Early Favorites

When I was a new comics reader, Captain America, by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, was far and away my favorite. I also enjoyed Carl Burgos' The Human Torch and Bill Everett's The Sub-Mariner.

When I first got into comic books, it was before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched "the Marvel Age". So, initially, I was drawn to the DC superhero books. The Wayne Boring Superman always caught my eye. Very stylized. Bob Kane's Batman, which was probably mostly drawn by Sheldon Moldoff at that time, was a favorite of mine as a kid. I really liked Carmine Infantino's artwork on the early Flash stories and Adam Strange. Also, I thought Gil Kane's Green Lantern looked great. I suppose Gardner Fox and John Broome would have been favorite writers of mine at that time, but I wasn't aware of who was writing a lot of those books until many years later. But when Jack and Stan launched the Marvel Age, I pretty much became a Marvel freak although I kept up with the DC books as well. Stan really brought a whole new sense of reality and freshness to characterization that hit me (and millions of other readers) in a big way. Jack was such a prolific and amazing and stylized artist ... man, those were exciting years. I couldn't wait for the new books to come out every week! Nowadays, I'm much more into the DC books, but I try to keep up with both companies are publishing. Marvel's doing some good stuff too. I've loved the recent Winter Soldier story in Captain America.

Like most other teen comic fans in the early '80s (when I really started to collect), the Uncanny X-Men were at the top of my list. I was really bummed when I learned John Byrne was leaving the book, but kept buying it for way too many years afterward, through all that damned Brood nonsense, the Storm-gets-a-Mohawk phase and more convoluted plotlines than I care to remember. I remember picking up Frank Miller's Daredevil early in the run (back when Roger MacKenzie was still scripting it), and it seemed to have the excitement and thrills lacking in virtually every other comic on the racks. (Those issues still look pretty good, incidentally, which is more than I can say for the X-Men.) I also read [Marv] Wolfman and [George] Perez' New Teen Titans and way too many other DC and Marvel books that I can't recall now. Then, all of a sudden, Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing, Love and Rockets hit the stands, Nexus arrived and I found a whole new set of favorites.

I'm so incredibly old that my earliest comic reading predates credit boxes. I used to recognize the artists only by their styles (such as could be seen thru the various inkers), and the writers I knew not at all. I read all the Batman titles, though, and those stories were signed "Bob Kane", so, by virtue of Batman being my favorite character, Bob Kane quickly became my favorite artist. The fact that he drew in several different styles has influenced my own work right down to the present.

I started reading comics when I was nine years old, a complete Marvel zombie. I loved Bill Mantlo's Cloak and Dagger series and especially Louise Simonson on X-Factor. I didn't realize how much of an impact Louise Simonson had on me, until I met her in San Diego two years ago. Out of nowhere, I start geeking out, in near tears (I kid you not) about how she inspired me to write comics — all the while, she's completely preoccupied talking to someone else. That was embarrassing.

Well, hands down, had to be Mad Magazine: writers Dave Berg, Don Martin, Sergio Argones, Al Jafee, all of them. It was always my dream to write for them and I met with William Gaines (on MAD-ison Ave) in NY. Unfortunately, in the early '80s MAD was one of the toughest humor markets to break into in the country. Anyhow, I wound up working for Mad's competitor, Cracked Magazine — and I always felt like a traitor.

Way back then, I really got into the B&W TMNT works of Eastman and Laird, Jon Bognadave's Power Pack, and the Batman covers by Mike Mignola were and are still my favorites.

The first comics I ever read were Denis The Menace, Peanuts, Turok,and Tarzan. Some of my favorite creators were Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert and Jim Steranko.

The book that first snagged me was Secret Wars, which was a good general intro to the Marvel Universe. From there, Uncanny X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, [Walt] Simonson's Thor, [Jim] Owsley's Power Man & Iron Fist, [Mike] Baron's Punisher, and a few others kept me in the Marvel loop. But I also picked up indies like American Flagg!, The Badger, Concrete, and especially Nexus, which remains among my favorite all-time reads and hugely influential on my storytelling approach.

My favorites were (as a kid in the '70s) Legion of Super-Heroes, Justice Society, Micronauts, Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex, Unknown Soldier, Sgt. Rock, The 'Nam, Spider-Man ... ok and everything else I could get my hands on at the 7-11. My favorite creators back then were all artists ... (I learned to check out who wrote the books as I got older) [Keith] Giffen, [Michael] Golden, [John] Byrne, [George] Perez and [Bernie] Wrightson. That was the list from which I would buy no matter what they were working on. It's obviously expanded over the years but they were my favorites as a kid.

I guess in the earliest of early days, I was unaware of any comic creator by name other than some guy named "Stan Lee." And since every Marvel Comic I ever saw said "Stan Lee Presents" on it, I had this slightly off-kilter illusion that somehow this Stan Lee guy was responsible for, like, every comic ever. Spider-Man was a massive favorite. My mom would go to garage sales and bring home giant stacks of comics where she'd get 80 books for a buck. I remember as a young-'un of maybe about five or six years old, that I insisted on acting out a battle I had just read between Spidey and the Green Goblin for my assembled relatives who had gathered in the back yard for a July 4th picnic. They didn't seem too interested, but stuck with me nonetheless.

I grew up with Asterix and British war comics like Commando Picture Library, Battle and Warlord. Then I discovered 2000AD when I was 10 and I was hooked. This was in the early '80s, when it regularly featured guys like John Wagner, Alan Moore, Steve Dillon, Brian Bolland, Alan Davis, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, you name it. The quality of their work pretty much spoiled me for anyone else.

The very first comics I read were my dad's Golden and early Silver Age comics from when he was a kid. All my earliest work was influenced by Weird Tales, Jonah Hex, Superman and Batman. I wasn't too aware of who was writing or drawing the comics, but I remember the stories and the covers vividly. Of course, being a kid, I left them all over the place, on the floor, stepped on them, all that great stuff. I probably destroyed half his collection.

There were so many. I loved John Broome as a writer (Flash, Green Lantern) his stories still hold up today. Gardner Fox was also an early favorite and, of course, Stan Lee. Jerry Siegle also turned out some very memorable stories in those days ("The Death of Superman" being one that truly stands out). For artists, I loved the beauty and grace of Curt Swan and the weirdness of Steve Ditko. Gil Kane's powerful, but graceful figures were always a favorite, too! And I liked George Papp's very simple rendering. But, at the risk of being a cliche, Jack Kirby was, is and always will be The King for me.

The first comic I fell for was Fantastic Four 178 from 1977, by Roy Thomas and George Perez. I was hooked — The Thing's made of rocks?! The Torch can catch himself on fire?! The Negative Zone?! The Brute?! Tigra and the Frightful Four was just icing on the cake. I loved the book, bought every back issue I could find in a used book store, and followed it up until John Byrne took over, and then freaked out and fell in love with Byrne's work. Byrne on the FF (the first time around, with [Joe] Sinnot inks) coupled with Uncanny X-Men 121 (the first Alpha Flight) made me a lifelong comic fan. Another early favorite was The Micronauts — I had the toys so I had to have the comic book and Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden's work on that title is under-appreciated to this day.

All of those series — FF, X-Men, Micronauts — were great team books with rich characters and lots of science fiction liberally mixed in.

I'd always been a casual reader growing up, but it was in the early-90s, around 14-years old, that I started getting serious about comics. It was always Superman for me, though! One of the first comics I ever remember reading was Action Comics #660 (The death of Lex Luthor), and then it was the "Death of Superman" (Superman #75) that really locked me in. So coming from that, my favorite creators were people like Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett, and people in that crowd. I also quickly became a fan of Kelley Jones on Batman — I loved his twisted style. I'd love to do a really dark story with him someday!

I was a new comics reader in the early '90s, as I discovered comics rather "late" in life. But the things that rocked my world were: Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, From Hell, Lost Girls, Watchmen, Miracleman, and Swamp Thing; Los Bros Hernandez' Love and Rockets; art spiegelman's Maus; Eddie Campbell's Alec and Bacchus sagas; Kyle Baker's The Cowboy Wally Show and Why I Hate Saturn; Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Signal to Noise and Mr. Punch; Dan Clowes' Eightball; and Chester Brown's Yummy Fur. And they're all still touchstones for me.

I first started reading comics in the '70s, and my favorite titles were Marvel Team-Up, Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Tales, Brave & Bold, Detective Comics, and Marvel Two-In-One. And it didn't take me long to fall in love with the artwork of Gil Kane, John Romita Sr., Ross Andru, and Jim Aparo. By the age of ten, I could already spot their distinctive styles and would follow their work onto other titles like the Avengers and Action Comics.

Artists, mostly, being an artist myself. Gil Kane. John Romita, Sr. Romita was a god, to me. Still is. The Gil Kane Romita covers of the seventies are still some of my favorites — ever — of all comics. Dan Decarlo has been a perennial favorite. Mike Ploog. Frank Brunner. Steve Englehart. Jim Starlin. John Buscema. I always loved Conan by him, and actually preferred him to Barry Smith, although I loved Smith's art, just not as much as Buscema on Conan. Sal Buscema on his old Captain America run. Paul Gulacy on Master of Kung Fu. I still own that entire run. I was an enormous fan of Ross Andru on Spider Man. John Byrne — especially when he was doing Iron Fist, and his early days on X-Men. Chris Claremont, on X-Men.Those were my first loves, when I became a serious collector.

I had read the Sunday comics and Archie when I was younger, but when I really started collecting comics I was a hardcore superhero fan. One of my favorites was John Byrne's run on Fantastic Four. I remember he did one issue where it was announced that Sue was pregnant and, because of that, the FF were going to break up. I was shocked! Were they serious? It seemed like a logical decision, but I still couldn't believe it. Thankfully, miraculously, the next issue revealed that they would stay together after all. Looking back I realize that the old break-up-the-group routine was a cliche even then, but as a twelve year-old reading it for the first time it was great comics. As someone said, the Golden Age of comics is when you're twelve and at the time Byrne was the best there was at what he did.

I started reading comics at around eight years old, and Transformers was pretty much the only title I bought. There would be road-trips with Archies, a couple of issues of the incredibly strange (to my young mind) Crisis on Infinite Earths, Super Powers mini-comics with the figures you got at the gas station, but the only one that I was rabid about was Transformers. The first time a "name" creator really made an impact on me was Rob Liefeld, actually, who drew a very cool Wolverine vs.Cable fight. After that though, and largely thanks to Image comics, I began to really pay attention to the names in the credit boxes on my comics. Peter David's run on X-Factor was probably the first writer I noticed, and from there it was [Neil] Gaiman's Sandman, and [Grant] Morrison's Invsibles, both of which made huge impacts on my idea of comics.

Walt Simonson and Archie Goodwin affected me profoundly with the Manhunter storyline back in the seventies. I say it over and over again, but it's true — I've never recovered. It not only affected me as a writer of comics — but also as a writer in general. And as a fan — at that time, Simonson's art was a revelation. I was of course a fan of Neal Adams. And then [Gene] Colan and [Marv] Wolfman on Tomb of Dracula — their influence on me is enormous.

My favorites as a kid were Uncanny X-Men with Chris Claremont, Daredevil with Anne Nocenti, and Alpha Flight. Of course at the time I was buying comics based on what characters I liked (mainly stories with strong female characters) and didn't start to notice which artists or writers I liked until later on.

I was a huge fan of The Brave and the Bold, Legion of Super-Heroes, Teen Titans, and the whole Bat-Shebang ... which doesn't even begin to cover my monthly comic budget as a kid. As well, I couldn't get enough of World's Finest and Adventure Comics when the titles were a buck each and featured six or more stories per issue. Obviously, Jim Aparo was a favorite. Denny O'Neil. Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen. Marv Wolfman and George Pιrez. Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. I could go on and on ...

I used to love G.I. Joe. The Mike Zeck Covers, The Michael Golden stories in the Yearbooks ... I'm getting misty eyed just thinking about it. While I've been reading comicbooks for longer than I can remember that really is the first book that I started to make sure I had all the issues. The first artist I remember sticking out for me was Jim Steranko. There was a Nick Fury reprint book that really blew me away and Nick Fury: Agent Of Shield #1 was one of the first "back issues" I picked up as a kid. Todd McFarlane was the fist modern comicbook artist that I really responded to. I just remember that with each new issue of Amazing Spider-Man thinking, "how is he gonna draw that guy?."

I was never a "new comic reader", that is to say I didn't read new comics. My father has been a dealer in antique lighting for the last 35 years. So I grew up attending a lot of auctions, estate sales, antique shows etc. ... That's where I bought almost all of my childhood comics. I used to say that I wanted the Batman comic where he looks like "this" and then put my thumbs and forefingers up to my face to make the square jaw. There was no Batman Adventures then, but those older Batman comics were light, colorful and appealed to my childhood palate.

