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.
Then I got into the “toy properties” books of my youth like Pat Lee’s Dreamwave Productions’ Transformers and Devil’s Due G.I. Joe. I was back into the comic game following some of the creators and characters I really liked through the early 2000s. Some of my favorite early 2000s books included Geoff Johns Flash run, Jim Cheung creating the Young AVengers, David Finch working on Moon Knight, and Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev run on 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, a few issues of Moon Knight and Young Avengers 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 first few issues.
After I bought my first home, I rediscovered the medium and joy of comics. 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.