The First Comic: Web of Spider-Man #101

If you ever talk to a comic book fan and ask them if they remember their first comic, almost one hundred percent of the time, they will say yes. Some will say they were readers beforehand and a comic came across their path and became a part of their life. Some like myself learned to read from comics. One of my earliest memories was a Christmas when I was around four - one of the presents I opened that day was a box of comics. My family knew I was already a fan of the characters like Batman and X-men from the cartoons I was watching and decided to get me some comics and see what I thought. I remember opening the box and feeling like a whole universe had opened up - I had comics featuring Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, some character called The Mask, and many others. When I grew up, I realized that my mom had gone to a local comic shop and went to the fifty cents bin and grabbed, as she recalled it years later, about ten dollars’ worth. The next thing I can remember is wanting to read them but at that time had just started school and didn’t have time right away. The first series inside the box that grabbed my attention featured Spider-Man (the Maximum Carnage storyline). Funnily enough my mom had only found the even numbered comics of the fourteen-part storyline, and until I could sit and read by myself without her help,  she would try and make up the stories taking place between the different issues. 

This went on for a while, until one day I decided to sit in front of the TV after school (an activity I know many of my fellow 90’s kids can relate to), and I opened the comic…and started to read. I remember being thrilled, enthralled, overjoyed, AND realizing that my mom had been toning down some of the violence and wording, but it didn’t matter. I remember still to this day being hooked. I grabbed the next comic and read that, and then the next; pages filled with characters I had never heard of like The Mask and Iron Man kept me enthralled. The moment my mom walked in the door, I showed her I could read by reading it out loud and I went through the entire issue. I remember my mom and I being incredibly happy, and she told me it was time to take me to comic stores and bookstores (posts for another day). 

It would be years before I would grab all the issues for the Maximum Carnage storyline and read it, but growing up poor with that comic being one of the only complete stories on hand, I would read it over and over again until it fell apart. It wasn’t until I started working in comic book retail that I was able to reassemble a set. I was even given a set from a customer with signatures and drawings from some of the original creators. As I write this post, the marketing is ramping up for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which will bring the Carnage character from the comics onto the big screen and expand the fandom beyond just comic book fans, something I literally never thought I would see. No matter how the film is received or how many appearances Carnage has in the future, I am excited to see the comic which changed my life coming to life on the screen. It made me want to create, write, sell comics, talk comics, be around comics, and influence my life for the better. Since then, there have been tens of thousands of comics, hundreds of books, and thousands of hours of TV and movies inspired by them both…but I will always be thankful to my mom and for my first comic Web of Spider-Man #101.