When I bought new comics they were either Brave and the Bold or Micronauts ... that's about it. I got a copy of Detective Comics #408 when I was five years old. I was aware that there was someone who drew Batman better than anyone else. That man was of course, Neal Adams. when I couldn't get Adams (which I could only find when there was an antique show to go to) I would usually settle for a nice Jim Aparo-drawn issue of Brave and the Bold. Micronauts was the only Marvel comic that I would ever look at — and I loved it! The art was better than anything else out ... period! There was dramatic lighting, atmosphere and mood. Michael Golden was really showing me how to draw back then! I never read ANY other Marvel comics ... their characters always seemed so fake and Johnny-come-lately. I didn't read X-Men and aside from Captain America they all had really dumb costumes. My childhood tastes dictated that heroes are to have a logo right in the middle of their chest and really should have capes and tights! Here's the thing to remember ... back then I was able to pick up used comics for a lot less than new comics. Think about it ... no wonder I didn't want George Perez-drawn issues of Avengers ... why would I when for half the money I could have issues of Bernie Wrightson's Swamp Thing, Mike Kaluta issues of The Shadow. Heck, I even had the two Jeff Jones issues of Wonder Woman. I was very sensitive to the art in comics, and most late '70s and early '80s comics were looking really slick and silly. They didn't have the drama of the early '70s comics.

I think I became a regular comic book reader around age nine or ten in the mid-seventies. I loved Byrne & Claremont's X-Men, Cuti & Staton's E-Man, Wein & Wrightson's Swamp Thing, Kirby's Eternals, Mantlo & Golden's Micronauts, but to be honest, I'd read anything I could get my hands on. When Frank Miller popped up a few years later it broke me wide open and sent me on a quest for more daring material, both old and new. So now I'm that guy at the comic shop who buys The Hulk and Drawn & Quarterly and everything in between.

New Teen Titans, Uncanny X-Men, almost anything from Wolfman, Perez, Claremont, Silvestri, Byrne, and other artists who worked on Uncanny X-Men

Back when I was three or four years old, you mean? My favorite artists then are still my favorite artists now — Dan DeCarlo and John Romita Sr. When called upon to do an art job (pretty rare these days), I'm still emulating them. Other than them Hernandez boys, nobody has ever worked the pretty girl style that brilliantly.

I did not grow up reading comics. It wasn't until my late teens that I was introduced to the medium. Really, the only book I read back then was Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Dave Mckean's covers was what made me curious enough to even pick one up. After the first one I was hooked like some kind of junkie.

All the Mad guys, especially Don Martin, Paul Coker and Al Jaffee. Also Charles M Schulz, Mort Walker, Al Capp, Hank Kitcham and many other daily strip artists, as well as various oddballs like Basil Woolverton and Big Daddy Roth.

Probably my first exposure to comics was the Peanuts Parade collections my school library had. I had subscriptions to Mad and National Lampoon, so when I started getting an allowance I bought every humor magazine I could find like Cracked, Crazy, and Sick. From there I bought every humor comic I could find. There were lots of black and white magazines like the Warren stuff and the imitations that mostly reprinted old '50s comics. I guess my father realized I was reading all this so he brought out the things he read when he was that age like old Mads and ECs. Then this book and record store that sold comics also had undergrounds and didn't mind me buying those. I also went through a period of buying everything Marvel put out in the early '80s.

When I started reading comics at the tender age of nine years old, the book that hooked me was Countdown, a weekly magazine featuring strips based on science fiction TV shows such as UFO, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Stingray and Fireball XL5. The artwork, by creators such as Gerry Heylock, Frank Bellamy, Brian Lewis, Frank Langford, Ron Embleton and Michael Noble, was of an incredibly high quality, made possible by the fact that they only had to produce two pages of color — or grey wash — art each week. I wasn't aware at the time that many of the strips were reprints from a '60s comic called TV21, but that didn't matter, they were still great reading and there were no compilation reprints of TV21 strips back in those distant days. Unfortunately Countdown only lasted two years but was replaced for me by Look-In, another weekly based on TV shows with top artists drawing strips such as Kung-Fu, Timeslip or Man From Atlantis by Michael Noble, The Six Million Dollar Man by Martin Asbury, The Bionic Woman featuring the beautiful early work of John Bolton and The Tomorrow People by John M. Burns. The stories in both Countdown and Look-In were written mostly by Alan Fennell or Angus Allan respectively, and were often more engaging than the TV shows that inspired them — I always preferred the UFO comic strip to the TV show.

I also loved The Trigan Empire by Don Lawrence in Look and Learn, a fortnightly educational magazine and the only one available in the school library that featured comic strips in English! The Trigan Empire is currently being reprinted in truly beautiful hardcover volumes by Dutch fans (in English or Dutch) — you can find them at www.triganempire.co.uk. Without exposure to work of such top quality I don't think I'd have developed the patience to wait for Ladronn's work on Hip Flask these past few years. There's a lot of Countdown and The Trigan Empire in his work, and I'm always reminded of how much I looked forward to new episodes of Captain Scarlet or The Trigan Empire when new pages of Hip Flask come in from Ladronn via email.

What got me started was really New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. The characters felt more real than other comics I'd look at on the racks. I was a kid but I didn't feel like it was talking down to me. Both in the writing and the art (Perez was my favorite artist for many years, I was lucky enough to thank him at a convention for inspiring me to start drawing comics, although he had just signed, like, five billion comics so he probably a little out of it.) The characters were very three dimensional in the writing and the artwork.

I've always read the superhero stuff. When I was very young, SuperFriends was on TV (the early stuff with Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder-Dog), Spider-Man was on the The Electric Company and the Adam West Batman was in re-runs. So, I could easily identify with those characters and had comics featuring them.

Eventually it got beyond that handful of superheroes and on to other superheroes. I guess I was in Junior High when I started being able to recognize specific creators work, but I never really followed an artist from book to book, mostly because I got sucked into stories and characters.

Oh, first comics I read were probably Commando books from Great Britain. These were fun and sort of 'just for boys' type publication ... all warrior material with elements of valor and survival and history. Very military type stuff and the art work was great. About the same time I was reading the more classic European graphic novels: Tintin, Asterix and Lucky Luke. These were a lot of fun... I liked them all! I didn't know who any of the creators were on any of these books, but you could sense a tangible element to all of the work ... they held their own space and identity.

From the American mainstream my favorite was Spidey so I picked up a lot of titles ... maybe because I grew up watching the old cartoons as a kid. I always thought he was fun and bizarre and not so serious. Stan Lee/John Romita's Spider-Man was THE Spider-Man ... everything from his depiction of Peter Parker's life in the '60s to Spidey's interaction with JJJ [J. Jonah Jameson]. I thought it was really cool to have this partial physical element, partial Archie Comics element all in one book and Romita captured it wonderfully.

Later I began getting more and more into other mainstream titles ... like X-Men and Batman (the original Dark Knight series) and Conan. As a teenager I enjoyed the more physical elements but continued reading Spider-Man titles ... they were always more fun. McFarlane's art and storyboarding was just too cool and energetic... it took a while to get used to his designs but soon after I thought they were great and very creative. The Thomas/Buscema Conan's were great ... they were originally published before my time but I discovered the work through Conan Saga which were reprints from the original run ... probably from the '70s. Every Buscema panel is a joy to look at ... full of dynamic action and classic atmosphere. For me it was the 'escapism' type material ... comics are all about creative writing supported but good art, and Roy Thomas laid what I felt was a solid foundation to sword and sorcery within the comic book medium for all age groups to enjoy.

Strangely enough, the same creators who I still love today: Sergio Aragones, Stan Sakai and Frank Miller come to mind. Also Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.

I originally got into comics via the Sunday paper with Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson) and Peanuts by Charles Schulz, but made the transition into comic books through Trent Kaniuga's Creed, which to me was wholly different than anything I'd seen before ... he's also just a few years my senior, and so it was encouraging to me at the time to think that comics were a viable career choice. we're pals now, which is cool too haha. Also, Mark Crilley's Akiko was a huge influence on me at the time, and Andi Watson and Michael Allred and Jay Stephens were all putting out books that I would rush the shops for too! Comics are keen!

My very first comic was an old issue of Aquaman drawn by Jim Aparo. Hooked immediately, I started to branch out , but later, the book that really grabbed me and made want to be a comic book artist was the Moon Knight series in the '80s. Awesome art, great character. Then I "discovered" that inks can make a difference in the look of a book. And, I also discovered I was a lazy penciller that loved to draw the characters, but hated drawing background. So, I decided to leave that up to others, and see what being an inker was all about. The rest of the time I began to look at inkers and how pencillers looked better with certain inkers than others. I became a fan of Klaus Janson, Terry Austin, Joe Rubenstein, John Dell and other inkers that really made the pencillers "shine". So began my education and never-ending quest to make a penciller look as best as I can make them look.

The first series I ever collected was The Flash. I got really into collecting comics in the ninth grade and then my favorites were Uncanny X-Men, Camelot 3000, New Teen Titans, New Mutants and Fantastic Four. My favorite creators were Chris Claremont, Joe Kubert, Paul Smith, George Perez, John Byrne, John Romita Jr, Bill Sienkewicz, Brian Bolland and Jose Garcia Lopez.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Kirby solo, Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Steve Ditko, Jim Starlin ... this could be a long list.

Superman and all the off shoots: Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Worlds Finest and The Legion of Super-Heroes. The Batman books and then I discovered Spider-Man,Fantastic Four and Thor. I wanted as an aspiring artist to draw things as " real" as I could, so to my 11 year old eyes that was being done by Neil Adams. I've since realized he was as stylizes as anyone else. Also [Jack] Kirby, [Wally] Wood, [Jim] Steranko and [Joe] Kubert. Then I found Creepy # 3 and was blown away by Torres, Morrow( probably the "reallest" of all the comicbook artists) and especially Crandel.

My first comics were from Marvel's Star Wars series, so [David] Michelinie and [Walter] Simonson should get credit where it's due. Once I really got myself immersed, I was a big fan of [John] Byrne's Fantastic Four, [Chris] Claremont's Uncanny X-Men and [Bill] Mantlo's Spider-Man days. Oh, and let's not forget Marv Wolfman and the New Teen Titans and Larry Hama's G.I. Joe.

John Byrne's Alpha Flight was my first passionate love-affair with a comic book. This lead me to his work on Fantastic Four, and from there I was sucked into all things Marvel. Dave Sim's Cerebus and the black and white reprints of Will Eisner's The Spirit were the comics I fell in love with once I finally made it past the Marvel shelves.

My favorite comics were Daredevil, Spider-Man, Thor and the Avengers, and my favorite creators then were Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, John Romita, Jack Kirby and John Buscema. I discovered Marvel Comics in 1968, when I was ten years old.

If you mean really early on, I was really into '50s and '60s era Peanuts as a kid, and all the Archie Comics. I really loved Dan DeCarlo's art. And I would occasionally stumble on something weird like Millie The Model, which seemed like it came from another planet. I think I got a stack of those for a nickel at some antique store in South Jersey when I was six or seven. My mom turned me on to Tintin around that same time. I liked it a lot — especially the clear line style — but I was appalled by the images of "darkies" and other bizarro stereotypes in it, because that just wasn't done anymore in the '70s, and it was really offensive by then, even to a small child. I didn't realize at first that Tintin came from a much earlier time.

But probably the first cartoons I ever read were B. Kliban's. My grandparents had three of his books in their house, and whenever we'd spend summer weekends with them, I'd wake up before everyone else and read them cover to cover. They were totally engrossing. "It was hell, recalls former child!"

I didn't really read comics in junior high and high school, until I was fifteen and my friend Maya showed me Are We Having Fun Yet? by Bill Griffith. It totally blew my mind. It just seemed designed to appeal to a sarcastic, literary teenager with a surreal bent. Then it sort of snowballed — I discovered the genius Lynda Barry, and then RAW started coming out again, introducing that work to my generation, and then I discovered The Hernandez Brothers, and it was all over. No comics and few pieces of prose mean as much to me as Love & Rockets.

George Tuska — The first artist I could remember by name. I followed him everywhere: Iron Man, Black Goliath, Power Man, Champions, Avengers .... Nobody at that time could draw a more forceful punch-Whomp! And as a wee tyke, that's what I bought comics for, the fight scenes!

In my early, early days it was Steve Ditko's version of Spider-Man. I had the little, proto-graphic novel versions, in the form of paperback sized reprints. Tiny, but mind-bending. Good thing my eyesight was better then! When I started to read comics regularly, though, I was in college. And the things that really hit me were Frank Miller's work (from Daredevil to Ronin to Dark Knight), Mage by Matt Wagner, Nexus by Steve Rude and Mike Baron, American Flagg! by Howard Chaykin, and Love & Rockets by the Hernandez Brothers. The early '80s were a fine time to get back into comics.

My early years were as a kid, and I was big into Walt Disney's Comics & Stories. I didn't know then who did them, but even then I knew they were great Ducks (by Carl Barks) and Mouse (by Paul Murry). I also loved the Dick Tracy reprints (Chester Gould). And some guy called Batman.

I was hooked by DC's Legion Of Super-Heroes early on. I mean, I had read whatever comics I could get my paws on, Batman, Spider-Man, etc., but Legion really grabbed me, it was this bizarre fusion of science-fiction and silly superhero histrionics, and it hit me where I lived. To this day, I would give a lot to write and draw some Legion stories. James Sherman was pencilling it at the time, and his art was so realistic, so well drawn, that I think he was my earliest influence. He was brilliant. I also loved the Neal Adams Batman reprints, the Treasury Editions.

