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An Early Life Steeped In Mid-Eighties Marvel Comics

20151023_134742-e1445708891383-197x350I'm a grown man with my hand in a bear puppet.

Hi, my name is Gibson and I write, draw and publish Lloyd and the Bear – an all ages book telling the adventures of Lloyd and his best friend Bear (who just happens to be alien that looks like teddy bear)

We're currently running a Kickstarter event with the plan of getting a collected works published which we'll sell at conventions in 2016.

A familiar face was added to our conventions this last year with a big puppet of Bear that I constructed. Yup, you read that right. I made a big puppet of a bear and I'm there at conventions with him on my arm. Me. A grown man. How did this come to be? I'll tell you how – COMICS!

Here's five books from my childhood that I blame for leading me down the career path I'm now on!

Star Wars

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Yup, I was a child of the Star Wars era and Return of the Jedi was the first Star Wars film I saw at the cinema. What was there not to like about this book?!? I honestly can't remember much about it bar the actual Star Wars strips, the letters page where readers comments were read by the Editor-Droid C.Y.R.I.L (which I'm sure makes no sense to anyone who never read the comic) and also…

Power Pack

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I am not ashamed. I LOVE Power Pack! From the very start I liked the whole story of four kids with powers but it was when they moved to New York and met the likes of Spider-man and some of the X-men while fighting crocodiles and saving baseball courts from getting blown up just blew my mind! I was just a wee kid from a small village and this book made me want to visit New York so bad! I mean, yeah. Power would be cool but going to New York? That was the dream! The book also still works today with it's references to Star Wars and Spidey and I figure it's well worth picking up the collected trades if you want to break your kid in to Marvel Comics.

Secret Wars

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Another great introduction to Marvel's superheroes was the massively wordy titled Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars (and yes, the only books I could ever find as a kid were Marvel books)! Still a great book to this day I remember the excitement of opening the comic to not only see all these familiar superheroes and villains that I knew from watching cartoons on telly but also ones that I'd never seen before! It felt like you were getting a great deal by having so many characters in one comic and even as a child I liked getting value for money – but hey, where's Daredevil?

Marvel Tales

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The first issue of this book that I picked up was #189 with the Spidery/Kraven/Vulture (but not THE Vulture) battle but the issue that really sticks in my head was my second purchase, issue #192 with the reprint of the Death of Gwen Stacey. A brilliant story but not because it had the death of Gwen (who I didn't know and didn't care for – I sure was a heartless 12 year old!) but because of the Green Goblin biting it. I remember it being an extra size issue as well so it felt like I was getting a real bargain (hey, can you tell I'm Scottish?).

There was the death of a Spidey supporting character that did totally shock me even though I wasn't familiar with the character and this all happened in….

039Now Spider-man and Zoids was COOL. The main Spidey stories was set after Secret Wars and had Peter in the black costume but you also had the really cool Zoids backup strip (which has sadly never been collected). What makes me pick this though was the reprinting of The Death of Jean DeWolfe. I remember being in my parents car happily opening the comic to read more fun adventures of Spidey only to have this unknown character (who I was to discover was Jean DeWolfe) clearly dead and staring out at me as she bled out. It was a great read and also made me feel equally grown up and like I was reading something I shouldn't have been.

Seriously, how did this even get the go ahead to be reprinted in what was clearly a kids book?!?

And yeah, with a childhood filled with these books it made me want to make my own and here I am now with a Kickstarter and doing my own kids book!

These, along with the later released Transformers book, are my most read books in my collection. If you haven't, I would strongly recommend picking them up as they're all still great reads – and hey, all great to give to your kids too. Well, maybe not the Spidey ones I mentioned. Yeah, maybe you should save that money and spend it on….. I dunno, my Kickstarter?

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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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