Comic Books: The One That Hooked Me!

JESSICA ABEL
Writer-Artist: La Perdida, Mirror, Window, Life Sucks
First Comic: 1940s Wonder Woman collection

Although I can't guarantee it's the very first comic I ever read, the first one I remember is a large-format collection of 1940s Wonder Woman comics by Charles Moulton Marston and Harry Peters, compiled and published by Ms. Magazine in the early 1970s. (At the time, I skimmed over the introduction by Gloria Steinem.) Those comics fascinated me, and they've continued to do so throughout my life, for varying reasons. At first, I'm sure I simply enjoyed the stories. Later, I loved the woodcut-looking drawing and funky, old-fashioned, sometimes-just-plain-wrong color. I came to appreciate the inventiveness and energy, and wacky irony-free innocence of the work. It hardly turned me into a superhero fan, but I still love those stories and the aesthetic and will give it to my daughter to read when she's ready (i.e., soon)!