However, I gave up comics for a while, and didn't come back until I spotted a Paul Smith-drawn copy of X-Men, and was hooked for years, followed him and then John Romita Jr. on that title, at one point I was actually subscribing to it. The Romita Jr. issues of X-Men were probably the most influential on me and my art and career.

When I was a kid just starting to read comics in the late '50s, I loved Superman and Batman. In Superman's case, that translated to Curt Swan and Wayne Boring, and for Batman, Bill Finger, Dick Sprang and Shelly Moldoff (with credit given to Bob Kane, of course!).

I was also crazy about the early Marvel Monster mags, which meant Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Within a very few years, I stumbled onto EC (through paperback reprints of Mad and the horror and sci-fi books) and my list grew to include Kurtzman, Elder, Davis, Wood and Feldstein. Still later. Will Eisner's Spirit rounded out my list of faves.

Hmm ... When it came to my youth (so, so long ago!), I was really taken in by Arthur Adams (the Asgardian Wars stuff: New Mutants Special Edition #1, X-Men Annual #9), Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge), Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse), Frank Doyle (Archie), Al Hartley(Archie), and Harry Lucey (Archie). I drifted out for a while, then returned with a crazy love for Jamie Hewlitt (Tank Girl) and Frank Miller (Sin City/Dark Knight Returns/Dardevil) ... drifted out again, and then returned because of the work Paul Pope (THB/100%/Escapo) was doing, Jeff Smith (Bone), Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (Preacher) as well as Rob Schrab (Scud: The Disposable Assassin), and the entire manga boom of work ... Ken Akamatsu (Love Hina), Yukito Kishiro (Battle Angel Alita), Hayao Miyazaki's (Nausicaa) and Tohru Fujisawa (GTO). Now I'm on a nostalgia kick with Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy), Rumiko Takahashi (Maison Ikkoku, Ranma 1/2), and Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima (Lone Wolf & Cub). What a long list ... and I haven't even touched everyone else that I love!

My favorite comics as a kid were Superman and its spin-offs — Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen — and Batman. Later, in high school, I was a big fan of SubMariner, and later still, post-college, the Uncanny X-Men and the New Mutants. The New Mutants in particular were influences on my first novel, Winterlong.

I'm a bit older and grew up with not a lot of money so I only had a cherished limited amount of comics as a kid that I read over and over again. I read The Brave and the Bold. I love Batman and Carey Bates was the writer and Jim Aparo was the artist. I used to copy Aparo's art when I was learning how to draw superheroes. You might see some of that in an issue I did for Batman Annual #5. I never got to meet Jim Aparo, so that was disappointing for me. Now I'll never have that chance.

I was always more hypnotized by the artwork. I would try to figure out how these guys did what they did. I love to read and writers are brilliant, but the comic artwork seemed more of a puzzle for me. Then I discovered Denny O' Neil and Neal Adams. Neal Adams was an influence on my learning how to draw comics also (not drawing in general, just drawing comics). It's funny how later on I wound up actually drawing comics myself and did that Batman Annual for Denny O'Neil, who was the editor at the time. Looking back it's amazing to me that I actually got to work with Denny O'Neil, be it briefly. I've worked with and met most of my idols.

I got to know and work with John Romita Sr. who's work I loved on Amazing Spider-Man as a kid, then he taught me a lot working with him when I was just 19 or 20, looking over his shoulder up at the Marvel Bullpen when I was a fledgling. A big influence as a person and a professional.

Not to mention when I was in high school, the big deals up at Marvel then were Chris Claremont and John Byrne on X-Men, and Bob Layton on Iron Man. I eventually wound up only meeting Byrne once at a convention, but drew several stories from Claremont scripts, one of them being Jubilee's first feature story in X–Men Annual #13 ( I think it's 13).

I started out in this business as an inker in the early 1980's. My first ink job was in '83 on a Mooknight story and Denny O'Neil was the editor on that too. I guess you could say he was my first editor before the Batman Annual. In 1986 I got my first pencil job which was an Amazing Spider-Man story called 24 hours, which was hand written on 6 pages of a yellow memo pad by Bob Layton! That was the most difficult job I had as a young talent. It was an awful job on my part. But Bob bit his lip and was encouraging. He inked the cover I penciled. I think I learned a little bit more since then. Not much, but a little!

John Buscema was a big influence and his brother Sal actually helped me get my foot in the door up at Marvel. John lived near me on Long Island, New York in a town called Port Jefferson. I'd see him around town every once and a while and we'd chit chat. The last time I saw him, I spent a few hours with him while he was doing an autograph signing at a local comic book shop. I had so much respect for him. I also got to be friends with Ross Andru, another influence from Spider-Man fame, and Mike Esposito. A couple of sweet guys. We worked together on a smalltime project for Archie Comics called Zen the Intergalactic Ninja!

Alan Weiss was another influence. He is a very close friend. He created Steel Grip Starkey. Long before I met him, another artist buddy of mine had some small sheets of paper with fantastic original drawings of women doing every day things. Just figure studies. I was floored by the beauty of these drawings. My buddy gave me a couple. I treasured these and learned how to draw women from them. As fate would have it, I wound up working with Jim Shooter at Defiant Comics in the middle '90's and who do I get to meet? Alan. We've been close friends ever since. His wife Pauline was an editor at Defiant. They are a couple of the best people you'd ever want to meet!

The list goes on for me as far as influences. Everyone is an influence for me in some way or another. Jim Lee, Greg Land, Garcia Lopez, Adam Hughes, Ryan Sook, Jay Scott Campbell ... everyone who's any good, I look at and still puzzle over how these guys do what they do. But, the most important for me, as far as artists go, my best friend in the whole world for 11 years until the time of his death by lung cancer, was Don Heck. Dashin' Don. One of the few original Marvel Comics artists. He designed Iron Man's early bullet head costume, as well as creating Hawkeye for the Avengers, and designing Scarlet Witch and then some. He lived a stone's throw from me (1 and a half miles) and we spent just about every day together. I didn't have a studio as a young artist so he let me work over at his place. He'd be behind me at his board drawing Wonder Woman at the time and I'd be at the other board doing whatever I was working on. His walls had all these girlie pinups from Playboy, so that was something else to look at while sitting long hours at the drawing board! He was the first person to show me all of the mechanics of inking, then eventually he showed me what he could of pencilling. When I say pencilling, I don't mean drawing. I could always draw really well. I mean laying out a comic page using composition and how to story-tell. Don's home was a comics museum. His room that was his studio had 2 drawing tables, but his whole house was a studio. Every room had a drawing table! Even his basement had a couple of drawing tables and was filled with original art from the early days of his career as well as the comics books from Marvel when they were first printed in the '60's. I would trip over the piles of magazines and comics that he had on the floor. He had one small room the size of a walk-in closet under the stairs leading down into the basement that was devoted strictly to National Geographic magazines! The walls had shelves lined up from floor to ceiling just with these magazines. His place was an artist's paradise! I miss those days. It was more fun somehow. Now it seems to be just hard work.

I have to say, that having met and worked with most of my comics idols over the years, for a starry eyed young kid like I was when I started out, it really is a bizarre and wonderful life!

I was a big fan of George Perez and Marv Wolfman when they were doing The New Teen Titans. When I was developing 10th Muse, I wanted to get Marv Wolfman on board to write it — and it was a dream come true when he accepted. I was loved what Norm Breyfogle did on his run on Batman. But my all time favorite was the Brave and the Bold with Batman and a guest. I loved riding my bike to 7-11 to get it each month.

I think Frank Miller was my first favorite writer and artist. Those Daredevils I read when I was nine were the first time that I became conscious of a creator's individual voice in comics. After that, Jim Steranko I loved as a kid. And Mike Mignola.

Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing is the first thing I read that really made me think about comics in a serious way. Before that I dabbled in Spider-Man and X-Men, nothing serious. But Todd McFarlane's run on Spider-Man was revelatory for me too; it was the first time I consciously wondered about the person who drew the comic after reading an issue.

I grew up during the Image days so I have to say that I was picking up a lot of Spawn, Cyberforce and WildC.A.T.s. I also loved reading anything Batman.

Richard Corben, Segrelles, Nine, Gimιnez.

All the usual suspects: Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, George Evans, and Bob Kanigher on all the war books. Gil Kane on anything. Same with Neal Adams, although the highlights were Batman, Deadman, and Jerry Lewis!

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko on all things Marvel. When Jim Steranko started doing S.H.I.E.L.D., that was a high point for me. The Warren books were always a favorite. Archie Goodwin (forever and ever, amen), Berni (before he was "Bernie") Wrightson, Reed Crandall, Alex Nino, Angelo Torres, Jose Gonzalez. As a boy, I tried to read anything and everything I could get my hands on, but it was Warren that introduced me to my personal gods.

I started reading comics in 1966 at age eight or nine due solely to the Batman TV show (which just celebrated its Fortieth Anniversary), so I read a lot of Batman comics. I LOVED the 80 Page Giants! But, I read many other varied books, as well ... Superman, JLofA, Adventure Comics ... all the superhero comics from DC, Spooky and Hot Stuff from Harvey, some Spider-Man and I LOVED Thor ... I liked Super Goof, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Little Lulu and Mighty Mouse from Gold Key and Dell ... and Tintin reprints in Children's Digest. My absolute favorite story from that era was the reprint of "Ride, Bat-Hombre, Ride!"

I first read Ritchie Rich comics back when I was about seven years old. I went on the read superhero comics when I was about 10 or so. My favorite at the time was Fantastic Four. From there I was hooked and read any and all comics I could get my hands on. I discovered manga when I was about 13 when I went to Taiwan and became a fan of Mazinger Z. My favorite creators were Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Rumiko Takahashi, Go Nagai, Jack Kirby, Barry Smith, Frank Miller, Otomo, and Akira Toriyama.

First thing I read was Alex Toth's Zorro, which appeared in a British anthology called Mickey Mouse Weekly. Then I discovered the Weisinger-era Superman Family: time travel, parallel universes, robots, telepathic mermaids and flying dogs. I don't think I ever recovered! But I was also reading Classics Illustrated, the entire Harvey line and anything else I could get my hands on. Discovered Marvel with Fantastic Four #6 and Dr Doom dragging the Baxter Building into space. If only the movie had been that good ...

When I was starting out I didn't really know creator names for the most part ... it was more likely Peter Parker I was looking for than Peter David. The first creator I took note of as a kid was John Byrne on X-Men and Fantastic Four. I was very into the X-Men back then, in the '80s ... and Iron Man, The Hulk ...

The first comics I loved were the '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s Batman/World's Finest strips that I received one Xmas in a UK collection. I was about three I think. It was the usual suspects I guess. Dick Sprang, Curt Swan, Kurt Schaeffenberger, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Neil Adams, Denny O'Neil, Frank Robbins etc etc. Those were the first. Then when I got into comics when I was a touch older it was the British comics Eagle, Buster, Tiger and Roy of The Rovers. Lots of those strips were written by Pat Mills, Alan Grant and John Wagner and drawn by loads of different artists whose names I can't remember. When I got into American comics as an eleven/twelve year old I was a big fan of Wagner, Grant and Norm Breyfogle/Jim Aparo's Batman, John Byrne's Superman, Alan Davis' Excalibur, but then also the weird and wonderful Animal Man/Doom Patrol/Zenith by Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan's Shade The Changing Man and Skreemer (and his genius run on Detective Comics, which is seldom mentioned, but was a joy to read at the time). Bizarrely, I also really got into Black Kiss by Howard Chaykin. I had a very cool comic shop near me, what can I say!). Other than those fellas I was also a junkie for the collections of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, his Superman stories and of course Watchmen that we got in the UK and — obviously — anything and everything by Frank Miller.

I was a huge fan of the Dick Dillin/Frank McLaughlin Justice League of America, which, in the course of their once-a-year Crisis-on-Multiple-Earths team-ups, introduced me to both the Justice Society of America and the Legion of Super-Heroes. As a result, I started buying the relaunched All-Star Comics (with Super-Squad)" and Legion of Super-Heroes, and, to this day, have an enormous emotional attachment to the JLA, JSA, and the Legion. My favorite writers at the time were guys like Paul Levitz, Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, Elliot S! Maggin, Len Wein, Denny O'Neill. The list goes on and on ...

My brother is only two years older than I am, so we read comics at the same time. He was always more a Hulk and Spider-Man guy, where I preferred Daredevil and The X-Men. He loved Werewolf by Night, and I loved Tomb of Dracula. We both dug Avengers. Obviously, we were Marvel zombies back then. I didn't really get into DC-though I loved the characters, the comics somehow weren't that compelling for me — until I was in college.

My comics exposure was pretty limited as a kid. I loved Elfquest and the graphic adaptation of the movie Alien, but it wasn't until my early '30s that I started to catch up with all that I missed. I do remember having a Spider-Man and a Hulk read-along LP that I listened to constantly. Now I read anything by Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Mark Waid.

Actually, I didn't start reading comics until high school — and only then because my brother was into G.I. Joe and Mike Grell's Jon Sable, Freelance. Then when I went to college I fell in love with Matt Wagner's Mage. interestingly enough, I wrote the movie adaptation to it some fifteen years later ...

