How Did You Get Into Comics? (Submitted by femmebotshaveemotion)
My love for comic books sort of started more with the excitement of superheroes and a love of history. It never bothered me that I was a girl who read comic books originally, but I was always told “only stupid people” read comics. This created a challenge for me because I was embarrassed to admit even an interest in superheroes. I first read an issue of Tales of Suspense and fell in love with the character of Iron Man and Red Skull. While neither one of them are favorites of mine now, I eventually watched a life changing movie.
The Adventures of Babysitting. The movie involves a young girl who’s obsessed with Thor. For the first time, I saw a normal kid, a normal girl who loved comic books…and she was smart, brave and everything was ok. Therefore, I first bought the second issue in the Thor series that started in the 1990s involving Jake Olson vs. Dr. Don Blake.
I became obsessed with Black Canary, The Flash, Black Cat, Thor, Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy, Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, The Spirit, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the list just goes on and on. I tend to read collections from the Silver Age, I love looking into each word of the comics until one day, I couldn’t understand to why anybody could say “only stupid people read comics”. There was a hidden brilliance in each issue and especially in graphic novels.
I started to speak to school boards, my professors or teachers about the literary elements and strong characters in comics. Somehow, this made my love for comic books stronger and a need to read more comics and a broader range of them.
Introducing my fascination to others, which was always hard because a lot of people started to dislike my opinion because I was a girl. I wanted to break into the comic book industry and work on an editorial staff. This summer I actually interviewed for an internship at Zenescope Entertainment to work in the editing department and after all that, I’m set to intern there next summer.
And it all started with me scared to read comics but unable to resist Tales of Suspense and a little girl who loved Thor in a silly 80’s movie.
