A Confession

As a start to this new blog (no matter how hard I try, that word still sends slivers of pain into my spine), I guess I should start with something embarassing.

I read comic books.

Now, to those that know me, this is no surprise. Some think that it is the only thing I do, some think that I am obssessed. Of course, this causes many people to make asshole comments. Everything from the basic, "you should know that" stuff, to that "Bif Bam Zort!" crap. God I hate Adam West.

The truth is that I never really read comics until about three years ago. Sure, I knew some stuff, owned a couple that I got for free. Most of my knowledge came from the 90's crop of superhero toons, from Spider-Man (which was okay), the poorly animated X-Men (which I inexplicably liked), to the amazing Batman: The Animated Series (which I love to this day). I probably had an above-average knowledge of comics, but that came more from being a general nerd than a comics nerd.

But then something hit me on comics three years ago. It started out as one of my research binges, where I just jump headlong into a topic for a while. I started researching comics on the web (comics have a huge presence thanks to the fact that most comic fans are also fairly computer literate). The wealth of comic stories, the long list of history, all of it smacked me around for a bit, before I decided to go whole hog. I homed in on what seemed to be the three most well regarded comics in the "comics mainstream," Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, and Sandman. So, having some Hanukah money to burn, I bought the Watchmen, DKR trades, and the first trade of Sandman. And from there I was hooked.