When I started to buy comic book as a teenager, It was just all about the comic book characters. Still, I wasn't exposed to the artist that were behind the comic books. Then one day, I met Arthur Adams and he told me he made a living out of comic books and drew them. That's the day I started looking at the credits as to who worked on which titles. From then on, I bought everything that Art Adams drew regardless of who published it. This is when I really started buying comic books as a hobby. Of course there are many more creators that I follow today, but I would have to say that Art Adams is the artist that made me a "collector".

Man, after getting lost in the world of Spider-Man, I got heavy into the New Mutants, but it was Nexus that really ruled my world. Nexus is one of the best series ever, I hope Dark Horse puts out the trades in paperback because the hardback is costly and keeping it out of readers hands who have heard of Nexus, but aren't going to pluck down huge bucks just to try it out. Especially by Volume 2 and what will be Volume 3, just amazing stuff. New Mutants felt so dark and real to me, especially the Bill Sienkiewicz issues and poor Peter Parker, I just kept wanting to know when the dude was going to get a break.

My favorite comics were Marvel ... Captain America, Spider-Man and Not Brand Ecch! Loved Mad Magazines' artist Mort Drucker ... could not stand Cracked.

Was kinda a late bloomer, but Image was just startin' up and anything McFarlane, Keith, ect. also was/is a huge Mignola, Mckeever, Bachalo fan

Sergio Aragones, Chris Claremont, Gilbert Shelton. Those were guys I recognized and sought out. Everything else I got was based on the characters involved instead of the creators.

Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Jom Steranko, Gene Colan, Jack Kirby.

I adored the teen comics published by what was at the time Timely and later Ajax (they would eventually become Marvel Comics): Patsy Walker, Millie the Model, etc., and also Bill Woggon's Katy Keene, published by Archie Comics. They were great comics for girls, all about the light romantic adventures of teenagers (in the case of Katy Keene, she musta been all of 20, making her the oldest teen heroine), stories a young girl could relate to while also wishing she was as cool and beautiful as the heroines of those comics.

I really don't remember a time when I didn't read comics ... which means I started very young ... back in the days when I could go to my local Brooklyn candy store and find Superman (in his Wayne Boring glory), Batman (square-jawed and totally sci-fi), Archie, Casper, Hot Stuff, Sad Sack, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Disney, westerns ... a wide range of material, all aimed squarely at kids. I pretty much loved anything and everything I could get my hands on. As I got a little older, super-heroes began to dominate and the Fox-Sekowsky Justice League of America and Broome-Kane Green Lantern became my special favorites.

In the seventh grade, I had a religious conversion to Marvel Comics and devoured everything they put out. (I guess that's when I became Very Serious about my comics.) Lee and Kirby on Thor and FF, Lee and Romita on Spider-Man, Lee and Colan on Daredevil. And I had a real soft spot in my heart for Roy Thomas and Werner Roth on the X-Men. Those, for me, were the days of innocence and wonder, when a comic book really was a doorway into a magical world.

I'm a HUGE fan of the Tales to Astonish era Giant-Man. GM's still my all time favorite superhero bar none. I was (still am) also a big fan of Gene Colan's artwork, especially his run on Iron-Man.

I enjoyed a lot of artists work, but Michael Golden and Bill Sienkiwiecz stand out he most for me. Especially Golden, his work on Avengers Annual 10 and Dr. Strange 55 were amazing- the best drawn comics ever. I keep copies of both by my table ...

My very first introduction to comics as a child back in the '80s was GI Joe #21 ("Silent Interlude"), and GI Joe remained my favorite for a long time. As an early collector in my teens I was most enthralled with the various X-titles from Marvel, at the time I thought Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee were the pinnacle of comic book creators. Of course, my tastes have changed significantly as an adult.

Looking back at the beginning though, while I've certainly outgrown GI Joe, "Silent Interlude" is probably one of the top 50 single issues I've ever read. Given that I've read thousands of comics from America, Europe and Asia, independent and mainstream, in the years since, it remains interesting to me that my first would remain one of my favorites — and by its own merits not simply the fact of having been the first.

Early years? Hey, I'm not that old! (Laughter) Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema. I was just crazy about their work on Captain America and The Defenders. As far as classic artists, I was drawn to such guys as Neal Adams, as well. His run on Avengers felt as though people were really wearing those costumes.

Admittedly, it was all the toy tie-ins that first got me truly hooked. That is, I "played Superman" as a younger kid and dressed up as Batman for Halloween. But — and this definitely dates me — when Larry Hama's G.I. Joe comics and the Transformers comics first came out, I was an eager, drooling fan. (I think I also picked up some of the Marvel Star Wars comics, even though I was disgusted at how little they resembled the movie, in my pre-pubescent eyes.) And, egads, when they did the first G.I. Joe/Transformers cross-over? I was on cloud nine. Soon, though, savvy tie-ins like Secret Wars, the "rebooted" Superman titles, and the Spider-Man Saturday morning cartoon lured me over to "real" comics (aka superheroes).

Then again, taking a step back, I was into Garfield since I began to read, and that lead to an unhealthy Bloom County addiction, predating my unhealthy comic book addiction. So, I guess I was beset on both sides by sequential art, in whatever form!

My first book I ever really picked up and read was X-Men #1 featuring Jim Lee. Also when Image Studios was launched I fell in love with WildC.A.Ts, Spawn, and Young Blood, OOOHHH and Pitt!!! Pitt was a personal favorite as well as The Maxx. Dale Keown was a big influence on me back in the day. So was Sam Keith. Sam's work on Maxx was phenomenal.

Curt Swan's Superman, Claremont & Byrne's X-Men, Lee & Ditko's Spider-Man (the Pocket Book editions), all of the Fireside Marvel paperbacks (Origins of Marvel Comics, Bring on the Bad Guys, etc.), Don Martin's Captain Klutz, Wolfman & Perez's New Teen Titans, Mad Magazine ... I was not particularly discriminating. I'd read any comic I could get my hands on.

When I was first getting into comics, my favorite titles were Ralph Snart, old reprints of The Flash, Golgo 13, and Groo. People like Paul Dini, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman had a big influence on me and my work as I got older.

When I was very young, I was awed by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson's Manhunter back-up stories that appeared in Detective Comics. Also, Nick Cuti and Joe Staton's E-Man was really rockin', too. Nick and Joe made funny super-heroes really fun. However, what really made me love comics, was John Byrne's Uncanny X-Men. The artwork by Byrne and Terry Austin influenced me to become a professional comic book inker. Now, those were great comics.

I was a huge fan of Spider-Man. Roger Stern's Hobgoblin story in Amazing Spider-Man drew me in, but I also really enjoyed the work of Gerry Conway, Peter David and Bill Mantlo. As I read more comics, I became huge fans of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Matt Wagner and Stan Lee. John Romita, John Byrne and Todd McFarlane were my favorite artists.

I started reading comics when I was like eight or so — and I'd say that anything with Captain America or Sgt. Rock and Weird War Tales in it was for me. I really loved the Kirby and Kubert stuff back then and still do today. Paris Cullins run on Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) was also a favorite of mine. Gadzooks — I was a sheltered comic reader back in the day ... I think it wasn't until the late '80s when I actually had money to buy more comics ... good God that's sad.

I was a huge Batman fan as a kid. But it wasn't until Neal Adams started working on the titles, specifically The Brave and Bold series, that I began paying attention to the creators who worked on the books. When I became more serious as a 'collector' in my high school and college years, I was more into the early Dave Sim Cerebus and Matt Wagner's original Mage series (from Comico no less).

The books that I remember the most were the Avengers illustrated by George Perez, The X-Men by Chris Claremont and John Byrne and from DC The Justice League of America. Later the Teen Titans with Marv Wolfman and George Perez and the Fantastic Four by John Byrne. I was a big team book reader since I had very little money to spend I wanted the most superhero bang for my buck. The Astonishing X-Men to this day continues to be one of my first reads on Wednesdays.

Well when I first started reading comics I wasn't into the comic stories as I was into the artwork. In Junior High School, or around that age I was picking up Alien Legion first with Chris Warner and then Larry Stroman. I was picking up everything John Byrne did at that time, Fantastic Four, Legends, The Incredible Hulk, The same thing with Arthur Adams and Mike Golden and Jerry Ordway on Infinity Inc. When I got into the High School of Art and Design in New York, I discovered the three people who, looking back on it now are probably the biggest influences on my own work. Nexus by Mike Baron and Steve Rude, The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens and Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Dave Stevens work was so beautifully rendered that I had a hard time believing it was done by one guy (although after talking to Dave in later years and learning how long it took for him to get those stories done I'm not surprised.) Steve Rude was the storyteller I admired most because of the fluidity of his work, the beauty and the classical comics influence to it. Brian Bolland, Probably the most detailed artist I'd ever seen.

Boy, that depends on your definition of "early". When I first, first, first remember reading comics at all, it was Tintin chapters in the back of Children's Digest. My first full comic books to read were late Fifties/early Sixties DC Comics, mostly Al Plastino and George Kaye Superboy titles (Adventure, Superboy, Action Comics) Bob Kane Batman books, and Mort Weisenger Superman titles. A little later it was Gold Key books (Magnus, Turok, Bugs Bunny), early Marvel titles (Iron Man was a favorite of my grandmother, for some reason). My father had a hardcover Asterix comic in his library, and when I was six or seven, that seemed very important to me, that a comic was given this kind of treatment. (This was the Sixties, when I doubt many comics were printed in hardcover, but European imports were, and are, often published like that.)

When comics became a serious reading habit, when I was twelve or thirteen and I was buying them myself, it was a golden age for comics in the Seventies — Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams doing Batman, Green Arrow, Brave and Bold, etc., Jack Kirby finishing up the FF and moving on to Kamandi and Mister Miracle, Wally Wood's JSA in All Star Comics, and Hercules Unbound (with Garcia Lopez and Walt Simonson!!), John Buscema's FF and Conan, Gene Colan on Doc Strange and Daredevil, O'Neil and Dorfman, with Swan and Anderson in the Superman titles John Romita, Russ Manning's Magnus: Robot Fighter, all that stuff From Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Nick Cardy's Teen Titans and those wonderful DC covers for the 20 cent era. Barry Smith and Steranko's miniscule output was always a treat, as was Michael Golden and Dave Stevens. Kaluta, Chaykin and Wrightson, Jones the Studio ... They all worked sporadically and it was always worth it. Then, at twenty or so, I discover Moebius, Crumb, Eisner and Kurtzman and my brain exploded.

I was brought up on a steady 2000AD diet, so Brian Bolland, Alan Moore, Alan Davis, Dave Gibbons and Glenn Fabry were the first to really blew my mind, although the turning point that made me want to draw comics was seeing a Superman cover done by (I'm pretty sure) Josι-Luiz Garcia Lopez.

My gateway drug was the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Mirage. I know a lot of creators my age were influenced by that series, but few are willing to cite it because of the huge kiddie pop-culture franchise it soon became. Say what you want about the Turtles' history, there's no denying the quality of Eastman and Laird's original run on that book. The bizarre energy they infused into every story was contagious. They just seemed like two guys having the time of their lives who wanted you along for the ride. That book introduced me to independent comics in general, and Dave Sim, Stan Sakai, Richard Corben, and a host of other indie creators in specific. One taste and I was hooked.

I can answer that question in two words: "Art" and "Adams". (Actually, there will be more words, as evidenced by the fact that here they are.) When I was a wee thing, I read whatever comics got in front of me, but latched onto X-Men most particularly. And, within the vastness of the X-Men world, the very first artist who stood out to me over any other was Art Adams. I remember picking up one of the X-Men Annuals that he did and thinking, "Wow, all comics should look like this." As I read more X-books, I found myself particularly drawn to Chris Claremont's stories. Then, some time later, I was exposed to Mage and it completely reinvented in my little head what was possible in the world of comics. Since that day, I've been a huge fan of Matt Wagner, both as a writer and artist. Then came Todd McFarlane (as an artist) and Masamune Shirow (as both writer and artist).

Marvel. The secret to the pathos of the Marvel characters is the tragedy of their transformations. For them, being super-human is not a blessing, it's an awful curse. Imagine having the most exquisite reflexes in the world, but losing your sight. Daredevil was one of my first heroes. To me, heroism combined with tragedy is at the core of epic adventure. Those are the things that resonate from early childhood and throughout our lives. Without the backdrop of tragedy, all you have is adolescent fight scenes. But by adding that one element, you suddenly have poignancy and depth, which gives the artist a moody canvass on which to create evocative images.

JLA has always been my favorite, especially George Perez's run. Also Wolfman and Perez on New Teen Titans also lit my inner fan-ness. I was so in puberty love with Terra and her strong girlness. Also, Alan Moore was the first writer I ever knew was great — from Miracleman to Mogo the Green Lantern.

It was the '80s! We had John Byrnes' X-Men and Fantastic Four, Frank Miller's Daredevil.Paul Smith was making his rep on the X-Men after JR.Jr's run ... Simonson was doing Thor! Young upstart Art Adams was blazing away on Annuals and a Longshot maxiseries. And there was also ROM: Spaceknight! All was good ... then the '90s came.

