How to Start a Comic Book Collection

When I was younger I had no interest what so ever in comic books, but some time after Dark Knight came out I started looking very tentatively into Batman comics. My first initial look online made me cringe, there was so much I didn't know and the sheer amount of spin offs and back issues had me reeling. I didn't feel like I could just jump into reading anything, and heck I hadn't been in a comic book store in years. So I started researching, looked through wikipedia, went through forms and looked around and finally came across a few helpful posts and being directed from that I picked up No Man's Land; it's about Gotham City being quarantined after a gigantic earthquake. I enjoyed reading it from what I remember, but eventually lost interest and closed the book on that hobby.

It wasn't until a year or so later when a friend gifted me with the first graphic novel of Transmetropolitan that I really started to get into it again. To this day I don't think I've loved a comic more than Transmetropolitan. I have to say if you don't want to deal with multiverses, buying multiple comic serials, and your usual slap and dash heros and villian go with Vertigo (did you know it's part of DC?). Don't get me wrong, I still have tons of DC comics littering my shelves, but what I adore about Vertigo is the fact that the stories are geared towards more mature readers and usually are a bit more diverse.

Anyway, from there I got up the nerve to visit the local comic store and with the help of the store owner slowly started out buying the series that caught my fancy- which was Batman of course. It was fairly easy to pick up with guidance and I had fond memories of the animated series from when I was a child.

It might seem intimidating at first, whether it's because it seems like you have to do a lot of searching for back issues or if you've just seen a movie *cough* X-Men First Class *cough* and have gained a sudden interest in the actual comics but don't know where to start, but a little bit of research and talking to your local comic book store owner can easily lead you to something to start reading. You also want to go into it with an idea of what you might like to read, there are a lot of different genres to choose from, not to mentions different publishers other than DC and Vertigo, such as Marvel, Boom, Image, etc. I've only dabbled in these a little, mostly got my hands full with DC at the moment.

Some things to start you off with if you're interested:

If you like Batman and are just starting: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, Hush, Batman And Son, No Man's Land, and the new 52 (which is now the perfect time to jump in since a good portion of DC has been relaunched to issue 1 as of september 2011)

*Also if you were a fan of Terry McGinnis, Batman Beyond is now part of Dc Comics and has its own serial.

As for Vertigo some of my favorites are: Transmetropolitan, Unwritten, American Vampire, Hellblazer, and Lucifer

Boom is currently publishing Farscape comics continuing the series after Peace Keeper Wars- I haven't looked into them too much beyond that.

And two of my favorite from Image comics are Hack/Slash and The Maxx.