As a child growing up in the late 70's - early 80's, there was one absolute requirement for mind fodder. I'm referring of course to comic books. My first ever encounter with comic books was when I bought the first issue of a comic called "Speed". I was totally enthralled. As the name suggests, all of the stories were centred around the theme of speed. Google tells me that the date of issue was in fact 22nd Feb 1980, so I was 9 years old at the time, an impressionable age.
Eventually, Speed joined with Tiger and then it just became Tiger. Unfortunately Tiger just wasn't so good as Speed, so I bailed out. My next comic was to be "Scream", which was also excellent, although again obvious from the title, featured horror stories. Unfortunately, Scream only lasted for about 20 issues, so I tried The Beano for a while, but it was too childish for my liking.
I hit a bit of a comic void after that, although I did purchase quite a few issues of "Commando", because all my Grandparents had played their part in WWII, and I'd heard many tales about that and felt it was my duty to educate myself about the war in the best way possible, ie. by comic-strip.
The last comic I was to purchase and which I bought without fail through the best part of the 80's, was 2000AD. What a fantastic comic that was! Offering both tantalising glimpses of the future and of the past, other worlds, technology and humour. My favourite characters were Slaine, Rogue Trooper, Ace Garp and Nemesis. Surprisingly, I've seen many of the ideas from 2000AD come to fruition and I'm sure many more will. I guess I stopped buying comics (except Viz maybe) when I got a job. Reality has a harsh way of crushing your imagination doesn't it? Not that my imagination has gone altogether, I still read a lot of books just to keep my mind ticking over nicely, but I require stimulation intelectually on several levels, so it's rare that a book ticks all the required boxes for me.