The first creator whose work I recognized was Steve Ditko. I was familiar with him via Spider-Man reprints, and I was excited to see him doing Charlton suspense comics. While reading those books, I fell in love with Pat Boyette's work, as well. The only other creator-centric proclivities I demonstrated was a pronounced preference for Marvel Tales, a monthly reprint, over The Amazing Spider-Man. I loved Stan the Man [Lee] and John Romita, Sr., way back when he was Just John Romita.

The first titles I really started collecting regularly were DC Comics Presents and All-Star Squadron from DC. I liked the format of DCCP, with Superman plus a guest, and a rotating list of talent. You saw a bunch of different characters, and the Jim Starlin Mongul three-parter was pretty cool. I was always a JSA fan, and All-Star Squadron let me see all those characters in their prime, plus a bunch of other characters I hadn't seen before, like Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle.

Before that, when I was collecting at the whim of my parents, getting the books they'd buy for me, JLA and Firestorm were my favorites. JLA was the place to see all my favorite characters, and I think the two part "Secret Origin of the Red Tornado" and JLA #200 are the best Comic Books ever. They're not the best stories ever, and aren't necessarily the best art ever, but when I think what a comic book is, what it should be, I think those. Firestorm was like getting in on the ground floor of Spider-Man. The dual personality thing was sweet. He had cool powers, and a decent weakness in not being able to harm organic matter. Man, I miss that Firestorm.

Back in the stone-age of the mid 1960s, we had mostly two choices, DC or Marvel. My favorite comics were The Flash, Batman/Detective Comics at DC, mostly because of the art by the great Carmine Infantino — and, though I didn't realize it then — the editorial touch of Julius Schwartz, who became my professional hero and model. I was also a fan of other Schwartz-edited titles, such as Green Lantern and Justice League. At Marvel I was drawn to Spider-Man for all of the character's now-famous innovation, but especially for Steve Ditko's dramatic and moody art. Johnny Romita was different but equally great when he took over. I loved and still love Daredevil for his uniqueness (and that Wally Wood did the art on the first issue I saw). Of course neither book would have attracted my attention without Stan Lee's evident genius at plot and dialogue.

Despite the dominance of the big two, other publishers would enter the mix as well. Tower and Thunder Agents were great, the Archie heroes (Fly-Man, the Shield) were goofy fun, Creepy and Eerie delivered chills and great art, etc.

When I first got into comics, all of mine came “second hand” from a relative. So I got to read whatever he was reading. Some of my favorites at the time were Justice League, Daredevil, Flash, and X-Men. I liked the team sprit/friendship of those JLA stories. Flash was fun, and who wouldn't want to run fast? X-Men was the most unusual characters of my comic reading. This was that Neal Adams stuff, and it just blew my mind at what possibilities comics really had. This was the team comic that had distinct personalities for each character (even the villains didn't seem like cardboard cut outs), and the art was friggin 3-D like! DD spoke to me from the beginning. Yeah, I dug Batman, but it was DD that first brought emotion from me from a story. It just seemed real. Yeah, I know, blind lawyer with heightened senses wearing a red devil costume ... but the idea of the guy overcoming his obvious handicap, and no one knew it, just rocked. I wanted a secret like that! I didn't want a twin brother like DD, mind you, just his ... courage. “Man without Fear”. Man, what a killer sub-title.

Mike Golden on The 'Nam, Art Adams on X-Men, G.I. Joe, Marc Silvestri, Frank Miller.

I would have to say Mad Magazine was my comic of choice. Although I guess it's not technically a comic. Some of the first actual comics I read was Peter Bagge's Hate, Daniel Clowes' Eightball and Terry Laban's Cud. I'd never read any super hero comics at that point, not that I really do now, but I'm much more aware of them. Bagge, Clowes, Laban, Joe Matt, they all opened the flood gates for comics in my world. Not to say Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Charles Schulz, and Garry Larson weren't strong influences, I just never walked into a comic book shop to read their stuff.

I learned to read using Batman comic books. As I progressed though elementary school, I mostly loved Justice League of America, and I thought Dick Dillin was amazing. I was so-o-o sad when I read his death announcement in issue #183. Talk about an underrated artist! I also liked Joe Staton an awful lot, and fortunately, he was working on many books in the '70s such as Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and Metal Men.

My earliest memories of comics are mostly associated with Marvel Comics. The first comic I remember buying was Giant Sized Super-Stars #1 (a long story in and of itself). I was mesmerized by those muscle-bound Marvel heroes! It really didn't matter which titles, either-any of them would suffice. I also enjoyed Sad Sack, Archie, Casper, Mad ... just about anything I could get my hands on. This was when I was very young ... I started reading comics at about six years of age. I'd sit on the floor at my dad's grocery store and read them for hours (or so it seemed. It was probably only 15-20 minutes max, but they were magical moments, indeed).

It wasn't until I was in the seventh grade that I started to pay attention to who was creating them. And then I was primarily (i.e. only) interested in who drew them. My first love was John Byrne-those issues of the X-Men when they exploded onto the scene! I devoured them and then made it my mission to get every single comic he ever worked on. After that I really started to pay attention to who did what in the comics. My early favorites included Don Martin (Mad), Sergio Aragones, John Buscema, Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo and, of course, the aforementioned John Byrne. He was my God (I have a disturbing story about that as well! Wrote about it in one of my Geeksville issues)! By the time I hit college my tastes broadened and I discovered many, many others. I also realized by then that you need a good writer, too.

I didn't read comics till I started writing them, in the mid '80s. At the time I worked at Marvel, so I'd just read what floated by. We'd get a stack of whatever was fresh off the press from Marvel and DC (I think because we used the same printer) plopped on our desk every week. I remember pulling out Walt Simonson's Thor and whatever Alan Moore or FrankMiller or Bill Sienkiewicz were up to and pretty much dumping the rest, but I'm probably forgetting a few talented folk. So, I was probably no different from your average fan in those days, going for all the obvious names.

I literally can't remember when I first started reading comics, because I never differentiated WHAT I was reading at that point, I was so young. We had comics around the house because my dad and brothers liked them, but I remember my dad specifically taking me out to buy Richie Rich, Casper, and Wendy the Good Little Witch by the time I was four. Oddly, within just a few years, I discovered a big stash of old Creepy and Eerie comics at a swap meet my dad took me to, and those really got me. I've been a big horror fan ever since. I spent most of my early childhood reading that stuff, plus Archie Comics. I also read some superhero titles in there, and that's about the only time in my life that super-stuff has really appealed to me. Eventually I did make more of a conscious choice to pursue comics outside of these titles when I was in my early teens (the late '80s), and I came out of the comic shop with things like Gregory, Eight Ball, Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children, and Swamp Thing.

My earliest reads were from the Uncanny X-Men, pencilled by John Bryne (I was nine). I later got into TMNT and Jamie Hewitt's Tank Girl. Then I read an adaptation of Dracula illustrated by Jon Muth, and Daredevil with Bill Sienkiewicz. Those really blew my mind. Muth's been illustrating children's books, did you know? So-o-o great. Right before I started making my own comics I had been collecting Shade the Changing Man with Chris Bachalo, and Madman by Mike Allred. I consider those the early years too because my taste has really changed since. I still enjoy these reads, but I don't really seek them out very often.

When I started out, I was only ten so the creators were a bit off my radar, but I ran to the local liquor store every week to check out the spindle rack ... Alpha Flight, Uncanny X-Men, Daredevil, Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man.

I was living in Germany when I first got into comics. The old Conan magazines were pretty much all I could find, so those were all I was into — ridiculously into. When I got back to the USA, I expanded into X-Men and anything Arthur Adams did.

Oh, there were so many. The first writer/artist I avidly followed was probably Carl Barks on the Dell — and later Gold Key — Disney Duck comics. Of course, there were no credits in those days, so it would be years before I learned his name. At the time, I just knew there was one artist whose work I liked better than the others.

Later, I discovered Wayne Boring and Curt Swan on Superman ... Shelly Moldoff and Dick Sprang on Batman ... Ramona Fradon on Aquaman and Metamorpho ... Jack Kirby on Green Arrow, The Fly, and Private Strong ... Ross Andru and Mike Esposito on Wonder Woman ... Carmine Infantino on the Flash and Adam Strange ... Gil Kane on Green Lantern and The Atom ... Mike Sekowsky on the Justice League ... Joe Kubert and Murphy Anderson on Hawkman ... Steve Ditko on Captain Atom ...

In those old, pre-credits days the artists' works was always more identifiable than that of the writers. Years later, I learned that the stories I loved best had been written by Jerry Siegel, Bill Finger, John Broome, and Gardner Fox And then, of course, Marvel came along, and I re-discovered Kirby and Ditko and Wally Wood, whose work I remembered from Mad Magazine. Plus, I discovered the art of Don Heck, John Romita, Gene Colan, Bill Everett, John and Sal Buscema, Marie and John Severin and so many more. And thanks to the introduction of credits, I learned that my new favorite writers were named Stan Lee and Roy Thomas.

The "Old School"stuff like "Dan Dare" (SF) by Frank Hampson, Prince Valiant (history adventure) by Harold Foster, Coco Bill (western cartoon comic) by Jacovitti and Black Rider (western) by Croatian artist Andriya Maurovich, were the faves of my childhood.

When I first started reading comics I was definitely a Marvel kid. Back then, each character pretty much had one main title, and my favorite was Amazing Spider-Man. That was really what I stuck with in my formative years and so John Romita Sr., Gil Kane and Ross Andru were the artists that I loved most. Incredible Hulk was also a favorite, so I have a soft spot for Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema. After that it was Marvel Team-Up and Defenders, which of course let me read more about Spider-Man and Hulk.

My mom bought me those Pocket Books from the drug store. I got the first three volumes of the origin of Spider-Man. So I have these sketchbooks where I'm copying Steve Ditko's Spider-Man pages. I was maybe seven or eight. I was (and still am) a HUGE Spidey fan thanks to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. I later got into Conan in my teens. I loved John Buscema's art.

Hmm ... Well, I guess my favorites were Chris Claremont, Denny O'Neill, and Louise Simonson were my favorite authors, and I loved the X-Men, Iron Man, and (not ashamed to say it) the original Power Pack.

I was raised on Carl Barks' Duck comics from before I could even read, so Barks was my earliest favourite. He's still in my top five. Ken Reid's wacky monsters in British children's weeklies like Buster and Whoopee! were another early favourite. I remember being blown away by Jack Kirby's 1970s Marvel work on Captain America (which was my first exposure to him) — compared to everything else around at the time, his work just looked like it had been drawn on Mars.

I remember reading Plop! and loving Basil Wolverton. Will Elder fried my brain the first time I saw his stuff, which would have been a reprint of "Starchie" from the original MAD comic. I tracked down those black and white paperbacks (the MAD Reader and so on) like an eight-year-old possessed. I was a big fan of Joe Staton, thanks largely to the witty and charming E-Man (and, later, his work on Plastic Man). I still am! Speaking of Plastic Man, Ramona Fradon's work on the character, and on Super Friends, was a big favourite. I didn't immediately realise she was the Metamorpho artist I liked so much as well. Kurt Schaffenberger was probably the first artist whose name I deliberately sought out. I still think his work is sublimely beautiful. His (and C.C. Beck's) version of Captain Marvel was, and remains, my favourite superhero.

Actually, a lot. Most of my early redings were the Italian translations of Marvel Comics (Daredevil by Miller, Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith, X-Men by Claremont & Byrne, Jim Lee's Punisher and so on...), then my favorite books became Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, Maus, Dark Knight Returns, Ronin, Metropol by Ted McKeever, all of the Vertigo titles, Cages by Dave McKean and so on. I've always been reading Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt (which is one of my all-time favorite), Alack Sinner by Munoz and Sampayo, and I'm a big fan of creators such as Sergio Toppi, Enki Bilal and Andrea Pazienza.

I had a tough time keeping up with ongoing series. It was hard enough to complete one of those old-school maxi-series collections like Camelot 3000 and Mage. I was a big fan of Frank Miller's Batman. I collected anything by Matt Wagner or Alan Moore as well. I started buying Swamp Thing at issue 43, but had a hell of a time getting back issues. It was Comix Experience owner Brian Hibbs who clued me into that one, by the way. That was 20 years ago now.

I started reading comics as a small child and that was close to a half-century ago. My absolute favorite comic was Uncle Scrooge, by Carl Barks. The dialogue, the pacing and characters and art were just hilarious and as close to perfect as a comic could get, and I 'got' this as a child just beginning to read. His stories still make me laugh out loud. My father wrote comics for Disney, too so of course I loved the stories that he told me he did, because as a little girl I loved my Daddy. We knew Mr. Barks and I learned to appreciate all the research he put into making the Scrooge adventures overseas look very accurate, so that made me appreciate that you have to do your very best work even if it was 'only' a comic book. I also liked Little Lulu (because she was a girl with a mind of her own and there was a sort of surreal quality to her stories!) and the Dennis the Menace adventures, such as when he went to Mexico, Hawaii, Washington DC and Hollywood. I think Al Wiseman was the artist, and his line art was just beautiful and clean. The work I admire most is the kind that is so good, I know I will never be able to come close.

