Comic Books: The One That Hooked Me!

CARLA SPEED McNEIL
Writer-Artist: Finder
First Comic: Uncanny X-Men #141

I think I had several first times, actually. I fell out of love with comics as often as I did otherwise. Let's see: I was six, and stole some classic X-Men issue from the bedroom of some kid whose name I can't remember. Possibly a neighbor, someone my parents were visiting. ''Days of Future Past'', with the Wolverine-and-Kitty Pryde cover, the one with the ''all your beloved characters are dead'' poster in the background. Then I'm 11, and one of my cousins stashed a big box of EC horrors and such in my house to protect it from his mother. Soiled my little pinafore reading those... I don't dare go back and try to find the ones that I read back then. They could not possibly hold up to my memories, and my little heart would just snap. Last I'm 15, and I pull Elfquest #13 and Cerebus #52 out of the same waterlogged box at the local flea market. The guy who ran the stall was closing up, and he tossed me a Pacific Comics catalogue on his way out, never to return, like the weird guy in the ''magic shop'' that never reappears, straight out of Ray Bradbury. It took some doing, but I got my hands on more Cerebus and Elfquest, and after that was Journey, The Rocketeer, Tales of the Beanworld. And Swamp Thing and Normalman and Lloyd Llewellyn and Neat Stuff and Those Annoying Post Brothers. And Love and Rockets. No going back from that stuff.