 I told you motherf***ers that I wasn't a fake comic book fan. I owned a pretty huge chunk of comic books when I was a kid, I can't lie. I didn't inherit these books or anything. These were copies I actually went out and bought myself ever since I was about like nine years old. You see, when I was a kid at some point I sat in front of a TV with Spider-Man on it. I have no idea when this moment was, how old I was, or anything like that. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man was baked into my brain and it's felt like he's been there since day one. You see, this is only a theory of mine. I have no idea how I first saw Spider-Man, but based on my birth year, it's only reasonable to assume that Tobey Maguire Spider-Man had to be the first Spider-Man I could have ever seen. I have no clue. Spider-Man was just there, always, and I have no clue how he got here. But anyway, I started to learn and watch every Spider-Man movie I could, but then it sort of got to a point where there was nowhere else to go. It was about like 2011 and I was still nine. I watched every movie. I thought Ultimate Spider-Man was pretty mid. I didn't love it. I think I was in like fourth grade and I had this Spider-Man encyclopedia, which basically gave me everything I needed to know about Spider-Man's comic book history up until the 2000s. But at some point, my dad took me to a comic book store. And I remember one of the first couple issues I picked up. It was ASM 290 and 291. The issue where Peter Parker asks MJ to marry him on the cliffhanger, and MJ literally says no on the first page of the next issue. Those are like the only two I can remember from the very beginning. Tell him to bring out the whole ocean! I have one massive shoebox entirely dedicated to collecting issues of the entirety of the original Amazing Spider-Man run. I have the original five issues of Spider-Man 2099, including the original issue with its iconic red holographic cover. Yes, the one you saw in Spider-Verse, not to brag. I'm bragging. I'm fucking bragging like a motherfucker right now. I have the first issue appearance of Spider-Ham, which is one of my favorites to show off whenever anybody is unlucky enough to stumble into the comic book corner in my room. I have all four of the original holographic 30th anniversary issues of Spider-Man. Don't... Don't pay attention to the fact that there's only three on screen. I don't know where the fourth one is. I swear to God I have it. I bought them all in a pack. But that's pretty much everything I care to brag about right now. I would build up my collection from going to different comic book shops with my dad or grandpa, and taking everything I had and lining them up in any shoebox I could find. As neatly as possible. If you're looking for places to store your comic books and you're trying to get into it, I definitely recommend tearing apart a couple shoeboxes. The character I obviously collected the most issues of was Spider-Man, specifically the 616 version of the character. While I may not own every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, I still own a couple notable footnotes in the history. I have all of the continuation issues of Amazing Fantasy issues 16, 17, and 18. These books actually cover the time gap between Amazing Fantasy and issue one of Spider-Man. I always found this short continuation of issues to be quite interesting. There's this really engaging story about Peter finding out that Aunt May was being scammed by these people, who tricked her into thinking Uncle Ben had some debt to pay off before he died. So Peter suits up to track down these scammers, only to find a warehouse full of people who are just lying to widowers trying to get debt money out of them. And Spider-Man was not going to let that slide. But it's his first time being Spider-Man, so he's kind of new to it, and he's kind of charming. The two books that come after this are pretty neat too. I definitely recommend them. They're written by Kurt Busiek, and every panel is painted wonderfully by Paul Lee. I love the way Paul Lee paints the web head, with his classic look from the time, but with giant expressive eyes that leave no question about Peter's feelings underneath. You can really see the anger in certain shots, and I really love that. Paul Lee is probably one of the most unappreciated Spider-Man artists. I have not heard his name tumbling around in the discourse at all. That's probably one of the most interesting sets of comics I have related to 616 Peter. At least to me. I still do have a couple headliners from his continuity, though. I have the issue where he gets the first Spider-Armor, the issue where he takes the black suit to the Fantastic Four for testing, Hobgoblin's first appearance, the 50-year anniversary issue, and the final 700th issue before the Superior Spider-Man saga. I remember reading through issue 700 over and over and over again. It was such a huge comic, and it was way bigger than any other standard issue I had. You can clearly tell I read the shit out of this thing, too. The pages are slightly out of place. Some of the ends of the pages are bent. It's got some tape on it and shit. I mean, what are you gonna do? I was like 9. I actually had a friend back in 4th grade that I'd trade comic books with. His name was Lewis, and I'm pretty sure I got that Spider-Man encyclopedia from him. I read a lot of comics I wouldn't have been able to find because of him. And I even traded a lot of comics with him, too. I don't know where you are now, Lewis, but thank you for showing me that issue of the Spider-Man annual, where Spider-Man makes out with the thing. I fucking hate you for showing me that issue, and I wish I never saw it. But as I said earlier, after issue 700, the real Spider-Man was gone. He was replaced by Doc Ock running around in his body, and with Peter gone, there was only a couple other Spider-Man I could rely on while I was reluctantly reading Superior Spider-Man. It's so cute, bro. Think back. Think back all the way to little 4th grade me. Fucking upset at a piece of Spider-Man media for the first time. A beautiful thought, such young negativity. Look at how far we've come since then. Being mad at Spider-Man media is pretty much my job. I read the shit out of Ultimate Comic Spider-Man, also known as the first appearance of Miles Morales, the second Ultimate Spider-Man. I don't know what it was that attracted my kid brain so much. If it was the lack of Peter going on at Marvel Comics at the time, or how cool Miles' new costume was, but I was hooked on whatever he was doing, I loved Miles Morales so much that he was actually my favorite for a little bit. I didn't have every issue, but I pretty much read through almost everything in that first series of Miles Morales comics. His origin is kind of foggy for me. I remember not having issue one or two, but having to start at issue three. I just remember really connecting to Miles at