Damn, that's reaching back. I suppose the first time I got serious about comics was toward the end of high school (yeah, I'm a late bloomer), which was just around the time Image was starting up. I didn't pay any attention to creators at that point — it was just about the books and the characters (I've grown up since then, funnily enough) — and I have to say, I was all about Marvel. I mean, the Death of Superman happened in that period, which was cool, but I'd grown up with the Spider-Man and Hulk cartoons, and those cheesy '70's Spider-Man movies and I just felt the Marvel characters were so much cooler than their DC counterparts. So for me it was Spider-Man and X-Men and ... The Punisher. The Punisher really spoke to me back then ... and yet I never went on a shooting rampage. Still haven't. Go figure.

I started reading comics way back in the early-mid '70s. The first storyline that stood out to me was the "Secret Empire" tale done by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema in Captain America. As an artist, I always gravitated to the work of particular artists: Jim Starlin on Captain Marvel and Warlock, Paul Gulacy on Master of Kung Fu, Craig Russell on Killraven, Frank Brunner on Dr. Strange and Howard the Duck, Neal Adams and Gil Kane on whatever they were doing. The Warren black and white books because they featured so many terrific artists. From a reading standpoint, I loved reading Fantastic Four, Capt. America, Dr. Strange and Daredevil. It didn't really matter who was working on them, the characters just resonated with me.

I had all the Peanuts comics from Dell. They weren't written or drawn by Schulz, but they were still Peanuts, and I loved them. Patty-Cake's green striped dress is a small homage to those comics. Linus' shirt was two shades of green. I was avidly into Dennis the Menace; up to about '68 or whatever year they changed artists. The quality nose-dived. The new art just failed to be funny. They actually switched in the middle of a story! I liked Archie until I got old enough to know that my teen years were going to be nothing like that. Two girls fighting over me, and I can choose either one? Didn't work out that way. I also liked the Harveys, particularly Little Audrey, because she wasn't tied to some single obsession like dots or money or food. And she wasn't dead like Casper. And Little Lulu. And MAD, even though it wasn't a comic in the '60s. It was still done by cartoonists, and fit the smart-aleck side of my sense of humor. As for the superhero stuff — I liked Batman and the Metal Men. My brother bought anything with Superman, and I just read his for free. There are other things I don't remember as clearly. Some teenage comic with sportscars. Oh, and Dagwood & Blondie, which was coming from Harvey at the time. We also had various movie and TV comics, many of which were disappointing, but I especially enjoyed the Yellow Submarine adaptation, which I read before seeing the movie. I could go on, but mostly i liked the funny stuff.

Batman, Superman then Spider-Man. I liked art by Aparo, Swan, and John Romita.

Back in the day I was a huge reader of anything X-related. I think the first time I really noticed the art was when Silvestri was working on it. It was guys like Silvestri and Jim Lee whose art really jumped out and grabbed me, made me want to give drawing a try.

Back when I was a new comics reader ... Hm. Comics were a dim and strange reality when I was a kid. Comics existed at the bottoms of magazine racks and in dog-eared piles at the local library, or in musty smelling boxes under beds at my various friend's houses. The only time I really read comics was when my family would go all Bill Keane and do the middle-class '70s and early '80s camping trip thing. I'd be given some coins and a bathroom break and be allowed to buy something at the rest stop convenience store to keep me occupied for the rest of the road trip. I remember picking up one issue which was the middle of a three part series; a pretty spectacular adaptation of Blade Runner. Al Williamson had done the pencils and it was just stunning. Of course, I didn't realize it was stunning until years later when I pulled that old issue out again for another looksee. At the time I'd bought it, I was only 12 years old, and the story was just plain disturbing. Han Solo getting his fingers broken by emotionally ill-equipped androids who he perhaps should not have been hunting in the first place? Creepy. I wasn't aware of 'good' or 'bad' artwork at that time. When I was 12, the art in comics might as well have been all photo-realistic. I simply accepted that adults knew what they were doing at all times, and that if I didn't understand something, it was due to my own incomplete knowledge and awareness of the world. I reacted to the Blade Runner comics as though it was story about something real, (even though I understood the difference between real and imaginary, my emotional self wasn't quite so capable of that distinction.) Thus, "good vs. bad artwork", was only a dime concept when it came to comics. That came later when I began trying to draw them myself.

Hm. Now that I think of it ... The comics which I really got started on were the little digest-sized Dennis the Menace comics, and coincidentally, the Bill Keane, Family Circus collections. Those were more a learning-how-to-read reading tool, and I was excited simply to be able to successfully decipher letters into ideas. I found that almost more entertaining than the comics themselves. Then, once reading was nailed down, I graduated to Mad Magazine and *their* paper-back collections. Those were wonderful and seditious and all of that. Very cool. I was hooked at that point.

Still later, when I finally clicked to the fact that there was a comics industry and that comics followed story lines and that they came out every month as opposed to simply randomly appearing under the porn rags in the magazine shops, my first favorite series was from Marvel. -I discovered this in Jr. Highschool. The Secret Wars 12 issue limited series. Wow. That was great fun! My best friend had started telling me about this weird series, the Secret Wars thing, and fascinated, I asked him a bunch of questions. He wound up bringing to school the next day a stack of the issues. I took those home, read them and thought they were wonderful. Except the next day, when he asked how I'd liked them, I said, "They were cool! But you forgot to give me all of them. The last four in the series were missing." He told me, "Well, yeah. They've not come out yet." This confused me. Remember, up until this point in my world-view, comics simply existed. They lived in ratty piles at the library and under beds. It took several tries before my friend managed to stretch my mind to accept that comics are made one at a time, and that I had to wait around for the next issue. Perceptions are funny things; sometimes you know when you don't know something, but perhaps more often, there is this curious state in which we don't even know we're working with a limited awareness until we suddenly gain the missing pieces. Rather like the motorcycle accident victim who doesn't understand or believe he has brain damage until he realizes he's trying to put his socks on over his boots.

My main attraction has always been illustrators. I was a big Norman Rockwell fan as well as Winsor McKay, John Singer Sargent, Charles Dana Gibson, and the like. So any creator had to come from that vein. Neal Adams was the first, then to be followed by Jim Aparo, John Buscema, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, etc. I also migrated toward the Philippino and South American artists such as Rudy Nebres, Nestro Redondo, Tony DeZuniga, and Alex Nino. Some Europeans like Moebius, Victor De LaFuente, Milo Minara, and Poalo Serpieri. I can even attribute caricaturists like Mort Drucker, Sam Viviano, and Angelo Torres. My last big influences and lasting ones were Frank Frazetta and Michael Golden. In a nutshell you can say my style is a mix of Rockwell, Frazetta, and Golden with hilippino/S.American/European flourishes rounded out by illustration proportions. Maybe a dash of caricature's charm. As for writers, I liked Mike Barr, Len Wein, Denny O'Neil, Chris Claremont ... basically your '70s and '80s A-list.

My early years in comics came relatively late in my life. Back in 1992, I took a job making Marvel trading cards, started reading everything I could get my hands on, and really enjoyed the X-Men family — back in the Bob Harras era. On the art side, Lee, Liefeld and Tex had just finished raising the bar and so had the Kubert Bros. On the writing side, Chris C and Jim B had already laid a solid foundation and Scott L, Fabian N were writing super scripts.

It's difficult to remember that far back — I was reading comics before I was able to understand the words in them. I loved Harvey Comics; especially Casper and Spooky. But I would read any comic I could get my hands on over and over again. Batman, Archie, Spider-Man, DC horror comics, anything. The first comics to really capture my imagination and compel me to follow the issues as they came out were Mike Grell's Warlord, Chris Claremont's X-Men, Wendy and Richard Pini's ElfQuest, and Los Bros Hernandez's Love & Rockets. That's pretty much the progression of my comics reading from grade school to college right there.

Adam West as TV's Batman lured me into comics when I was a child in the late 1960s, and the wacky but endearing Silver Age Superman stories sealed me into a lifelong comics tomb from which I don't wish to escape. Curt Swan was the first artist whose style my burgeoning tastes could identify, but it was then-newcomer Neal Adams who made me go "wow." B-list DC titles were also favorites: the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics, Metamorpho, Teen Titans, Hawk and the Dove, and the Creeper. I discovered Spider-Man and Fantastic Four through TV cartoons (in grade school, I couldn't figure out Steve Ditko's symbolic half-Peter Parker/half-Spidey "spider-sense" face — "Was this how he turned into Spider-Man?" I thought). My all-time favorite comic is The Brave and the Bold. I'm in awe of the art of Nick Cardy and Jim Aparo.

Joe Madureira's work on the X-Men was what got me into comics in the first place, at the time his style was really different than the norm so it caught my attention right off. Impulse, back when Humberto Ramos did the art was probably my favorite comic at the time, Gen 13 and Generation X had just started so I was really into them as well. Aside from mainstream superhero comics I always really liked Bone by Jeff Smith and Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett. In fact Bone was the comic that made me want to work in black and white comics instead of color. I know there were a lot more I read but those were the ones that really stand out to me.

Marv Wolfman and George Perez on New Teen Titans; Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen on Legion of Super-Heroes; Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway on All-Star Squadron; Frank Miller on Daredevil; Alan Moore on Swamp Thing; Matt Wagner's Mage; Scott McCloud's Zot!; and, almost the entire First Comics line — Grell's Jon Sable, Ostrander/Truman on Grimjack, Baron and Rude on Nexus, Chaykin on American Flagg, Steven Grant on Whisper.

When I was very young, I didn't know the names of most of the guys I liked because almost nobody put credits on comics back then. But I was a big fan of guys like Jesse Marsh (Tarzan and the Burroughs' Mars adaptations), Tom Gill (The Lone Ranger), Carl Barks (all his duck stuff), Floyd Gottfriedson (the continued Mickey Mouse stories) Alex Toth (Zorro and The Land Unknown), Alberto Gioletti (Challenge of Zorro [pre-Disney] and Turok), Everett Raymond Kinstler (Sword of Zorro, Hand of Zorro), Russ Manning (Brothers of the Spear), and Lou Cameron (the Classics Illustrated versions of The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine among others). And I loved Leonard Starr's work on the newspaper strip Mary Perkins/On Stage.

I became a Marvel zombie early. I discovered Stan Lee & Steve Ditko's Dr. Strange in the back of Strange Tales in 1964 and was hooked on this weirdness even though I was only eight years old. Soon afterwards I found Spider-Man and never looked back. So it's pretty much always been Lee and Ditko as my favorites.

Admittedly, I was not an avid comic reader growing up, but I did read and enjoy miscellaneous funnybooks and some superhero stuff from time to time. Stumbling upon and reading my friend's collection of Shannon Wheeler's TooMuchCoffeeMan books changed that and made comics a normal thing for me. Still, it wasn't until I read Eightball that I wanted to start making them. "Art" comics completely altered my outlook on sequential art as a whole — even superhero comics. Stories like Black Hole by Charles Burns and Ghost World by Daniel Clowes had these so-real-that-they-were-surreal emotions in them and that was completely alien to what I knew comics to be. I wanted to be a part of that.

I started reading comics shortly after birth (or it seems that way sometimes), and in my early childhood I'd devour (sometimes literally) anything I could get my hands on: Disney comics, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Amazing Story of Dirtboy & Captain Scumbag ... whatever! My choices narrowed to superheroes sometime in elementary school. And for years, DC Comics were practically the only choice. But around the sixth grade, I discovered Marvel. I ended up following all the Marvel titles, but my first and deepest love was always for The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. I loved Kirby and Ditko's art. But I absolutely worshipped Stan Lee.

That's tough for me, as I was always enrolled in state funded art programs that pushed the masters on me, and that was my first venture into the world of god like muscles and capes. after realizing that making it as a painter would be next to impossible I discovered comics and was into guys like Art Adams, Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, Erik Larson, and Todd McFarlane they were the guys who did that great stylized but formulaic musculature. I'm sure most kids in the eighties would give the same list though for comic artists and as I got older I got into Simon Bisley, Mike Mignola, Adam Hughes, and Frank Miller who had what I considered a more alternative style as they tended to go against the grain of what the mainstream was producing, in my opinion. So while it may not be obvious to see in my style I have always had more eclectic tastes but the comic artist must have stuck with me 'cause here I am.

Back when I was a callow youth in the early 1950s, I was a fan of the work of Carl Barks, Murphy Anderson, Roy Krenkel, Wally Wood, Reed Crandall and Will Elder. My favorite comics included Walt Disney's Comic and Stories, Uncle Scrooge, Mystery in Space, Strange Adventures, Mad, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and Blackhawk. I still have fairly extensive runs of all of them, 50 years later.

When I finally got over how awesome the A-Team comics were, the first creators that made me realize that individual artists were actually involved in making comics, were Bill Sienkiewicz and Kent Williams. As a young'n I loved Elektra: Assassin and Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown. Before them, I never really paid attention or cared about who was responsible for making comics.

