Why Comics, Particularly American Ones,Started My Love Of Reading

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Sometimes posts start by accident. This one is one of them. I was reading a Penguin paperback readers group where the question was posed "Which book started your love for reading?"

And this seems to be a common thing. This idea that a child despite all the distractions the outside world can provide will pick up a book that will change him/her.

But, especially now as it seems to be Superhero Summer let me suggest another route to a love of books. Comics.

We're talking the seventies here. No internet and just three TV channels. British comics also were taken as a whole dull and boring. The American comics were simply different. Not just better (though obviously they were that) but also every page was in colour. The stories were more exciting. It made you want to turn the page.

And, and this is the point regarding reading, these comics made you want to know what those letters inside those bubbles meant. So the plots and the characters and the colour and the writing made you want to read.

And they were capable in the seventies of going beyond the fantastic and even the Fantastic Four. One of my favourite comics of the time was The Defenders (a sort of alternative Avengers) which was mainly written by Steve Gerber (incidentally also creator of the legendary Howard The Duck). He could write for example about them facing the Sons Of The Serpent, an out and out racist organisation but in a way that comic book fans could relate to.

The point is that a love of comics nurtured a love of reading which led to novels etc.

So if people try to mock the love of reading that a comic could ignite. Don't bother to argue.

You know better.

Until the next time.