Martin Wisse writes about a reader’s suggestion that Love & Rockets is the kind of book you hand people to get them to read comics, which soon moves into that thing I never understand about how the series lacks a natural jumping-on point. I’m beginning to wonder if the old way of encountering TV shows and comics right in the middle of their narratives and then working one’s way backward or not depending if it’s interesting or not has all but gone away. It could be the stumble-upon approach was simply the default method of those that grew up without access to DVD series season collections and comics trades.
It wasn’t so much the lack of a clear jumping on point that stopped me getting into Love & Rockets as just not seeing the original comics anywhere and the collected editions only rarely. And usually when I already had my eye on other comics. Besides which, I am anal enough not to want to read books out of sequence if I can’t help it.
When I were a lad I did get into superhero comics just diving into the deep end. The first American comics I can remember reading were Dutch reprints my uncle had lying around in his small collection. One was a reprint of the start of the Korvac saga in Avengers, which in half an issue introduced some dozen heroes or so, then puts them into space to meet yet another half dozen heroes, with copious allusion to earlier stories. The other one I remember is a Lee-Buscema Fantastic Four story, the Coming of the Over-Mind, again with a lot of characters you’re supposed to know and references to stories you’re supposed to have read. That was enough to intrigue me and once I started buying my own comics, it was yet another guest star filled Avengers spectacular, that crossover with Thor when Surtur’s demons threaten New York.
But all of that was at a time when I could buy one or two comics each week even on the meagre pocket money I got. That’s a bit more difficult if you’re buying comics at three-four dollars a pop, let alone want to buy trade paperback collections or gods forbid, hardcover reprints. Then it is a bit more risky to take a chance at a new title and you do want to get something you are already pretty sure of you’ll enjoy and understand. The more expensive comics become, the less easy it is to stumble over new stuff.
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