The first comic book I ever read... heck, I don't remember that. My younger sister loved reading comic jobs, she also had the job so she had me go out and buy her a bunch of comic books every couple of weeks. This was back in early High School I think. I'd ride my bicycle across the highway the 10 or so miles and back, getting hit by a car once, but that's another story.

The first comic book I remember collecting (and still have) is Doctor Who. Marvel Comics reprinted a bunch of the serials from the Doctor Who Magazine, in color and in good paper stock for the time. It was a good comic book, eventually turning into a sort of small magazine, with short articles, reviews, and interviews along with the comics. It lasted 23 issues.

Just before going to college I started collecting Excalibur. I love Rachel Summers (Phoenix) and Kitty Pryde (now Shadow Cat). The writing was witty, with occassional references to British culture (like Doctor Who). Other comics that I started collecting at about that point were Wolverine and L.E.G.I.O.N.

Super-hero comic books are my favorite and the ones I predominantly collect, with team books being preferred over solo books. Just like everything else, I try to collect from issue 1 and on, through thick and thin, changing of writers and direction, etc. I've never collected too many comics at any one time, currently the count is six titles, I believe.

Spider-Man was a good concept at first. Multi-part story arcs, self-contained within that book. That lasted for a couple of years and then they changed it to just another comic book. It lost much of its luster for me, though I continued to collect and read it until Marvel reset all of the Spider-Man titles.

I'm collecting Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Force, and Wolverine, which is still less than half of the X-type titles. One of the problems today is the large number of crossovers that Marvel does to try to increase sales. Well, it must be working since they keep doing them. But it's annoying since I collect series, so I'm not going to buy another comic book just because it continues a crossover storyline. It's less than satisfying.

Another thing that Marvel and DC have started to do is resetting titles, making a big change and starting from number 1 again. Issue 1s do sell well. When they made the alternate universe X-titles I didn't buy any X-titles and that a nice break, but then they restored everything and continued with the old numbering, so I had to start buying them again.

But the resets have allowed me to start collecting the Avengers (volume 3), which is a group I have long admired but didn't want to collect since that would mean I'd try to get every issue. That's what I've been doing with Uncanny X-Men. My friend Shannon gave me his collection, which was pretty complete from issue 100 to issue 350 or so. So I've filled in the gaps and only have 30 or so issues from before issue 100. Those are expensive, so I only buy about 1 a month, reprints are fine as it's the story that's important, not the fact that it's the original printing.

Anyway, that's a small glimpse at my comic book hobby. There is a certain sort of continuity to buy a comic book month after month, seeing the characters slowly change over time. It's something that I've continue doing until I die, probably.