I bought my first comic book in 1971, the first issue of Marvel Feature, with Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk.  At twenty-five cents, it gouged my weekly allowance of around forty
cents.  The drugstore half a block from my house had the candy I bought every Saturday when my father would give me coins that purchased so much more in those days.  For forty cents I could get a candy bar, a pack or two of bubblegum with sports cards, licorice, Good and Plenty or other cardboard box candies.  It was wonderful to go home and eat that shit, to smell the lingering gum scent on the cards with their detailed information about the players on the reverse sides. 
     My older brother began buying Marvel comic books at the same corner drugstore earlier that year.  I looked at them, entranced, and I absorbed his statement that an issue with the number 1 was worth having.  He had several such premier issues and was on the lookout.  One day, I saw Marvel Feature number 1 in the rack and I bought it, not without some hesitation.  I knew my brother would be upset that a first issue got past him.  Still, the Hulk on the cover, green fist thrusting forward as if to punch through the cheap colorful paper made it impossible to resist acquiring this item.
     I feel old writing this.  A character as well known now as the Hulk was once new to me.  Since then, a TV series, films, and the idea of someone losing control of his anger to the extreme extent of becoming a monster of violence and rage have made him a well-established archetype in popular culture.  To my young eyes in 1971, though, he and Sub-Mariner and Dr. Strange were fresh, and even bizarre.
     Anyone entering a long-established comic book universe, Marvel, DC, or any other, is likely to get confused.  So much has happened before, characters and their relationships have become so complex, that getting a grip on all of it may be impossible.
     At my young candy-gobbling age, the images attracted me more than the text: Dr. Strange in his ethereal body floating through walls, Sub-Mariner reaching for the Hulk's throat, flamethrowers shooting out of a wall at the Hulk.
     Monomaniacal crazed dialogue, as when a villain, Yandroth, says, "The Omegatron will be automatically activated by my death--the death I planned!  It can protect itself with weapons--with hallucinations--and precisely five hours after it is activated it will explode every nuclear stockpile on Earth!  Every man wants the world to end when he dies--but only I shall fulfill that dream!"
     Does every man want the world to end when he dies?  Probably not, and reading that when I was seven years old didn't make me believe it, but it's a wonderful over the top rant in a genre operating on a plane shifted from our reality.  To a friend I observed, while talking about James Bond films, that "these movies exist in a world of their own."
     It's not easy to craft imaginary worlds that draw people in.  One key value of these worlds, literary, cinematic, comic book, or whatever else, is how they can represent elements in our own lives.  Batman, in comic books and movies, symbolizes a man's shadow side coming forth to battle criminals, usually at night.  He needs to be anonymous.  His methods require a dark persona spreading fear to his adversaries.  He can't battle the Joker wearing a three piece suit; thus, he embraces his darkness because without it he wouldn't be able to commit the violence required to fight chaos and evil. 
     No one in real life is a real life Batman or Hulk, but these characters and the multitude of others in Marvel and DC, in their stylized exaggerated ways and costumes, represent what's in human beings, much as pantheons of gods and goddesses did for ancient civilizations. 
     I bought most of my comic books for a few years into the 1970s, but then I started reading J.R.R. Tolkien.  Imaginative literature took over, but I respect comic books and graphic novels a great deal. 

                                                                            Vic Neptune