I discovered comic books in the summer after I turned nine. We were playing with children we didn't really know, their father and my dad were friends, playing tag or hide and seek or some damned thing, and I careened around this corner out a back door and slipped on something on the back porch. It was a comic book, only half there. Cover gone. The cover page was still intact, though, and that's what drew me, that and the bright colors of the comic itself. World's Finest. Superman and Batman in one adventure together! I read that story, loved it, then went looking for other comic books to read. I don't mean that day. I mean for the rest of my life. Whenever, for whatever reason, I was able to get my hand on a little bit of money, it got spent at the local drug store on comics. A clean dime, at first, then twelve cents, which is to say two for a quarter with the remaining penny going for state tax.

​     Marvel Comics. Absolutely essential. The first Marvel Comic I read was Fantastic Four #7. Later, Fantastic Four #6. The Sub-Mariner and Dr. Doom team up in an adventure that was nothing like anything I'd ever read over at D.C. Read the issue where Spider-Man first tangled with Doc Ock. Cinematically exciting art by Steve Ditko in that one. The Thing squared off against the Hulk for two issues a couple of years later, and that was it. I was a Marvel guy after that.

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