For my first major blog on our new...uh....blog, I wanted to talk about my love of comic books. I am one of the owners of the magnificent shop that is Black Bowser Comics and I am the acting manager. I have been collecting comics since I was 17 just before I graduated from high school in 1993 but have been reading comics all my life. In fact it was Bowser who got me jazzed about comics in the glory days of Sackville comic fandom. The first comic I ever bought was Venom: Funeral Pyre #1 at the local Quick Mart (now Sassy's Convenience) with Bowser in tow. I didn't know much about comics in those days but I knew what I liked.....FLASHY COVERS!!!! I knew who The Punisher was at the time but didn't really know who Venom was. All I knew was that they both looked bad-ass, they were both jumping at me to buy this book, it was a #1 issue and the flames were in a shiny metallic print. I absolutely had to have this comic and I was willing to pay the outrageous $3.75 for it just so that I could bask in it's shiny opulence. At this point in my life, after reading soooooo many comics I don't really remember what the story was about and it's not important anyway. What is important is that I enjoyed reading it enough that I bought the next three issues in the mini-series each of which got more and more terrible as the comics came out. But what did I care.....I had all three issues!!!!
Even though we shopped at the Quick Mart and Mel's Tearoom for comic books it didn't take us long to start driving to Moncton and go to an actual comic shop on a regular basis. I don't want to say that we went everyday but there were times that we, or at least I, would make consecutive visits. At that time we shopped Halley's Comics and 1 Million Comics both of which received a huge amount of my student loan money. The wonderful thing about comic book shops before the internet really got going was that to keep up with what was going on in comicdom you had to hang out at a comic shop. Sure there were some comic book magazines out there like Wizard that gave you tidbits but to truely tap the vein you had to spend an hour or so at least once a week at a comic shop. I went to buy the books that I wanted but I would roam the store picking up comics and flipping through them deciding wether I wanted to buy it or just glean what I could from it and head out the door. While I walked around the shop other fans would be hanging out debating everything and anything about their favourites. It was amazing the amount of info you could pick up listening to people arguing the ethical issue of Professor X wiping Magneto's mind or why Marvel would do something as stupid as bringing Peter Parker's parents back from the dead. Even if their conversation didn't convince me to buy a particular book it did give me some background on what was happening in comics. The comic guru though was the guy behind the counter; the comic shop guy. I've been to a lot of shops in my time all over North America and it always seems to be the same. The comic shop guy whether he (or she....sorry girls) is the owner or just a worker is a wellspring of information and usually a pretty damn good salesman. It was one of these guys that convinced me to buy Shadowhawk when I was undecided. He simply said "Really good book man". How wrong he was.............
Even though we shopped at the Quick Mart and Mel's Tearoom for comic books it didn't take us long to start driving to Moncton and go to an actual comic shop on a regular basis. I don't want to say that we went everyday but there were times that we, or at least I, would make consecutive visits. At that time we shopped Halley's Comics and 1 Million Comics both of which received a huge amount of my student loan money. The wonderful thing about comic book shops before the internet really got going was that to keep up with what was going on in comicdom you had to hang out at a comic shop. Sure there were some comic book magazines out there like Wizard that gave you tidbits but to truely tap the vein you had to spend an hour or so at least once a week at a comic shop. I went to buy the books that I wanted but I would roam the store picking up comics and flipping through them deciding wether I wanted to buy it or just glean what I could from it and head out the door. While I walked around the shop other fans would be hanging out debating everything and anything about their favourites. It was amazing the amount of info you could pick up listening to people arguing the ethical issue of Professor X wiping Magneto's mind or why Marvel would do something as stupid as bringing Peter Parker's parents back from the dead. Even if their conversation didn't convince me to buy a particular book it did give me some background on what was happening in comics. The comic guru though was the guy behind the counter; the comic shop guy. I've been to a lot of shops in my time all over North America and it always seems to be the same. The comic shop guy whether he (or she....sorry girls) is the owner or just a worker is a wellspring of information and usually a pretty damn good salesman. It was one of these guys that convinced me to buy Shadowhawk when I was undecided. He simply said "Really good book man". How wrong he was.............
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