The first comic book I ever bought was Batman #384, in March 1985. This was the cover:

(OMG! The Calendar Man! Run before he steals your daily planner!)

(By the way, it says “June 85” because comics were cover-dated three months into the future.)

I was 11 years old. My parents were away on vacation and my grandparents were staying at our house to watch me and my brother. I was a big fan of the “Superfriends” TV show — especially Batman and Robin (I also liked watching reruns of their 1960s series, although the camp factor went over my head). I played with my Super Powers action figures all the time, and I wanted to buy a new one. So I had my grandpa walk with me to the local newsstand/drugstore a few blocks away to see if they had any.

They didn’t, so I was disappointed. But I spotted a tall metal rack of colorful comic books on a rotating stand. There he was on one of the covers: Batman. I’d never read a comic book before, but I figured if I couldn’t get an action figure, I might as well read one of these. And it only cost 75 cents, so why not?

That was the beginning of a love affair that lasted several years. Batman’s battle against the Calendar Man ended in a cliffhanger, so I had to pick up Detective Comics #551 to read the conclusion (a much cooler cover, I think):

I was addicted. From Batman and Detective Comics, I branched out to Superman and Action Comics, and then I discovered Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was unfolding at the time. This was a 12-part series that remade the entire DC Comics universe from the ground up, in honor of DC’s 50th anniversary, and it introduced to me to the vast canvas of heroes and villians that had existed over decades. Superheroes were so much more than the one-dimensional cheesy portrayals I’d seen on TV.

I looked forward to Fridays. Every Friday after I got home from school, I’d walk to the same store where I’d bought my first comic. There in the rack were the week’s latest offerings. I’d pick out the two or three (or four or five) that I wanted, and the cashier would ring them up and put them in a little bag for me. I’d carry them home and spend Friday night catching up on the latest developments in the lives of my heroes.

For three years I did this. But in high school we moved to Japan, where I despaired of ever keeping up with my comic book habit. Fortunately the Tokyo American Club had a bookstore where I could buy comics a few months after they were published, but they were only there sporadically, so it wasn’t the same. (And I’d miraculously developed a social life and gotten involved in theater, so I had less time for comics anyway.)

A couple of years after I started college I got back into comics again, but it didn’t last too long. They’d gotten too expensive and too glossy. The publishers had realized that adults liked to not just read, but also collect, comics, so they would publish special editions with multiple covers, and there were more and more titles to follow. I started to feel manipulated and bored. So I quit.

My comic book collection still sits in my parents’ basement. My dad has been pestering me for years to get it out of there. I don’t mind selling most of them, if I could figure out how. I just know that I could never sell those first few comics I bought — Batman #384, Detective #551, maybe not even Superman #408…

…unless, of course, someone were to offer a few thousand dollars for them. But they’re not that valuable.

Yesterday afternoon I was dragged to see Watchmen, and I’m glad I was. I had no desire to see it, because the trailer didn’t do anything for me, but I enjoyed the movie much more than I’d expected. The last 20-25 minutes were a letdown, but otherwise I was totally pulled in.

Watchmen is an adapation of a 12-part comic book series that came out in 1986-87 and was eventually collected into a graphic novel. I’d long heard of it but had never read it, which is weird, because it came out during my comic-book-reading heyday. I guess I was more interested in classic DC Comics characters at the time and wasn’t interested in reading something so dark and adult.

What I really enjoyed about Watchmen is how it both honors and subverts classic comic book tropes and history. (I guess you could say it deconstructs them.) Woven throughout the story are references to a classic 1940s superhero team, which seems loosely based on the Justice Society of America, precursor to the more famous Justice League of America. The heroes experience a postwar fall from grace, parallelling America’s deteriorating view of itself from the end of World War II through the 1970s and 1980s. Watching the movie, I liked how we got a sense of history and continuity — some larger reality out there of which we only see pieces.

Film adaptations rarely live up to the original source material — they always compress it. So I’m interested in reading the graphic novel now, in order to experience the whole thing.

I’m annoyed that Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets have become the new blogging. It’s no surprise I feel that way, since I’m a blogging old-timer. But I think Homer put it best (see his entry from March 5 — I can’t link to the actual post): “I wish people would return to blogging and telling stories rather than telling me that they ‘hate their job’ or ‘have a meeting to go to’ or ‘I’m going to the gym.'”

Granted, some people can elegantly tell a story in one short sentence, and some people can blog for paragraphs about inane topics. (Guilty.) But sometimes status updates and tweets are little more interesting than this.

Of course, I’m only *partly* annoyed, because I myself write Facebook status updates sometimes. I just find it hard to encapsulate most of my thoughts in 140 characters or less.

I haven’t hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon, though — even though I kind of want to because, hell, it seems cool. Everyone’s doing it! The thing I hate about Twitter is when people write “private” tweets to other people. You can tell a tweet is directed at a particular person because the writer uses the @ sign. For example, “@johndoe: I totally agree, that was hilarious.” It’s like showing other people how cool you are by publicly having exclusive conversations with someone else. If you’re going to have a private conversation with someone, have a private conversation.

The same goes for people who write private messages on other someone else’s Facebook Wall. Maybe they don’t realize that everyone can see your Wall. But we can. When you write, “Hey, it’s been a long time! How have you been?” on someone’s Wall, everyone can see it.

I feel a little bit like Andy Rooney. You little whippersnappers with your Facebook and your tweets. Back in my day, we had to write blog posts about walking eight miles uphill in a snowstorm to get to school…