The very first comic I read that I consciously knew the creator's name was Dark Knight Returns, and that led me to start noticing specific writers and artists and seeking out their work. This was a little haphazard since I was ten and there were no comic shops in my area yet so I relied on good old fashioned police work to comb grocery store racks and bookstore shelves for the ones I wanted. I still remember finding a copy of Give Me Liberty in an upstate NY mall while visiting my cousin.

Other creators that I specifically remember from those days are Chris Claremont, Walt Simonson, Peter David, and Neil Gaiman. I was in junior high when Image happened, and I remember following those big names to their new books. By that time we had a comic book shop, so it was much easier but then decidedly more expensive as I now had access to so many more comics.

My earliest and fondest memories of comic books involve reading DC Comics titles: Lois Lane, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Detective Comics, Action Comics (with Supergirl back-ups), Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Justice League, Legion of Super-Heroes, suspense/mystery titles, the humor titles like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope, and of course, romance comics.My favourite creators were the artists who could draw women well. I loved the clean, confident lines of Kurt Schaffenburger, the fluid movement of Gil Kane, the superb storytelling of Curt Swan, the cheerful warmth of Bob Oskner, the robust sensuality of Nick Cardy and the dynamic stylings of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. Mike Sekowsky often drew chunky male superheroes, but he drew a killer Wonder Woman; his female faces were beautiful. My favourite inker was/is Dick Giordano, who has brought grace to many a romance page and action page alike. I did not read Marvel Comics until my university years, when I discovered Chris Claremont and John Byrne's X-Men; Kitty Pryde remains a favourite character. Other revelations included Frank Miller's Daredevil and The Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. These comics raised the bar and have continued to influence today's comic book creators.

The artists that pulled me into American comics were the heavyweights like Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Barry Smith and of course Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, all innovative in their time and all great storytellers. I never rated the writing that highly before Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison et al. appeared on the scene. Now I follow the writers more than the artists.

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko earned my eternal allegiance for Spidey Strikes Back, a comic folks would be hard-pressed to find me without. Many of my hand-me down comics came with missing pages, so I didn't always KNOW the creators that were grabbing me. Having learned a little since growing up, I can say it was Jack Kirby, either Buscema, John Romita Sr, John Byrne, Ditko, George Perez, and Curt Swan¦ which ain't a bad list by any means. As to the comics I was always seeking out on any newsstand, convenience store, or pharmacy? The usuals: Spidey, the X-Men, Superman, Batman, and Archie. Yes, Archie. I admit it. Leave me alone. I also was given stacks of oddballs, like Moon Knight and Nova, which may explain my interest in B-list characters of all stripes.

That goes a bit back ( a whole 18 years) but from what I remember the creator list goes Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, John romita Jr., Ron Frenz, and John Buscema. As for comics, I always loved Daredevil, especially during the Nocenti/Romita Jr. run, Iron Man and Thor. I was definitely more a Marvel Zombie then DC.

Back in 1978, you had one very popular mag in France called Strange which at the time featured Daredevil, Iron Man and two issues of Amazing Spider-Man — those are the series that got me hooked. Back then, they had just wrapped up Gene Colan's run on DD, Iron Man was getting close to issue #100 (I remember the art by George Tuska and I believe the series was then written by Gerry Conway) and the ASM issues were written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita Sr and had Spidey teaming up with Doctor Strange to rescue Flash Thompson in a Terry &The Pirates type of story. I loved these comics immediately. I should also add I tremendously enjoyed the first Nova series from the same time, I remember how fun that title was.

I loved Iron Fist, Nightcrawler, and Tigra. I also liked Spider-Man and Batman, which sounds typical, but they're great characters. I enjoyed the work of Len Wein, John Byrne and Gil Kane.

My early reading of comics was at six or eight years old. I read whatever was around. Mostly DC and Archie. At that time I paid little attention to who created the comics. Just read and enjoyed them. It wasn't until I was thirteen years old in early 1968 that I first became aware of Marvel Comics. I Picked up two consecutive issues of Gene Colan's Daredevil. This led to Kirby's Fantastic Four, Thor, and Capt. America, John Romita's Spider-Man, and reprints of Steve Ditko's Spidey in Marvel Tales. I starting collecting all the Marvel books I could! Those artists then, and now, have had a big impact on me wanting to draw and tell stories.

My favorite comics were Thor, Iron Man (Colan issues), The Fantastic Four, Conan, The Submariner (first seven issues), and The Silver Surfer. My second art training were copying the panels of Gene Colan, John Buscema and Jack Kirby.

I loved Stan lee and John Romita Sr΄s Spider-Man. I used to like Ross Andru on Spider-Man too. Kurt Swan on Superman, the great master John Buscema on Conan and Avengers — whatever he drew I was his fan. Alex Raymond on Flash Gordon and Lee Faulk's Phantom were one of my very early books. There were so many beautiful books then that I can΄t list them all.

I came in kinda late to the hobby, I was already in my early twenties when I started to collect and there was a wealth to choose from by then, but the people who stood out for me at the time on the art end were Neal Adams, Alan Davis, Arthur Adams, Brian Bolland and Jim Lee. On the writing end Peter David's Hulk really grabbed my attention starting with Incredible Hulk #340 I think. The Todd Mcfarlane issue with Wolverine. Oh yeah and Alan Moore. Any of those guys and it was a guarantee I was buying it.

Mignola, Frank Miller, Frazetta, Bill Watterson, Charles Schulz.

When I was really young, the only two comic books we had in the house were a Garfield and a Peanuts collection, both of which we bought from the thrift store for a dime each. In high school, I used to drive my brother to the comic book store (before he got a license) and I would read the X-Men, Akira, etc.

Well, I began collecting since I was six. My favorite books were The Amazing Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Capt. America, The Justice League, Batman, Shazam, World's Finest, The Invaders, Kaliman comics, Mad Magazine, Vampirella, Creepy, Eerie, Heavy Metal magazines. Many of the creators in these books remain favorites today. Some include Steve Ditko, John Romita, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, George Perez, Frank Frazetta, and Sergio Aragones to name a few.

I loved John Byrne and Chris Claremont's X-Men. Then, of course, there was Frank Miller's Daredevil. As a boy, my favorite characters were Kid Flash, Green Lantern, and Ant-Man. Moon Knight also made a huge impression on me. I believe the series debuted in 1980, which would mean I was about ten years old. 1980-81 were probably my favorite comic-reading years. Chris Claremont's Man-Thing frightened me quite a bit and I was also probably picking up the Defenders sporadically. Everything was sporadic for me because we had no comic-shops in the area. I had no idea what a comic shop was. I bought my books at a stationary store called "The Stage".

When I was a kid I was a total Marvel Zombie. G.I. Joe is what set the hook but it wasn't long before I was on board with Spider-Man and the three or four X-books that existed back then. I started reading comics around the time that the Punisher first got his own series. That character blew my mind because he was like a bad ass G.I. Joe turned superhero. The first creator I remember actually being aware of was Todd McFarlane. Probably because he had such a distinctive signature and style. He made making comics seem like a hell of a lot of fun and that's probably one of the big reasons I got into it. I can remember making special trips to buy a particular kind of old-fashioned, typing paper that was really thin so that I could trace McFarlane pages.

As a kid I read British humour comics then later moved on to the completely war-obsessive boys' comics. Things like Victor, with its famous cover stories of brave young Tommies attacking entire panzer divisions armed only with a toothbrush and a sense of British pluck. The Nazis would immediately surrender, but not without killing him first so he could die heroically. Every week it would end with the guy being awarded the VC "posthumously" and throughout my childhood I never guessed what the word might mean. I did gravitate to American comics like the rest of us, through the Marvel reprints, but what mostly grabs my memory now is that there was an 'other' British comics which was very strange and surreal and mostly has been buried under the gung-ho stuff — things like Adam Strange, The Black Sapper, Iron Teacher ... most people reading this will be young whippersnappers and have no idea what I'm talking about. Indeed all I have is a dim half-receding memory. But I think it's a sub-current which resurfaced in the early/mid-period 2000AD.

Stan Lee, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Paul Smith, Keith Giffen, and Frank Miller.

The two artists that made me sit up and take notice as a kid were Neal Adams and George Perez. I grew up reading mostly DC stuff and was used to seeing guys like Curt Swan and Carmine Infantino. And not to say anything bad about these guys, cause up till then, I loved their work. but once I saw Neal Adams take everything to another level, it made it hard to go back and appreciate what came before. I have a better appreciation of those guys now than I did then. And I was a huge Teen Titans fan when Perez took over. And we all know what kind of attention to detail he has. I was amazed on a monthly basis with that guy.

As a kid, I read a lot of Disney comics; Carl Barks was one of my favorite cartoonists. I also read Mad Magazine, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side. The book Humans by Mike Dowdall and Pat Welch, which is more of an illustrated humor book that a comic, was also influential. Later on I got into R. Crumb, Matt Groening, Basil Wolverton, Roz Chast. I wrote my senior thesis on the Twisted Sisters anthologies; I like Leslie Sternbergh's work.

Hergι and Carl Barks.

I discovered manga in the early 1990s when I started reading Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, by beloved animation director Hayao Miyazaki. It was released by VIZ, one of the few companies publishing manga at the time. I was amazed by the complexity of the story and the richness of the characters — this was totally different from the superhero comic books my brother would read! From there, I moved on to reading Ranma 1/2, by Rumiko Takahashi — loved the comedy — and Battle Angel Alita, by Yukito Kishiro, for my action fix.

I guess the Italian comic creators I liked as a kid are probably unknown or unheard of in the US (even if the great Hugo Pratt is an international master ..., so I'll mostly stick with the better known ones. I used to love Steve Ditko and his trippy/acid Doc Strange, King Kirby around his Kamandi/Eternals era, Barry Windsor-Smith on the early Conan, Gil Kane on anything and the classy Jim Steranko -"Tonight I Die" being one of my all-time favorite tales! I know this tells something about my age, though ... eh!

Comics: Thor, Captain America, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham, X-Men, Iron Man, Masters of the Universe, Secret Wars. I was a kid at the time, so some of these early favorites have held up better than others for me. Creators: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Jim Aparo.

My favorites then remain my favorites now: Wally Wood and Steve Ditko.Kirby was so omnipresent I didn't gain a proper appreciation of him until some time later. Took him for granted, I'm ashamed to say. But I learned! Those early Justice League issues held a real appeal. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were the pinnacle. I was fascinated by the Metal Men, but I liked the characters more than I enjoyed their stories.

My favorites were almost strictly Marvel Comics, simply because they were much more cool and hip than those from DC. I liked reading about a guy with problems who also happens to wear a costume. Stan's dialogue and Kirby and Romita's art always kept me extremely entertained.

As a prepubescent I like most of the X-titles from Marvel. I used the artwork as models to learn to draw from. Just like every other kid! As a teen, I moved onto Vertigo titles. Especially Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. After that, I took a long break from comics in general, not necessarily by choice.

When I got back into them, I felt so out of the loop. I had no idea what was going on anymore. So I turned to buying graphic novels. Self-contained stories. At least, self-contained chapters of stories that I could easily find via Internet or comic book shop, without the pressures of keeping up with the monthly issue. That eventually led to the independent comic books I'm into now. But those crazy X-Men, and that dreamy pale guy with pitch black hair will always hold a special place in my heart.

I was a complete X-Men head when I started getting in to comics. My first comic was an issue of Excalibur that was part of something called the Cross Time Caper. The thing made pretty much no sense at all. So that led to people like Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, and later on Chris Bachalo through Generation X becoming artistic favorites. Man I spent so much allowance, small job money on comics. X-Men 2099 later on too as I got a job bussing tables.

Around the same time though, I came across the Maxx on a newsstand and Sam Kieth rocketed to my number one spot (and still is). The grocery store near my house would get the Maxx, and I would be down there every week digging through the shopping cart full of comics looking for it. It only lasted on the newsstand there for about five issues, so then I went off to find a comic book store to get more. So there you go. The most mainstream of the mainstream and a quirky little book that occasionally was drawn in crayon. I still draw big feet because of looking at Sam Kieth's art for so long though, so blame that on him.

My youth was literally littered with comics bought, found or appropriated by other means, mostly by way of the black & white reprint volumes available in Australian newsagents. Growing up in regional Western Australia meant that there was little avenue to source much variety, so I made do with the traditional Superman and Batman comics along with the occasional issue of Iron Man, X-Men, Man-Thing or Defenders thrown in for good measure. At this early age I took a good deal of the creative process behind comics for granted (I would follow the storyline or characters rather than the writer/artist) and it wasn't until I moved to the 'bustling' metropolis of Perth (the most isolated capital city in the world) in my teen years that I began to develop more of an 'informed' appreciation, my interests in comics branching out with the variety of titles newly available to me such as Love & Rockets, Mister X, Swamp Thing, Cerebus, Sandman ... et al which also kicked me in the pants in understanding the creative process, and I invested many weekends in dissecting the work of Dean Motter, Dave Sim, Jaime Hernandez, Alan Moore to better understand just HOW these things were put together.

