and that was all that mattered.

And I guess you know the rest! Okay, yeah so there's a gap from 1996ish to 2019 where I wasn't making comics but I made my way back eventually. I just wish I had made my way back a little bit sooner.