What was the MAIN comic company of choice growing up?

[Roygbiv666]

In this context, "Johnson" is ... a store/chain/distributor/US President?

Back then, in the pre-Johnson days, comics were plentiful, cheap, and good.  No matter what town you lived it, you could find a place that had them, and they were buyable.  Also, there were a LOT of step-on titles for kids...funny stuff, adaptations of TV cartoons and movies and the like.  You got into those and you graduated to superheroes.  Now, we don't have them, and that's why kids don't read many comics these days, among other reasons.

[Geo (RIP)]

President Roy.

Geo

[glammazon]

For me, it was either Marvel or D.C. comics; I still have all of my DC and STAR WARS comics from Marvel from that period.  My very first "comic" was a Spider-Man colouring book, and my childhood playmate George Baldock had a Captain America colouring book in which the hero faces a team of robots led by the main villain.  I also had Disney and Looney Toons comics including Donald Duck and the Road Runner as well as quite a few ARCHIE comics, all of which I still possess.  I gave away most of my Disney and Looney Toons cartoons to the Broadview Book Bonanza in 1993, so I no longer have any of those but two I retained, COMICS & STORIES and BAMBI.

[misappear]

The Superman titles in DC comics were my choices, having limited funds as a kid.  This was carried over from the Superman TV show.  Just coming up with 25 cents per week was difficult.  My first purchase came on December 27, 1962 with Superman 159.  Kind of odd when I think about it, but Superman appeared in costume in only 1 panel of the story.

[kalel21]

Started reading around '72 or 73. I was pretty much a Marvel kid--loving both their superhero books and Tomb of Dracula. I did also read most of DC's war comics (I've always loved Russ Heath's art) and Gold Key's Turok Son of Stone.

It was the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie that got me thinking DC's superheroes were cool. Since then, my preferences have been more balanced.

[paw broon]

Narfstar's description of himself as an oddball collector rings true for me as well.  However, and as there are some non-N. American members, and as I'm a bit older and American comics weren't distributed here till '59 - '60, my main companies were L.Miller with Marvelman etc. and Foldes Press/WDL with Ace Hart, although I loved Beano and Dandy when I saw them, usually at the barber shop.  But, in the '60's, I much preferred DC and, later, the companies on narfstar's list, when I could find them. Normally I wouldn't know anything about a comic unless and until I saw it in the newsagent.  Marvel's continuity was pretty useless when you were unsure that the same titles would turn up every month.  Newsagents seemed to get a random bundle, although I remember that Batman and Detective always seemed to be there.

[Ami_GFX]

I voted Marvel but that just covers me from 1974-1977, at age 12-15, which were my main comic buying years. From 1970-1972 I primarily bought funny comics and the mainstay was Walt Disneys Comics & Stories which was reprinting early 50s Barks stories. I never missed an issue and also bought other Gold Key Disney comics as well as Harvey comics and Fawcett's Dennis the Menace. I moved on to super heroes at age 11 in 1973 and bought both DC and Marvel comics but was buying far more Marvel comics by 1974. In 1975, I traded a copy of Marvel Team up 1 for a complete run of Charltons E-Man(issues 1-7) and loved it. I started buying Charlton's other titles as well. Back isssues were usually in the 5 cent bins of our local comic dealers which made them an absolute bargain--especially when I found a good piece of art by Ditko or Tom Sutton among other artists who had much more stylistic freedom at Charlton. I had heard stories of collecting in the 60s when there were no comic dealers and collectors just prowled around second hand book and magazine shops and bought the early Marvels for pennies and I was delighted that there were still some comics that could be collected that way.

[Poztron]

I voted for DC, which was the dominant company distributed to my town's local drugstore during my elementary school days in the '50s. ACG was my second favorite, although I had to ride my bike across town to a little family grocery to buy them. I also saw Dell and Harvey comics, but DC was pretty much the main player available. My brother and I mocked the ridiculous Mort Weisinger Superman universe (with Bizarro Superman, Superboy, Jimmy Olson, Lois Lane, and so on), but it was the only game in town.

During my junior high and high school years, Marvel got back into the superhero business and with my family moving to another state, suddenly Marvel was being distributed to the local shops. I mainly switched from DC to Marvel during the '60s. (Gold Key also won me over in this period.) However, by the time I left for college in '68, I was mostly done with newsstand comics and shifted my attention to underground comix and the underground press. It took GAC and DCM to pull me back into appreciating the Golden Age comics that I'd mostly missed because they were all before my time.

Happy Halloween to everyone here and thanks to Michael T. Gilbert for a great Halloween DCM animated logo GIF.

[chaard]

This is a tough one, and I won't vote because 1) companies are elusive and 2) "growing up" came in several phases.

As a kid outside Los Angeles in the late 50s and early 60s, the corner supermarket stocked DC, Timely-Marvel, Gold Key, Charlton, and Classics Illustrated, and none really grabbed me. All except CI seemed lame. I loved MAD from its earliest days, and I loved certain newspaper strips and panels. But my real "growing-up" phase came about a decade later, and what really hit me were the undergrounds, both in papers and comix. I few years later I was selling those on street corners.

So for my "major growing-up publisher" I'll nominate: Apex Novelties (ZAP!).

[CharlieRock]

My main comic book company of choice growing up was Marvel. This was during the 80s and they were doing some exciting things with the X-Men (Fall of the Mutants, Dark Phoenix) and was the heyday of Chris Claremount. When Claremount and Frank Miller teamed up to do the Wolverine mini-series I read it a hundred times. I read other companies stuff those days to be sure: Dark Knight Returns, The Crow, etc. But Marvel got the majority by far.

Somewhere along the line during the late 90s to early 2ks (most of the 90s I was too busy in the military to follow any series or company faithfully) I made the switch to DC. The Cartoon series done by Bruce Timm of Superman and later the Justice League got me to the library checking out the graphic novel section of their stories. Stories like the Identity Crisis, Kingdom Come, Heaven's Ladder, and Red Son brought me back to comics but on the other company's side pretty much for good.

Now i'm mostly DC but do grab some of the other stuff out there by IDW, Image, or Dark Horse.

Thank you

[edmandu]

I was pretty oblivious to the publisher back in those days, but looking back my favorites were Silver Age Green Lantern, Doom Patrol, and Metal Men, clearly skewing toward DC.