Happy Birthday, Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics turned 70 years old yesterday. I was always a Marvel fan. Even as a kid I thought Marvel's characters more vibrant and bold than "The Other Guys." Marvel's art direction was just so ahead of its time. Pure excitement on paper. On the other hand, like I said, I found DC's characters much less interesting and a lot more two-dimensional. I remember thinking to myself "DC must stand for Dumb Comics."

I started reading comics at an early age. I read shit-loads of them. God bless my mother. She never blocked me from my addiction. To her, at least I was reading and staying out of trouble. I am convinced that my overall sense of creativity, and even my willingness to stay open-minded, was directly molded by the comics I read. Marvel Comics, more than any other medium, made me say, "When I grow up, I'm going to be an artist."

I remember vividly — the very first comic book I was ever given was a Marvel Team-Up that featured Spider-Man and Black Panther kicking ass against Stegron The Dinosaur Man. God, thinking back to reading that as a kid is such a sweet memory.

One day my older sister Kathy told me that her boyfriend, a garbage collector at the time, found two large boxes of comic books someone had left with their trash, and that he snatched them up for me. omfg I remember that day like it was yesterday. There were probably a hundred comics, mostly Marvels. I remember there were a bunch of Iron Man issues in those boxes... I was digging those a lot.

Anyway, io9 has a nice little write-up about Marvel's 70th birthday, so head on over.