first, because he was everything I was at the time. He was a young nerdy kid who had nerdy friends, and he also had parents. Unlike most other superheroes. But he also wants to figure out how to be Spider-Man so bad, and at every turn he has to prove himself to someone new. There was something that I really connected to, and it made me view my relationship with Spider-Man from an outside perspective for once. For me, Peter Parker was Spider-Man, and that's exactly how Miles Morales felt. And ironically, that brought me much closer to Miles. But eventually Peter Parker came back, and I was a little bit older then. The comic collecting was still going strong, and around this time I had started collecting those Marvel compilation comic books to start filling out my collection even more. And then a couple more years go by, and I've started collecting other comics. My original five issues of Spider-Man 2099 turned into a massive section dedicated to following Miguel O'Hara's Spider-Man books New or Old. My Miles section had most of the original Ultimate Comic Spider-Man run, on top of having a couple tie-in events that Miles had, or whatever issues I could find of his newer runs. I had been picking up a lot of the Ultimate Spider-Man books up to this point, but they never really meant much to me until high school. I had a couple of Agent Venom comics, and at some point for Christmas, I was gifted a subscription to Ultimate Spider-Man, which I was really happy about. If you didn't know, back in the day you could subscribe to a comic book and get new issues mailed to your front door. And I was really fucking excited, because the picture on the fucking subscription papers had the original fucking cover of Ultimate Spider-Man on them. I fucking thought it was... I fucking... I fucking thought it was issues of Ultimate Spider-Man, only for literally the worst fucking possible outcome to show up at my door every month. Every day, for a fucking year, I received comic book retellings of the Ultimate Spider-Man TV show. Now, these weren't terrible at first. But somehow, they got worse. They went from drawing in a somewhat original art style, then to completely taking screenshots from the cartoon and putting speech bubbles over them. So for about half a year, I was being sent screenshots with word bubbles on them. I fucking hate Ultimate Spider-Man. I will never let that shit go. That show is garbage, and everything around it is fucking horrible. And I hate that show. I'm sorry, I just get really upset sometimes. 2017. The next notable era of comic book reading that I could think of was high school. There were only a couple of characters outside Spider-Man that I could ever stomach reading. There was Daredevil and Gwenpool. I was not kidding when I said only a couple. It's literally only those two. I read Spider-Man Blue, which I loved so much that I ended up picking up Daredevil Yellow. This book retells Daredevil's origin, while also covering some cute stories between Daredevil and Karen Page, while a Karen-less Daredevil narrates. I have two other books with the old horn head, a bit of Mark Wade's Daredevil run and Daredevil Reborn. But other than Daredevil, Gwenpool piqued my interest. She was shown to me by Comic Drake, with his videos covering her. I thought she was super cute at the time, and I really liked her design. And I really loved Giri... Giri-Hiru's art. I thought she was super cute at the time, and I really loved Giri-Hiru's art on the book. I only own one Gwenpool book, and that's because there's only a couple that are drawn by Giri-Hiru. And I will not consume her books any other way. But aside from other characters, I was reading a lot of Ultimate Spider-Man. Mark Bagley's Spider-Man art had always clicked with me, especially like back then, now it's kinda mid. And now that I was finally old enough to actually be able to understand what I was reading, I really enjoyed the first couple eras of that book. There were so many cool things I'd never seen Spider-Man experience, like having his mask taken off by a villain, just for them to not know his name, making Spider-Man's unmasking much more complicated than one would think. Or when Spider-Man said, Oh. When were these books? Okay. Alright, that makes sense. That makes sense. There's so many naked minors in this book, too. It's really fucking weird. Like, why? Why couldn't you make it so that Peter was just wearing the classic suit under this? Why does he have to be naked? Why does poor 16-year-old MJ have to be naked in front of all these people? Why does this shit happen so much, man? Fucking stop this shit. Not to mention fucking pedophile Wolverine and the Your Oppression is Your Own Fault speech from Spider-Man. This book is fucking weird. I still like some of it, though, anyway. Now it's 2023. My rampant rate of collecting comic books has sort of slowed down to a trickle. I usually pick up anything I see that interests me at Comic-Con or on the random bookstore visit. There are actually a couple books of note that I want to mention. Being decades Marvel in the 60s, Spider-Man meets the Marvel Universe. That title was so long. It triggered my gag reflex. This book compiles a bunch of major issues from across Marvel encountering the web head. But I only mentioned it because it was one of the only moments in comics that's made me laugh in a while. Spider-Man just fucking breaks into the Daily Bugle because he's so thirsty while swinging. He just swoops in through Jameson's office like he owns the place and starts drinking out of the water cooler while Jameson yells at him. It's pretty fucking funny. Another book I picked up that I've yet to read is Secret Reverse. It's a book about Iron Man and Spider-Man fighting some Yu-Gi-Oh ass villain. Actually, this whole book was written and drawn by Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh. I gotta say, I'm quite impressed with him. He sure knew how to draw some Spider-Man. That's for sure. Rest in peace, Kazuki. That man died a hero. And finally, the most recent of the notebook I picked up was Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. I had heard about this book for a while and at first I was a little apprehensive to reading a book not entirely about Spider-Man. But it's actually a pretty cute and fun story so far and I hope I find the time to finish it. But that's kind of my problem with comics. I have trouble finding the time to really tune into a comic book to finish it. If I'm sitting down to read a comic book, I can't pay attention to anything else while I do it. So that means no editing videos, no making costumes, no animating my Spider-Man show that's still fucking coming, please be patient. But if I sit down to read a comic, it has to have my undivided attention until I finish reading it. Which I can't really fit into my everyday, you know? I mean, there is one way I could read Spider-Man comics. And that'd be if I made videos about them.