What age were you most enthusiastic regarding comics?

[Adam Eterno]

I had this discussion with a mate the other day and I've seen various comments by members here as to the fact that their interest waned in comics at a certain age and I wondered whether we were all similar ages, however old we are now, when comics were REALLY important to us? Importance as an adult now doesn't count for this question!

I read comics sporadically before and after I was 10 1/2 when I moved back to the UK in the mid 70's. From returning until 13 1/2 when I was sent away to boarding school, I spent everything I could on comics and couldn't buy enough. For me that was Summer '74 to Summer '77, 10-13 years old.

[koollectablz]

For me my proper total obsession with them was from '77 - to around '81, which would make me aged 6-10, I still bought them after that right up until around aged 15. But not multiple titles, by then I'd gone to only getting 2000ad.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

SEVEN

This was probably as I seem to have finally been entrusted with my own pocket money---before this, I had loads of older cousins who let me see their comics after they read them.

Choosing and buying my own comics was much better, though!

I stopped altogether around 1975/76: I got into underage boozing [I'm not proud!] music, film history [!] and other teen desires then---I started again in 1980, buying 2000 AD every week: it was just as good as the real early childhood stuff, but in a different way.

[Phoenix]

I stopped altogether around 1975/76: I got into underage boozing [I'm not proud!] music, film history [!] and other teen desires then---I started again in 1980

Did you at a later date, Rab, buy in those missing issues between 1975/6 and 1980?

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Yes Phoenix I have been doing a heckuva lot of catching up with many British comics from 1976 to 1980..........just this past few months really.


I have read more vintage UK comics over this past year than at any time in my life.

[Phoenix]

I'm sure I've mentioned this before. I was nine when my enthusiasm for Thomsons' text-story output for boys was born. I was still reading them in the Sixth Form. Inevitably there was a four-year hiatus while I was at university, and several more during my early years of teaching, my four years as a singer in a trio, performing in folk and cabaret clubs in England and Germany, and of course my marriage. Adventure, The Wizard, The Rover, The Hotspur and I eventually found each other again though. I now have all the post-war and most of the pre-war issues, including The Skipper, although a large number of them are photocopies. Believe it or not I am currently just as enthusiastic about them and their serials as I was when I was at school. In more recent years my enthusiasm has been extended as I have also acquired the picture story papers and most of the company's output for girls. I'm no longer buying any because the British Library fills the gaps. Having said that, I am still looking for nine of the forty-two Bunty Summer Specials, these being 1963 : 1964 : 1966 : 1968 : 1970 : 1971 : 1978 : 1979 : 1997. Anyone able to lend me any of them? If so, please PM me. The British Library doesn't have any of these.

[wilsia]

From age 4 years reading Robin and Playhour right up to 16 years old I was mad about comics. Still bought them after 16 years but not the same amount as there was less titles that interested me and girls and music came along and my interests went down different roads. Also felt that I shouldn't be buying comics at my age.
When I was 21 years old my interest kicked off again and my love for them continued, sadly by then it was the mid 80s and all those wonderful titles of my younger years had disappeared.
In my 50s and my love for British comics hasn't waned but I am saddened there is little in way of choice.

[Kashgar]

1964, when I was seven, is certainly a year that I recall as being comic related in my memory. Not least because I distinctly remember having the first, separate Dandy and Beano Summer Specials, in all their glossy tabloid-sized splendour. Then girls and music basically killed off my interest for a time when I was fourteen.

[Adam Eterno]

There's a common theme of girls and music arising here!

[Kashgar]

And in that order!

[starscape]

Intially between about, oh I don't know, 7-11 or so. But during my late-teens / twenties, when mature comics (be that Revolver, Crisis, Vertigo or Viz) came out, that was a real boom period too. Some good DC/Marvel/2000AD around that time too, as well as all the indies that suddenly arose.

In the last couple of years, comics has unfortunately become a virtual wasteground for me.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I think there is a similarity between comics and popular music: I don't care for modern rap or techno music---I am too old for that-----but today the sheer range of old music available very cheaply is staggering, even archive demos and obscure b-sides from the 60s and 70s are easy to obtain now.

It's easy to just sidestep modern music altogether: the same goes for comics, I have more old material than I will ever be able to read, which is amassing at a high rate of knots [again, very economically]: in some ways, the situation is better today, at least in regard to seeing all the older stuff.

Girls? ---yes, infinitely more important than comics.

[big bad bri]

i think im most enthusiastic about comics now in my forties but i was always buying them myself at secondary school between 82-87 then i was mainly into the american stuff,i did stop for a few years and sold everything but then i discovered the book palace and my love of comics was reborn and would now rather british comics over american stuff any day of the week,

[colcool007]

I got into comics at six and never really left them.

[paw broon]

I can't remember when I wasn't interested in comics, although here was a period when I was about 14 - 15 and my mother decided I should be studying rather than reading "that trash" and chucked out what I had. That would have been '63/'64, and at the same time music and girls became very important - not that I have ever lost interest in music, you understand. In the early '60's, I remember hearing Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and Duane Eddy, one after the other, on Radio Luxembourg, late at night and was hooked. ( I was in a band in the mid '60's, a 4 piece - guitar, bass, drums and me as chanter - playing in local church halls and not being very good. But you met a lot of girls)
So, although I still read comics at the barbers or at school and occasionally at home, I didn't really renew my interest in a big way till after I was married. Then I made up for lost time.
Going back to my pre-teen years, Beano, Dandy and some other British titles were regulars in my life and at primary school in the mid '50's I discovered Super Thriller and Ace Hart, then The Phantom in Aus. Frew comics that occasionally turned up in wee, local newsagents.
Now I've managed to find some of those old memories and added them to my collection.