I grew up in Europe, until age nine, and was already reading comics then but not American ones. The first creators I gravitated to when I came to the states were John Byrne, George Perez, and Frank Miller. Whatever titles they were working on I followed. Of course they were all doing long stints on their respective books so there wasn't a lot of hopping around from title to title, at least not at that time. Titles like Byrne on X-Men, Perez on Teen Titans, and Miller on Daredevil. Typical for many fans at that time. Shortly after that my attention turned to Alan Moore on Swamp Thing, Mike Grell's Jon Sable Freelance, Howard Chaykin's American Flagg, Cerebus, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tim Truman's Scout. I was already exposed to manga and anime at an early age so when that was becoming more available in the U.S. I devoured them. My friends' mom was Japanese and she would travel back and forth to Japan and bring back manga, or my dad would take me to Japantown in San Francisco and I'd get it there. I couldn't get enough of Toriyama's Dr. Slump. Back on the American side of things Eclipse became my favorite publisher, I mean they were doing Scout, Miracleman, Airboy, Area 88, Xenon, Mai: the Psychic Girl, Dagger of Kamui, Mr. Monster, The Rocketeer, Zot! and on and on. It was all good.

I started reading comics around 1970 and was drawn to DC and Marvel's mystery/monster books. I also loved the DC war comics (especially Our Army at War) and Mad. Favorite artists were Steve Ditko, Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, and nearly all of the Mad artists. I think Ditko was the first comic book artist whose work I copied.

I was a fan of the Image guys back when they worked for Marvel and DC. Long before I got into manga, I loved Jim Lee's X-Men work, and I remember liking Todd McFarlane's work on DC's Invasion. At the same time, I liked Geoff Senior's and Andrew Wildman's work on the Transformers. They had completely different styles that were appropriate for the storyarcs they were drawing.

The Avengers was my favorite book, especially during the Falcon-Beast-Ms. Marvel era, and I also loved the X-Men, back when there was only the one monthly title (ah, the old days!). I really loved Alpha Flight as well, both during the Byrne and Mantlo runs.

My all time favorites from all over the world are many, so I will narrow it a bit down for time and space allowances here. Thanks to the military, I was born in Japan and lived most of my life overseas. So, the artists that really fascinated me as a kid reading comics were: France: Uderzo & Goscinny with Asterix Le Gaulierre (Asterix The Gaul)
Japan: Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atomu (Atom Boy), Jungle Taitei Leo (Kimba), Shotaro Ishinomori's Kamen Rider series (Masked Rider), Go Nagai's Cutey Honey!, Leiji Matsumoto's Uchu Senkan Yamato books (Space Battleship Yamato), Rumiko Takahashi (all her books, period, though Urusei Yatsura really launched me professionally, so it is number one in my heart still!)
America: Any and all comics illustrated by Joe Kubert, Sgt. Rock, Our Army At War, Jackk Kirby and Kamandi ...

... and so many other popular and not so well known artists and titles from all around the world. I was also heavily intrigued by comics from Italy but alas as they were all in Italian, I cannot recall the names and titles off hand.

I only got into comics relatively recently in 1999 (umm, that's still six years ago now!), when I met my partner and he started suggesting titles I might like. It actually took a few months to find anything I was interested in, and that comic was Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore. It was the trade of the first three issues and I just loved the characters. Francine was so easy to relate to, and it's fun to fantasise about having some of Katchoo's qualities, especially when she hangs a naked Freddie up in the shop window. After that I picked up Kabuki on the strength of David Mack's beautiful artwork, and wasn't disappointed by the story that accompanied it. From there, it was full pelt into the world of comics and a hop and a step into small press publishing.

I had a few periods of comic-reading. The first was Disney Comics like Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck. Then there was a period of a year or two where I read everything Batman. But the real passion came when my brother brought me an X-Men comic. That opened the door even more and from that point on I was done. First it was the characters that drew me in (mainly the X-Men). But then (probably thanks to a Wizard 100 COMICS YOU MUST OWN) I discovered Alan Moore and Frank Miller, and my world changed. Alan Moore is my favorite comic writer of all time and Dave Mazzuchelli is my favorite artist of all time.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a new reader (age 4). I had no idea comics had creators. I thought they crew like leaves once a month at the 7-Eleven. About age six I started realizing that wasn't true. Carmine Infantino was the first creator who I became aware of actually writing at the time. (Although I knew of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby). My first great idol as a writer would come about age nine or so with Chris Claremont and then Marv Wolfman.

Osamu Tezuka is always my favorite. And his work Black Jack is my all time favorite.

My first-ever comic was Superboy #140, in which Clark Kent's secret identity was almost uncovered by a gambler who never lost, and Krypto contracted Super-Rabies from outer space. I'll always have a soft spot for Al Plastino and George Papp for those stories. My favorite ongoing DC books, however, were unquestionably Batman by Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and Dick Giordano; and Justice League of America, with Steve Englehart, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. Denny, Neal and Dick were the ultimate Bat-team — their stories were dark, moody, and intelligent...far beyond the traditional "comic book" that was being published at that point in time. And Justice League of America was flat-out my favorite "adventure" comic, a chance for me to read about Batman fighting alongside the rest of the World's Greatest Heroes. As far as Marvel Comics, my first one was Amazing Spider-Man #121. Talk about a jumping-on point! It was like nothing I had ever read in comics at the time-Gerry Conway and Gil Kane's story, in which the Green Goblin murders Gwen Stacy, made me a loyal Web-Head fan from that moment on. I also thought Ross Andru's subsequent work on that book was phenomenal, and quite underrated when everyone compares him to classic Spidey creators.

The first comic I ever bought was Avengers #300, featuring the new (and odd) teaming of Thor, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Gilgamesh (The Forgotten One), and the reincarnation of Steve Rogers as The Captain. It contained a rundown of all past and present Avengers in the back (by means of the classic Marvel "floating head" illustrations), and it was oversized. I was 11, and I must have read it a hundred times the day I bought it. It introduced me to the writing of Walt Simonson, but it also introduced me to the work of John Buscema, who would later instruct me on the finer points of comic illustration by way of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way along with Stan Lee.

But my love for Spider-Man has outshined my love for any other comic, Marvel, DC, or otherwise. I collected any title that contained “Spider”, “Man”, “Peter” or “Parker”. It didn't matter. And though I came of age in the Todd McFarlane/Erik Larsen/Mark Bagley era of Spider-Man, it was John Romita who I idolized. He, in my opinion, is the quintessential Spider-Man artist who defined the character for generations to come. I still to this day collect anything that has his signature style on it, be it posters, standees, or old back issues.

I cut my literary teeth on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge stories. But when I got a little older I discovered super-heroes, and I was all over that. I had a particular jones for the Legion of Super-Heroes, though it's hard to recall why; you look back at those early stories now, they're mainly about leotarded teenagers pointing at things.

The first comic I really fell in love with was Love & Rockets, then there was Sandman, Death: The High Cost of Living, Meat Cake and Batman — and of course I adored anything by Jill Thompson, and I still do. Oh yes, and I found the art in Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight & Nightmares very inspiring. Rather pale and tragic of me isn't it? What did you expect?

I liked Joe Kubert's stuff, Sgt.Rock, and Tor stuff was really exciting to me when I first started to notice comics. Also, I loved John Buscema's Conan work. I felt very adult as a young kid, it seemed kinda taboo for me reading Conan, and Buscema had a very gritty, yet passionate look. And maybe I felt a little intimidated by that stuff. So of course I loved that feeling so I had to keep reading it.

I also realized as a kid that comics were kinda over my head because of the serialized format ... and in those days a kid couldn't just run down to the local comic shop to pick up back issues of a title to catch up on a storyline. So all the drama, and story of mainstream titles was lost on me. Which actually seemed to carry over to this day.

I read comics in fits and starts. The earliest books I remember being into were DC. We lived on an Air Force base in Germany and my mom used to bribe me with forty-five cent issues of Wonder Woman from the base bookstore. Do the dishes and you get a comic – that sort of thing. I think she also bought me Vampirella, which in retrospect, was exceedingly cool of her. God bless '70s feminism. I also remember finding a bunch of Batman issues featuring Nocturna at a flea market. Nocturna! Oh man, I loved Nocturna.

The family down the street – the Edmondson's – had an insane collection horror comics. I'd go hang out there until my mom got off work and scare the hell out of myself reading House of Mystery and House of Secrets.

The first creators I recall being aware of were Jose Luis Garcia, Marv Wolfman (yeah, I was into the New Teen Titans, mock me if you must) and George Perez. I came back to comics when Elaine Dove pointed me towards the Elektra: Assassin (Frank Miller/Bill Sienkiewicz) in high school. That book blew my mind. I haven't read it in years. I wonder if it holds up.

Uh, what was next? I spent a day on a hammock reading The Watchmen when I should have been studying for my finals as a college freshman. Then I think Ian Short gave me a stack of Sandman and it was all over.

The first comics pro I ever met was William Rosado — met him at a party in NYC. I freaked out when he told me what he did for a living. He had rockstar status as far as I was concerned. I think I was 24, maybe 25? Living the dream. Living. The dream.

When I started reading comics, it was primarily newspaper strips. My favorites where Tarzan, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates and Flash Gordon. I'm sure everyone knows who were the creators of those fine strips! Most comic books of the day were uncredited or credited with a name that may or may not have actually done the work ... like Bob Kane. Batman was and is still my favorite comic book.

I grew up mostly on comic strips and devoured collected Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes books. Also Bloom County and Foxtrot, and a few others here and there. Based on that, my dad took me to my first “real” comic shop, where the owner recommended I try some Uncle Scrooge comics and Groo the Wanderer by Sergio Aragones. The guy knew his stuff, because I was back to buy more Groo and Disney comics not too long after. There was an issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Mark Martin that just blew my mind and introduced me to the beauty of black and white. By High school I started picking up the occasional superhero comic if someone expressive and fun like Chris Bachalo (Generation X) drew it. I liked the end run on Sandman (especially when it was drawn by Marc Hempel). I got really absorbed into the soap opera and strange storytelling style of The Maxx series by Sam Keith. When that was being published it was the series that made me anticipate new comic book day more than any other.

I actually was weaned on the Pocket Book Editions of the original Marvels that came out in the early and mid-seventies, so, even though I was born a decade after they were first published, my faves were Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, and Dr. Strange! I also loved going to the drugstore and getting the Blue Ribbon Digest DC reprints, that had such a variety of styles — war, horror, science fiction as well as super heroes.

Almost as soon as I found out comics existed, I was hunting down books from the early '60s through the early '70s — they weren't that expensive yet, and it was like stepping into another world. I always gravitated towards the art more than the stories, though of course I was a kid and I hadn't realized that the art IS the story in comics! But I was nuts for anything by Kirby (both his Silver Age Marvel work and the New Gods saga at DC), Steranko, Barry Smith, Ditko, John Buscema, Colan — that whole Marvel crowd, really. And to tell the truth, I still love them the best!

The first time around, as a wee child in the '70s, I was all about Jack Kirby (mainly from FF reprints), John Buscema, and to a lesser degree George Tuska (on Iron Man) ... with Joe Sinnott as God Of All Inkers, incidentally. Then, alas, I had to bail out on reading comics by roughly age nine or ten, as the books being cranked out in those dark days (somewhere in the mid-to late-'70s) had become far too idiotic to be bearable. This set the stage for my second go-round in once again being a "new comics reader," when the so-called alternative comics scene burst forth in the '80s ... And lo, the work of Chaykin on American Flagg, Baron and Rude on Nexus, Moore and Bissette and Totleben (et al.) on Swamp Thing did rock my high-school-sophomore world. I'm not sure if my later introduction to the even more important world of manga counts as a third occasion of being a "new comics reader"... But if so, then the work of Rumiko Takahashi on Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, Otomo Katsuhiro on Akira, and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko on Star of the Kurds and Venus Wars were my early favorites.

When I was a wee lad, it was all about the Peanuts Gang for me. Then many years passed when I didn't read comics at all, really. I discovered Edward Gorey when I was in high school and totally fell under his spell. Later, as an adult, I ran across Jay Stephens' Land of Nod Treasury, and it was like a lightning bolt of inspiration. It's drawn sort of roughly, yet it's so funny and immediate. I think the first single-issue comic book I bought was Dame Darcy's Meat Cake. And then a friend tipped me off to Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, which I loved, and it made me aware of Slave Labor Graphics.

Aside from Spanish authors (Carlos Gimenez, Font, Jose Ortiz, Max ...) and European stars (Moebius, Juan Gimenez ...) , my truly idols back when I was a comic reader (sigh!) were the Holy Trinity in Comics: Hal Foster, Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff. But short time later I discovered a whole new world:(Not in any order) Richard Corben, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer, Will Eisner, Terry Austin, John Romita (Sr.), Frazetta, BWS, Miller, Bill Watterson, Otomo, and the list goes and goes ...

First book I bought was back in 1979. It was a Star Wars comic. The covers to those issues were always cooler than the stories inside, but that didn't matter to me. From there I took a break, built some forts in the back yard, swam in some pools. Then, in 1985, a comic beckoned to me from the shelf of a local grocery store in Glenwood, Iowa. It was called Saga of the Swamp Thing. Written by Alan Moore and drawn by John Totleben, it changed the way I viewed comics-the problem was I only had one issue in my hands. I needed more! I did some research and found out that Omaha (a nearby city) had comic book conventions every month. I begged my Mom to take me to one and the rest is history.