Comic Reader Résumé: August, 1984

A quick clarification: I don't list every comic that I ever owned/read from a given month. For instance, some comics first published in August 1984 that have been in my possession at various points have included New Teen Titans #3, Wonder Woman #321, Uncanny X-Men #187, Jemm, Son of Saturn #3, Tales of the Teen Titans #48, Grimjack #5, Green Lantern #182, Infinity, Inc. #8, Dreadstar #14, and Crash Ryan #1. However, in each of these cases, by the time I got them they were "back issues." It's one thing if I bought a book a few months late out of a pile in a second hand bookstore, or even a few years later as a gift. On the other hand, stuff I bought at a comic shop in a bag and board nearly or into an entirely different decade don't count. The whole point of these "resumes" is to share memories of my reading habits relatively contemporaneous to the point of publication, to express feelings and experiences from a specific time, not just to offer a virtual catalog of all the books I've loved before (who traveled in and out my door...)

So anyway, I'm pretty sure I'd committed to buying G.I. Joe a Real American Hero monthly while Mondale was still campaigning, but I'm not sure if I skipped #28 or not. It had a tank and a jet on the cover, and vehicles bore me, where #29 had Destro, who does not.

It was a lackluster, unmemorable month in general. I kept putting off buying Kitty Pryde and Wolverine #1, probably because Al Milgrom inking himself wasn't half as palatable as Jim Mooney's inks on Peter Parker. Also, it was an almost entirely dull Kitty Pryde domestic drama. I stalled so long the issue sold out or was pulled by the distributor. Oh, well. So much for any sense of youthful completionism.



Even Blue Devil #6 was a bust, involving Dan fighting aliens in a casino. It was trying too hard to be cute/funny, and at least as a kid, fell short in my eyes. I haven't re-read it since.

I was irrationally drawn to Marvel movie specials in the days when rewatching a movie meant broadcast or bust, so I bought Buckaroo Banzai #1. At this point, they were threadbare cash grabs, trying to condense entire movies into just 44 pages. It rarely worked, but at least this one had Mark Texeira art. Tex was an early favorite artist of mine, although I wouldn't begin to really recognize his work for another few years.

I don't think I bought Iceman #1. I never liked Bobby Drake, and hopefully just thumbed through it while shaking my head at the 7-11 I bought most comics from. The comic sticks out though, and would have been par for these weeks of disappointing purchases.

Finally, Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars #8, where Spider-Man retroactively received his black costume after having already gotten rid of it in his own comic. These things are all a blur in my mind. About a decade and a half ago, I spent some time with my stepbrother, his lover, and their extremely attractive roommate. She loaned me a copy of the trade, then promptly got booted out of their place and fell out of contact. I tried to get the trade back to her, but thwarted, I finally sold the thing off cheap at my shop. I'd tried to read it, but it seemed rather shallow and stupid, and just made me think about the girl I wished I'd gotten to do more than play a bootleg Japanese Bust-A-Groove 2 with. It's bad enough when a comic fails to hold up over time, but it's quite another when it recalls unrequited lust and regrets of timidity. Curiously, I ended up becoming addicted to Gilmore Girls in part because Lorelai reminded me of the same chick. Maybe if Spider-Man could have talked a bit faster and looked yummier in a sweater, I'd have kept Secret Wars around.