Childhood: Rebirth

It started innocently enough. We were on vacation in Florida during the summer of 2009. I popped into a mall comic shop (Coliseum of Comics) while the rest of the family was shopping. I purchased The Flash:Rebirth #1 and X-Men: Utopia #1 and #2. I hadn't purchased a comic book in the previous three decades, but the X-Men and Spider-Man and Iron Man movies had reignited my childhood love for comic book heroes.

Returning home, and having partaken of the cliffhanger "crack" of those three issues, I began collecting trades and monthly books at an alarming rate. As a relatively poor teacher, there were few discretionary funds with which to feed my new addiction, but whatever funds existed were poured into my local comic franchise (Collector's Edge North) in Milwaukee and the nearest (but now defunct) Border's locations. I even went so far as to obtain a library card - and I ripped through the library's collection in one summer.

I had missed a tremendous amount of comics material in those thirty years. While the X-Men and The Flash had been my gateway back into the medium, I began to seek out a wider range of characters and storytelling. I found that I had missed out on (in no particular order) Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and Brian K. Vaughn and Brian Wood and Gail Simone and George Perez and David Michelinie and Mark Waid and Joss Whedon and Fabian Nicieza and Grant Morrison and Frank Miller and Geoff Johns and Brian Azzarello and Marjorie Liu and Kurt Busiek and Rick Remender and Greg Pak and Greg Rucka and John Layman and Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Chris Claremont and Scott Snyder and Ann Nocenti and Jason Aaron and Matt Fraction and Brian Michael Bendis and Robert Kirkman and Jonathan Hickman and Bill Willingham ... and a host of others that I have yet to discover.

Those are just the writers. My list of favorite artists (that I discovered thus far) is even longer.

I'm not a life-long collector, but I have amassed more than 100 trades and 350 issues in the last 3.5 years.  I have no art background, but I know what I like. I like to think I know how to write. Going forward, I plan to read and review (re-leaf through) some of the comics that are already in my long boxes and new ones that come across my nightstand. I look forward to providing the layman's perspective. Feel free to leave your opinions and comments...because I like talking about comics every bit as much as I enjoy reading them.