In Comic Reader Résumé, I use Mike’s Amazing World of Comics to travel back through time via his virtual newsstand to the genesis  point of my lifelong collecting of comics. From there, I can offer a  “work history” of my fandom through my active purchasing of (relatively)  new comic books beginning in January of 1982, when my interest in the  medium went from sporadic and unformed to routine on through compulsive  accumulation. To streamline the narrative and keep the subjects at least  remotely contemporaneous, I will not generally be discussing what we  call back issues, books bought long after their publication date.  Sometimes, I will cover a book published on a given month that I picked  up within a year or so that date, and I give myself an especially wide  berth on this aspect in the first couple of “origins” episodes. We’ll  get more rigidly on point as my memories crystallize and my “hobby”  spirals out of control into the defining characteristic of my life  (eventually outpacing squalor and competing neurosis.) It’s part  personal biography, part industry history, and admittedly a total wank  on my part.

The first episode of the podcast version of my old short-lived 2011  blog series re-purposes and re-edits the audio from the even  shorter-lived 2013 YouTube (barely) video adaptations of same, along  with supplemental material I recorded over a year ago that got shelved  when I realized that doing this wouldn’t be the effortless space-filling  regurgitation I’d hoped for as a stopgap while sweating over doing  other podcasts. The episode covers my earliest off the rack purchases in  January-February of 1982, as well as discussing a bunch of the comics  that had passed through my hands before this youthful indiscretion  became a full on addiction.

“Transcripts”