I don't exactly recall which comic was my first. Two memories spring to mind. One was a DC digest that had a team-up between the Justice League of America (whom I already mostly knew from the Superfriends on Saturday mornings) and the new-to-me Justice Society, as they raced through time to find a third group of heroes to fight an impossibly huge menace. Bits of it stuck in my memory, like Batman using the phrase "an historic monument" or Johnny Thunder suddenly having hiccups. Yes, a bit of 21st-century research turns up the answer quickly, and I now have more recent vintage reprint of that story, but for years, the nature of this story was lost in time, not unlike the scattered Seven Soldiers in the story.
That's a decent story and all, but I'd like to believe the other possibility. My other "first comic" was my Dad's copy of Origins of Marvel Comics. The 1974 edition, to be precise. It printed the first appearance of several early Marvel characters, and another, more polished story from later in the '60s. This was in a whole different league than the DC digest. Where the Justice League story had more heroes than I could shake a stick at, the Marvel book had... well, it had the Thing!
I instantly took to the Fantastic Four, who continued to be among my favorite Marvel characters for decades after. (Their powers, to me, seemed exactly the kind of things that "cosmic rays" would do to you, never mind that I hadn't heard of cosmic rays beforehand.) Then there was the Hulk. Big, powerful, more than a little scary (I don't recall if I ever made it past the intro to the TV show.) I'm afraid I didn't have an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Spider-Man or Thor (I was a bit too young to appreciate the soapy Romita-era Spidey and full-on Cosmic Kirby.) Then there was Doctor Strange. Who the heck was this guy, with his freaky eye-amulet and super-creepy art? A future underdog favorite, that's who!
Oh! I almost neglected one more character it introduced me to. No, not the Sub-Mariner. I'm talking about Stan Lee. I'm not gonna lie, dear readers; I still love his brand of hucksterism. All told, between Stan telling his story, and the characters I met inside, that book is probably the main reason why I've been mostly a Marvel reader.
Epilogue: 15 or so years later. I found that book again, in worse condition than I remembered it. The covers had fallen off, pages had been swallowed up by time, and a big chunk was torn out of "When Strikes the Silver Surfer", but reading what was left of it reminded me what I saw in it in the first place. Unfortunately, even more time has passed since even then, and I believe the book was lost in a flood. Of course, by then it had already taken root in my psyche. So, even if it wasn't the one I read first, I'm still going to say that Origins of Marvel Comics was my first comic. And to me, there couldn't be a better place to start.
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