How did you get started collecting comics?

I started collecting stamps and coins back when the hobby was fun. For stamps, you soaked them off old letters that family members gave you. It was about having one of everything in the stamp albums. It wasn't about getting rich. Somewhere along the line I started hearing stamp collectors criticize people who collected canceled stamps. You had to buy the expensive plastic sleeves to be considered a true collector. I was just a kid. I couldn't afford all the collecting supplies, I just wanted the stamps. I quit in disgust. I also collected coins in the same way. I bought the blue albums and pressed the coins in. The goal was to have one from each year and each mint from a given year. We also looked for error coins and rarities. It wasn't about grade and it was fun. Eventually all the anal high grade coin collectors ruined that hobby too. I was probably buying comics then too, but I never considered them collectible. They were fun to read.

This was one of the earliest I ever got.


My parents bought us comics to keep us quiet on vacations. We'd read the comics and we'd quit whining "are we there yet" on long road trips. Me and my sisters all had our own comics and we didn't really share much. I statted buying my own with my allowance and my dad encouraged me. He'd tell me stories about trading EC comics 2 for 1 at the local book store when he was a kid. He loved EC comics and Dr. Sivana in Capain Marvel. He like a character named Iron Jaw also. I guess my parents taking pride in my comics helped me take pride in them. One day I bought a Hulk comic with the Rhino in it. I didn't know who Hulk was, but I knew the Rhino from the Spiderman cartoon. I thought it was neat that the Rhino was fighting someone other than Spiderman. That hooked me on Marvel. Also, the stories continuing hooked me. I hated the way that each DC comic had a self-contained story and nothing seemed to matter. The hero always won at the end at there was no suspense. There was no wondering if he'd really make it out alive. I started buying more and more Marvel. One day I bought Marvel Team-Up #5 and the current Avengers comic also. Spiderman fought alongside the Vision in Marvel Team-Up #5. I finished reading it and then I read the Avengers. In the Avengers, the Vision was walking through the wall and he talks about having just fought alongside Spider-Man. It wasn't just an ongoing story. It was a universe with depth and events interconnected. From that point forward, I bought almost exclusively Marvel. Everything mattered and had consequences. It wasn't just reading about a hero being a hero. My partents kept calling me a collector. I never did. Then one day I strted seeing Mile High Comics ads saying my X-Men #94 was worth $60. Wow! I paid cover price. From that point forward I started taking better care of my comics.

Eventually, my ability to grade comics led to the job I have today. It was my training ground to be a quality inspector. My eye saw things other people weren't noticing. I started as an assembler and everyone in management recommended me for a job in quality. They picked me, I didn't think of it on my own. The job suits my personality. My organizational skills from retail also helped, but comic collecting played a big part in it.

Defiant1

That describes my experiences down to the Boy's Life subscription. I did have older family members that had collected stamps and they'd go through their closet and let me have old envelopes with stamps on them. They'd also let me and my sister's have extras from their collection. We also had a stamp & coin store at the nearby mall, so I could shop there. I never bought high grade coins, but for me it was just having the year. I still have several zinc pennies which I think are cool.

Defiant1

Like many things in my life my love of comics can be traced back to The Transformers my dad used to work for a local magazine distributer and he asked me one day about the Decepticon character Shockwave and having only seen the cartoon show (in the show Shockwave is a major suck up to the Decepticon leader Megatron) and that's what I told him. He then told a story of Shockwave beat up Megatron and took over the Decepticons and that all the Autobots were captured (except for the Autobot medic Ratchet) and they were all being stripped for parts by Shockwave to use to fix the Decepticons. Shockwave was keeping Optimus Prime's head to get something called the Creation Matrix out of him. Then I told my Dad that was impossible they were doing that on the cartoon show than he handed me a copy of Marvel's The Transformers #6 and suddenly a whole new version of The Transformers Universe were opened to me I read and re-read that book to point where it basically fell apart.

Now through the 80s the ONLY comics I collected were The Transformers and their assorted mini-series The Headmasters, G.I. Joe meets The Transformers, The Transformers Universe, and The Transformers: The Movie adaption when the series came to an end with #80 I had just seen Tim Burton's Batman and I decided to try out various comics and even go to comic book stores.

That's basically it.

The company he worked for primarily distributed magazines everything from Cosmo to Playboy (and every other magazine you can think of) they did put out comics and novels but they were a side job at best. The problem with this company (besides the fact that it changed hands and names about 3 times) was that the only comics he had access to was titles sold at the newsstands, drug stores, 7/11s, and etc. They didn't get titles that were for the direct market also he had to get them on the returns before they got shredded this had another problem sometimes they had a big black "X" on the cover and sometimes the covers were ripped off! I mean it was years before I got a copy of G.I. Joe meets the Transformers #2 with a cover!
The condition of the books sometimes were not all that great and because these were mostly returns I was often a month or two behind the series and sometimes they would be no returns or my Dad couldn't get to them in time and we had to scour the drug stores and newsstands for them (this was before we knew about comic book stores). Like I said they were at number #6 when he found out about it. We found a copy of #5 at newsstand and Marvel had released a grab bag of #1-4 at a local Toys R Us store.



