My Secret Origin I had a head-start in reading comics with a hand-me-down collection. I began selecting my own comics in the early 1970’s. I was in the early years of elementary school, at the time.
I’d never been to a large con before, but some fellow comic-book-loving friends were getting together at Baltimore Comic-Con this year. I made plans to join them. I was primarily interested in meeting with some of the professional writers and artists.
When I was a kid, my brothers gave me comic books to kind of start and fill out my collection. I wrote about the earliest ones I had owned here: https://jimlawless.net/posts/my-first-comics/
When I started buying comics on my own, DC was probably my favorite publisher. I think the stories were more geared toward elementary school kids like me. At some point, I discovered this hero known as The Flash
Justice League of America #97 ( MAR 72 )
Before I was in Kindergarten, I had a comic book collection. It began with some issues that were hand-me-downs and it grew slowly from the late 60’s into the early 70’s.
I had plenty of exposure to Batman and Superman:
“Night of the Reaper” scared the bejeebers out of me.
The DC 100-Page Super Spectacular anthology issues were great!
There were a few Marvels in the collection:
Shooter
I was a little surprised when I saw an announcement from Krypton Comics in Omaha ( http://www.kryptoncomicsomaha.com ) that comics legend Jim Shooter would be the guest of honor on Free Comic Book Day, this year. I was very happy to chat briefly with him.
I had wanted to bring something for Shooter to autograph, but I have had so many comic book purges throughout the years, that my original comics from his tenure at Marvel, Valiant, Defiant, or any other company are either long gone or packed away somewhere.
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by crystal radios. The first one I had was in the form of a backpack for the Six Million Dollar Man action figure ( Mom picked up the crystal set at some kind of sale before I ever had the action figure ).
The thing that fascinated me about crystal radios was that they required no external power-source; the radio signals themselves were strong enough to power a small earpiece at an acceptable volume.