BStryker's Bio
Who am I and why do I collect comics from time to time?
Well to start I guess we have to travel back to the mid 80s when I would watch Super Friends reruns and play with Super Powers toys. I never really got into the comic books though as baseball cards were my first hobby.
That all changed in the 90s though when X-Men The Animated Series premiered on Fox. I had no idea who these characters were, but fell in love with the theme song, the voice actors, and of course the characters and stories. I remember my first comics being the Gambit mini series and XMen 25 with the hologram of Gambit on it. Gambit quickly became my favorite character and I would later dive into other X-Men stories to read that I could get my hands on. The episode "Cold Comfort" was a personal favorite of mine because my family had recorded it on VHS and my brother and I watched that episode nonstop. I loved the Peter David X-Factor team. The Fleer Flair trading card sets and later Fleer Ultra X-Men sets became some of my favorite cards to collect as I got out of the baseball card world.
Then I discovered Image Comics. The art was nothing I had seen before. It was x-treme (pun intended). Pitt, Cyberforce, WildCATs, Spawn all became "monthly" pulls for me. I fell in love with everything Wildstorm was publishing in those early years. Cole Cash became a cooler version of Gambit in my young adolescent mind.
Then I got to high school and lost interest in comics (mostly). I would still catch the animated series on TV, but stopped going to comic shops.
Fast forward 10 years and I was drawn back in thanks to Kevin Smith's Daredevil.
I collected a lot of comics and sold them all. I collected a lot of original artwork and sold it all.
I was out of the game as of 2012.
Or so I thought.
The only comics I held onto were my Umbrella Academy books and the first few issues of Hawkeye. I loved the Matt Fraction/Ed Brubaker run on Iron Fist and managed to pick up a few issues of the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye series mainly because Kate Bishop was a fictional crush for me and Fraction/Aja is perfect comics. I never finished the 2012 Hawkeye series, but held onto those issues.
After I bought my first home, I rediscovered the medium. I sent a few books in to be graded and caught up on what I had missed for the past decade in trades, omnibuses, and online reading platforms.
What I collect now are small nostalgia memories I hold onto.
Will I collect every comic of a favorite character? Nope.
Will I collect the highest graded copies of series I loved and learned to love when I discovered them after the fact? Maybe one day
But for now I mostly collect comics written by Gerard Way, key Jamie Madrox comics, key Gambit comics, key X-23 comics, Hawkeye series (Barton or Bishop), and the Daredevil Volume 2 comics. Throw in some over printed 90s Image Books and that is my collection in a nut shell.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my origin.