As a comic The Transformers started out very good even though the art was very inconstant and a there is some continuity errors (namely in #1 and #2 characters like Ratchet, Ironhide, Brawn, and Gears looked like their toy counterparts by #3 they looked liked their cartoon counterparts probably because the latter is a lot easier to draw but it was never explained why the change in the book) the series was good up until #25 when they "killed" off Optimus Prime in one of the lamest deaths in comic book history we won a video game but killed some video game characters in the process. The following issue had Megatron blow himself up on a space bridge because he thinks Prime is after him. By the time it got into the mid #30s the book was pretty stupid to say the least one issue was called "Buster Witwicky and the Car Wash of Doom" cited by many fans as one of the worst, if not the worst Transformers every written in any media (and that is saying something considering that the various cartoon shows over the years had a LOT of bad scripts but it also had it's fair share of good scripts as well) the series bounced back #42 when Optimus Prime was brought back and then by #50 was a wholesale slaughter of Transformers by Decepticon Starscream who got jacked up and went on a world wide rampage, and he died at the end issue #50 as well.

Simon Furman who had been writing The Transformers for Marvel UK for quite sometime was brought in to replace Bob Budiansky who had been writing the series since around #5 in the mid 50s. Furman brought back and killed off Meagtron and Ratchet and he also brought back Starscream and fan favorite Autobots Bumblebee, Grimlock, and Jazz. Furman also retold the origin of the Transformers that he told in the Marvel UK series and had the Autobots go after the Creation Matrix to stop Unicron from destroying Cybertron and all this led to a huge fight in #75 in which Optimus Prime dies for a second time. The Transformers #76-80 deals with the Transformers thinking that without the Creation Matrix that Cybertron will explode Starscream and Shockwave steal the Ark and head back to Earth unknown to them that Galvatron (an insane and crazy future version of Megatron who had been upgraded by Unicron in another time line but since Unicron was dead Galvatron was more crazy than every) along with Megatron and Ratchet who been been fused together in a bomb blast and while they were physically separated they now had mental link to each other)was on board the Ark a battle breaks out and the Ark crashes on Earth again in Canadian wilds. Spike Witwicky (Buster's brother) finds the Ark and teams up with Fortress Maximus to fight Galvatron and Fort Max throws him in a frozen lake.
Back on Cybertron the Alliance between the Autobots and Decepticons breaks down and the Decepticons strand the Autobots and their human allies on Cybertron. Grimlock gets the Autobots off Cybertron with his stolen Decepticon battle cruisers that he had stolen millions of years ago. The humans stay behind on Cybertron to find "The Last Autobot" an ancient Cybertronian to bring back Optimus Prime (again for the 3rd time) and he does. The Last Autobot, Optimus Prime, and the humans join the rest of the Autobots for a last ditch battle on alien planet where Prime defeats Bludgeon, the Decepticon who is now leading them. After the battle Bludgeon a bot of honor takes the remaining Decepticons back into deep space. Prime tells the Autobots that Cybertron was never going to explode it was being reformatted back into what was in the golden age of the planet. That the Autobots will take the Humans back to Earth and help the aliens whose planet they helped wreck rebuild then they would finally go home.

After #80 Furman continued to write the Marvel UK' Transformers series until it's end.

Then in G.I. Joe #139-#144 brought back Megatron who finally crawled out the Ark and mistook a Cobra signal for a Transformer signal when he found he was wrong he attacked the Cobra base and when he stopped due to his injures Cobra Commander made a deal with him Cobra would rebuild his body and give him their new rail gun in exchange he would give them some of the Cybertronian technology on board the Ark. The Joes get word of this and use their special radio that was given to by the Autobots at the end of G.I. Joe meets the Transformers #4 and Optimus Prime sends a small group of Autobots to investigate and all but two of all killed off by Megatron, who later of course betrays Cobra Commander and kidnaps the woman who built his new rail gun for some unexplained reason and Spike sneaks on board the Ark. The Joes contract Cybertron again and ask more Autobots and then begins Transformers: Generation 2, a 12 issue series that a lot more intense and a much more violent Transformers series, in this series we learn that a second more powerful generation of Transformers were created ages ago and are now creating havoc across the universe. In the course of the series Megatron kill Bludgeon to reclaim the leadership of the Decepticons again, brings back Starscream (who of course betrays him again), and Optimus Prime dies and comes back to life in the final issue. Optimus Prime and Megatron decide to bury the hatchet and work to rebuild Earth, but during his battle with the leader of Cybertronians Prime learns of Liege Maximo and the Hub and he knows that the war will never truly end. In an epilogue the lone survivor of the Cybertronians that had escaped from the battle with the other Transformers returns the Hub and reports what happened to Liege Maximo, who then makes the revelation that he thinks of Megatron as an offspring and that the new truce between the Autobots and the Decepticons will never hold.

That was the end of Marvel's Transformers time line. There has been no official continuation of the Marvel Transformers time line by Dreamwave or IDW and chances are there never will be, but stranger things have happened.