Luthor

Name: Kevin Porter

My Mom used to buy me GI Joe and Marvel’s Strange Tales in the early 80s as a way to get me to read. I loved the GI Joe cartoon and the comic just seemed like an extension of that. Strange Tales was my introduction to super folk but I have to admit, even though I enjoyed it at the time, the characters in the book left a lot to be desired(It was usually Dr Strange with a Cloak & Dagger or Power Pack back up) and none of those characters hooked me.

A few years later my Mom and I were at a local drug store and she gave me a dollar to spend. They happened to have a giant vat of comics that were marked down to 3/99¢. After grabbing 2 random GI Joe comics, for some reason I decided to give something else a try. I had always liked the Lou Ferrigno Hulk TV show and there was an issue of a Hulk comic book, so I thought why not…and that decision, literally, changed my life.

The Hulk issue in question was Incredible Hulk #340.
It was written by Peter David and drawn by Todd Mcfarlane and featured a fight between Hulk and Wolverine(who I had never heard of before then). It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was violent and gory but smart and funny at the same time.

I decided that I had to have more, so that summer I went on a mad spree of comic book buying. There wasn’t really an easily accessible comic book store(this would be 1988 and I would’ve been 11), so I would scan the classified ads for yard sales or hit the used book stores. I also subscribed to pretty much every Marvel title. An old guy who had a weekly yard sale and always had an endless supply of comics for me(usually at a ridiculous price of 10 books for a $1) talked me into trying something something other then Marvel books. He gave me a handful of DC books for free and said he knew I’d be back for more…and he was right. Most of the DC stuff he gave me was from Brave & The Bold which starred Batman, who I had always associated with the 60s tv show and Superfriends. You can imagine my shock when reading these comics. I went from Marvel Zombie to comic book mass consumer.

If I saw something that looked comic related, I got it. I got black and white indy books like Cerebus and Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters. I got underground comix from a local skate shop(to this day I have no idea what those books were about). At one point I even found out that Becker’s(an old convenience store chain in Ontario) threw out their old comics on Sunday nights and I began dumpster diving(that didn’t last long, one ride in a police car is enough for my lifetime).

There have been times in my life as a comic book fan where I could’ve easily walked away, but memories of that summer will always keep me attached. If there is ever a book written about my life, that summer will have to be a chapter all in itself.