Falling In Love (Then Out Of Love) (Then In Love Again) With Comics

I love comics, me.

Ever since the early 80s, I've been a fan of mighty Marvel. Being from the UK, American comic books were difficult to get for someone not in the vicinity of a dedicated comic book store, so I loved the output of Marvel UK, weekly or fortnightly reprints of American material. The one comic I collected from its inception to its end was Transformers; at the end of its run, I retrospectively collected the US comic, despite having all of its stories in reprinted form. My brother used to buy Captain Britain and Secret Wars, and with reading those, along with cameo appearances from a freshly black-costumed Spider-Man, along with Nick Fury, back in the very early issues of Transformers, I became a massive fan of Marvel.

I loved the Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends animated series, watched the Fantastic Four cartoon (with the Human Torch replaced by the robot H.E.R.B.I.E., an urban myth surrounding that scenario which I recently learned the truth of), and was a casual fan during the 80s, my only fix of Marvel characters coming from very occasional back-up strips in Transformers, such as Iron Man, Machine Man, and Hercules. During the late 80s, my local newsagent started stocking random issues here and there of actual American Marvel comics, and I fell in love. Much as I love Transformers, and always have, this was something different. A huge universe of believable characters with foibles, I found myself adoring the format. UK Marvel publications had always consisted of A4-ish sized magazine format comics, with about 11 pages of the main story, a letters page, then 11 or so pages of back-up strip. Their American counterparts were something altogether different. A smaller format, the comics contained one story throughout, no back-up strips taking away any of the inertia and impetus of the main event. There was something exotic about seeing adverts for American products that weren't out in the UK, the paper quality, the smell, the Bullpen Bulletins... I felt immensely jealous of the American comic book buyers, able to get a multitude of comics like this every month. I saw the subscription page in the back, and how many titles Marvel published every month. Taking home my copies of Daredevil and Web of Spider-Man, this was the start of something much, much bigger for me. At the time, though, I consoled myself that the comics I bought were weekly, not monthly, and that our Transformers comic was infinitely superior to the American one (though that would soon change). All through this, I carried on drawing and writing, trying desperately to emulate the styles and subtleties of my favourite comic artists.

Not long after, Marvel UK launched Death's Head, a spin-off from Transformers. He was a bounty hunter (or freelance peacekeeping agent, as he preferred to be called) who, in its parent title, had been introduced when Rodimus Prime put a 10,000 shanix reward on Galvatron's head. Death's Head managed to destroy Bumblebee, kill Shockwave and help defeat Unicron in his time in Transformers, before winding his way into Marvel continuity in a bizarre way. After getting caught in the explosion of Unicron's time portal, he was thrown through time, colliding with the Tardis in the Doctor Who Magazine's comic strip. From there, he was sent by the Doctor into Dragon's Claws, then into his own comic, which was in the American format. In that, over the course of ten issues, he fought the Fantastic Four and Iron Man of 2020. My favourite comic was, in a very convoluted way, linked directly into the expansive Marvel continuity (as was the Doctor, strangely enough).

Apologies for the quality of the pic, by the way, it was done on a very poor art package in the early part of the century. Anyway, through Death's Head appearing in the Fantastic Four's own American comic (issue 338, if I remember correctly), and She-Hulk issue 24, I started buying comics by mail order. Cosmic Comics was the company, and I became a regular. As an opening offer, they sent a copy of The Avengers Annual issue 10, featuring Rogue's first appearance. It reopened a love of characters I read back in Secret Wars, and soon my collection was building. Then, I discovered the Comix Shoppe in Swansea, and I found myself spending a lot of money every month on my standing order. Every one of the X-Men titles, Amazing Spider-Man, Venom's spin-off stuff, and, for a while, every Batman title (during the Knightfall crossover, and my only DC stuff), and some of the Marvel UK stuff. I bought loads of graphic novels to catch up on stuff I'd missed, and discovered loads of artists and writers I'd missed out on in my formative years. The X-Men animated series was shown, followed by Spider-Man, and I was in awe of the faithful adaptations of stories I'd read. It was a Bold New Era for me, but, unbeknownst to me at the time, the beginning of the end.

Marvels was released, a stunning limited series with painted artwork by Alex Ross, retelling the Marvel Universe from the perspective of an ordinary man from the 1940s to present day, and to this day, one of my favourite comics series. But, from visiting the Comix Shoppe, more and more content on the shelves had a cover gimmick of some kind, be it a foil logo or gatefold cover. Venom had several mini-series released, back to back, the first issue of each having a 'special' cover. Marvel's X-Men crossover, Fatal Attractions, featured a hologram on every cover of its books one month, as one 'event' after another was touted to get people to buy comics. Wolverine had the adamantium ripped out of his body. Spider-Man's parents returned from the dead. Wolverine appeared in most comics every month. It was getting tiresome. The industry had fallen victim to the speculators; people who were buying comics en masse because they believed that they would be worth something, so a flashy cover overtook the importance of content. To my mind, the quality was suffering, and I backed out of buying comics. I felt cheated. I didn't want to be a part of it any more.

Over the next ten years or so, I dipped in and out of comics; art styles had changed, and my dream of becoming a published comics artist seemed more distant than ever. My style was influenced by people who were working throughout the 70s, 80s and early 90s, but everything had changed. My style would never fit in with the new stuff. Computer colouring had taken over; I'd heard about the Heroes Reborn stuff that Marvel had done, and realised that during my sabbatical, things had become worse. I heard about their Ultimate line of books, rebooting heroes with a modern twist. I hated that idea. I hate anything that fucks around with established continuity. I learned later that they were separate from the main continuity, so I choose to continue ignoring them. So anyway, this century we've had big screen adaptations of Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, and I watched them all enthusiastically, and that voice at the back of my mind was yelling at me to reignite my love of comics. We'd parted on bad terms. Perhaps it was time to make up.

From buying the Secret Wars graphic novel last year, I suddenly found myself wanting more. At Christmas, my wife bought me Marvel Chronicle, a massive year-by-year history of the company from the late 30s to present day. It was fantastic. I read more about storylines that I'd only heard about and knew little about before, such as Civil War. I decided to finally set up a web comic that I'd been planning for years, which has its barest origins back in 1993. Originally, it was going to be an X-Men spin-off, X-Corps, but I couldn't keep up with characters; my main characters all had their names used by Marvel within months of me starting my initial designs, and I lost faith in myself. Even X-Corps has been used by them now. Anyway, it's now called Destinauts, and aside from the design of the main character, absolutely everything is different to what I started 16 years ago. But finally, it's coming. I can put it online with no drawbacks like deadlines, and people can read it or not. It's something that I really want to do. This week, you'll see the first few character previews, and if you choose to read it, I thank you enormously.

The other day, my wife bought me Spider-Man: Visionaries, a collection of early 80s stuff, and 2004's Civil War. The styles and tone are vastly different between the two, but they're both incredible. I have fallen back in love with comics, and I hope they can forgive me for leaving them for so long.

Incidentally, I'm actually avoiding the current Transformers comics, as they're going for the multiple covers for the same comic angle. I can't be a completist any more, like I used to be, so as one love gets rekindled, another fades into dust. It's a funny old world.