I need to check my bootleg collection of digital comics. I may have most of them and not even know it.

I loved the DC horror comics when I was a kid, Ghosts was my favorite. Of course the EC horror comics can't be beat, but I grew up with the code approved DC ones.

Here's a short lived title (only three issues) that was hosted by Lucien (years later he appeared as the librarian of The Dreaming in Sandman, I love how Neil Gaiman plumbed the really obscure parts of the DC Universe for long forgotten characters to use).

I honestly love all the 1970s gothic horror stuff, like this one (that later became Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion). DC actually put out a crapload of horror titles in the 70s, but for some reason never got into the b&w horror magazine business like Marvel, Warren and Eerie Publications did, I wonder why?



Anyway, whenever I find some good 1970s horror publications in the wild, especially ones with cool covers, I grab them.

I've never seriously been into horror comics per se but I do love the moody artwork seen in Bronze Age DC horror comics.

I absolutely adore these "Men's Adventure Magazine" type covers for the POTA magazine!

Those are great. Actually, I love a lot of the painted covers on 70s Marvel B&W mags, gorgeous stuff!

I haven't read much of the Firefly extended universe comics but looking at all the covers of the various series and one-shots, there are not very many interesting ones that would attract me from the cover alone.

They're all pretty much shit.

The ones originally published by Dark Horse under the Serenity title are the best though the first two, released as three-issue minis, feel like they're too short for the stories they want to tell. The stuff BOOM! put out after picking up the license just feels like they're churning out merchandise.

I can still remember the day I bought that off the rack at the comic book store, including how the store smelled and how humid it was. Funny how memories work. Don't remember a single thing about the comic, however.

I bought it at my local drug store where I bought most of my comics back then. I loved the artwork but remember not really caring about the story and ended up not sticking around for many issues.

Excalibur was kind of a strange title. Ostensibly, with Kitty, Kurt, and Rachel, it was an auxiliary X-title, but the stories were more light in tone and it seemed more like a Captain Britain (whose stories weren't familiar to US audiences) continuation/spin-off than anything else.

I vaguely remember Excalibur for its artwork by Alan Davis, they always had nice covers. I think Claremont's obsession with Kitty Pryde and trying to make Captain Britain someone important is what drove that series. I don't believe it's a well-regarded series, I get the feeling Alan Davis was calling many of the shots.

What? Excalibur is absolutely well regarded, at least the initial Alan Davis run (way before it became just another X-title except in the UK). And yes it was absolutely a continuation of Captain Britain (mainly Moore and Davis's run) which absolutely confused me as a kid since at the time they only reprinted some of the UK stories. Claremont must've had a soft spot since he wrote the original run of the character (plus obviously brought over his sister to the main X-title).

Speaking of Captain Britain, living in Canada I sometimes stumbled across copies of the Marvel UK comics, they were great.



(I never had this particular issue though, I wish!)

A couple I picked up somewhere as a kid:

Man, I loved the old Carl Barks Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories, I still have a bunch of these lying around, going back to the 1950s. Barks' stories were so imaginative and well done.

And the below has a really nice Al Taliaferro cover, I love his artwork as well.

Earlier I mentioned I thought a House of Mystery was my first ever comic book, but it was in fact:

You have a good memory, I have absolutely no idea what my first comic book was, I wish I did.

Likely my very first comic book, given to me by a long deceased relative who owned a dime store and I believe this was an issue that didn't sell for him. Action Comics #498, which came out in 1979.

I held on to that book for many a moon.

I would hope this comic with the awful cover would possibly mean a fight to the death with its title, but I doubt it. Released in 1992 amid all those Rock 'N Roll comics that got popular for about half a minute.