Sunday, November 16, 2008

Giveaway: Alan's War

I reviewed Emmanuel Guibert's Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope a while back. I liked it a lot. And now I've come into possession of a second copy of the book. So, let's do a giveaway!

Here's how to enter to win a free copy of Alan's War:

Leave a comment at the bottom of this post that names the comic book that got you hooked on comics. (You already know mine.)

Here's the fine print: Make sure you either are signed in to your profile or put your e-mail in the comment form or I won't be able to contact you if you win (don't worry, I won't do anything else with your contact info). The entry period ends at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, November 23, 2008. After the entry period ends, I'll pick somebody at random, announce the winner, and then send out the book. It's that easy!

In case you needed more encouragement to enter, here's a link to a video of Guibert's fascinating drawing technique.

37 comments:

  1. I have loved comics since I was 6 and reading Garfield comics.Silly,but true.
    rachelcrisman@hotmail.com

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  2. Wow, that's a tough question. As a kid, I used to enjoy reading various Disney comics, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts. So probably one of those. I would also say that I really liked Tintin whenever I found the books at the library. For superhero comics, it was probably Untold Tales of Spider-Man. All-time favorite: again, I couldn't say for sure, but I'll go with Groo the Wanderer.

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  3. Quasar #22 (Marvel, 1991)

    For some reason that I don't recall now, when I was 11 I started collecting the first Marvel super heroes trading card set. I'd only ever read comics in the paper and a couple odd issues of GI Joe, but for some reason I was really into those cards. I think it was the cards more than anything that got me into comics, but the first comic I bought after that was Quasar #22. I had no idea what was going on in any of the comics on the rack, so I just picked whichever one seemed most interesting. I liked Quasar's entry in the card set and the cover showed him dead, so it was pretty cool for my 11-year-old self.

    I hope I win! Thanks.

    Joshua Strasburg
    jistrasburg@gmail.com

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  4. A Ron Frenz issue of the Mighty Thor - white cover with the "Thor Corps" on it. Don't remember the number, but it was in the 400s. I think I got it at a Waldenbooks!

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  5. It was an issue of John Carter Warlord of Mars. My cousin and I read it numerous times, and then when playing, pretended to be John Carter. "Dawn spawns of hell. get your filthy hands off. I said GET OFF !" quite a line coming out of a child's mouth.
    -pete

    pnbeaudoin@juno.com

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  6. I liked comics and had gotten random ones before, but the comic that really got me into comics was Flaming Carrot #17. It was the second issue in the two issue arc introducing the Mystery Men, where they think they have defeated the cloned hitler boots so they go out for a night on the town. The irreverence and absurdity of it has effected my art ever since.

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  7. When I was a kid, it was Usagi Yojimbo--although Watchmen and Y: The Last Man helped pull me back in a few years ago.

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  9. Adjectiveless X-Men 8: The picnic issue that had Gambit and Bishop end up in a brawl. Looking back, this wasn't the best comic, but it acted as a gateway-- and really thats all you need.

    scherem[at]gmail.com

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  10. The Alan Grant-Norm Breyfogle run on Detective Comics, I used to buy it in an ashcan sized edition here in mexico. Also Spiderman, specially Erik Larsen's.

    theyorko(a)gmail.com

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  11. Uncanny X-Men 143. The X-Mas issue of the X-Men.
    skro@aol.com

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  12. Giffen and DeMatteis on Justice League...International. We were spending the summer of '87 in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. I'd get a handful of quarters every couple of days to go play video games at the arcade. One day, while scoping out the candy selection at the local grocer, something very colorful caught my eye. There on the spinner rack was issue #5 of Justice League. Over the course of the summer, I watch as JL became JLI. I was hooked.

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  13. For me it was the Giffen Legion of Superheroes, circa issue 300 or so. Just after the Great Darkness Saga, which I didn't end up readin until many years later.

    joelhunt@gmail.com

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  14. I have two characters that I fell for, and been eversince in love with comics. The Incredible Hulk and the Phantom (the purple guy with mask). I made drawings of them, before I could even read.

    federiconeira@gmail.com

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  15. I started relatively recently, as I didn't buy comics when I was younger due to the overwhelming stupidity that made up the crash of the mid-90's. I started reading seriously when I was 18 (I am now 22, in case that makes a difference), when I picked up a copy of Daredevil #75, by Bendis and Maleev. I was instantly taken in by the shadow drenched artwork and moody atmosphere that Bendis was able to create. It was totally unlike any superhero comic I had read before. To this day, it is the only title that I still buy, month in and month out.

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  16. Amazing Spiderman in the early 80s.

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  17. Amazing Spider-Man #131.
    Aunt May almost marries Dock Ock.
    Great cover quote:
    "With this ring, I thee...web?"

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  18. ASM #131 FOLLOW UP
    gdespo00@gmail.com

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  19. Star Wars Annual #3, circa 1983.

    Link to the cover:

    http://www.rebelscum.com/photo.asp?image=http://www.rebelscum.com/comics/mvswannual3.jpg&text=Star%20Wars%20Annual%203%201983

    I already loved Star Wars and saw this thing sitting in the magazine rack at the drug store. Inside was a story about the rebellion fighting the Empire on some random planet, with AT-ATs, and at the end, some kid joined up with the Empire as a Stormtrooper. I still remember the AT-AT fight, and thinking it was awesome.

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  20. Iron Man is the reason I'm a comic fan today.
    And not because of the movie. That's just icing on the cake.
    I discovered Iron Man back in the late 70's while on a Boy Scout camping trip. We were riding an old school bus down to Charleston, SC for a weekend camping event and stopped at a 7-11 convenience store for fuel and food. While grabbing grub for the long ride, I discovered a spinner rack filled with comics. Mostly Marvel comics as I remember because I purchased several consecutive issues of Iron Man and The Avengers (which had IM in it as well). Totally loved the idea of a man in an iron suite because that could be me! From that trip to this day, I'm still an Iron Man fan.

    David
    dprowe@charter.net

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  21. I was only a young kid in the early 90's when I got into comics. I can't point to one "without a doubt" thing that got me into comics. But I can say it's one of these three or any combination of them.

    Fantastic Four 374, and issues that come after.

    The Death of Superman

    The Gemstone reprints of EC comics

    jesse.haller@gmail.com

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  22. My dad read me the Sunday funnies when I was a kid, and I think that's what got me hooked. Then, having been introduced to comics, and subsequently comic books, the one that really got me was Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog #9--I've been following the series for most of my life ever since.
    andrew.davis@houghton.edu

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  23. Well I love comics and have collected literally for decades. In the beginning I had Archies, and Jugheads and the first real superhero comic that comprehended the story on was Showcase #100 featuring Brave and The Bold with Green Arrow and Green Lantern but this one had Air Wave(2) make his debut which I thought was freaky. All key components to my early comic collecting but it is not the pivotal comic that locked me in.
    No that would be the end of Summer 1980 when I realized I had gone from just accumullating comics to actual collecting when I realized I had over a years worth of the UnCanny X-Men and the one the clinched it was Uncanny X-Men #137 and #138 that I picked up at a Voyager truck stop in Trenton on the truck ride home from clean out my Grandmother's home in North Augusta after she had passed away two months earlier. One had an action story to climax where every charcter had a part to play and the other with a funeral had covered 15 years of Uncanny X-Men history to cath you all up. It summed up a Summer of feelings and years life. It was the death of Phoenix and Scott leaving the X-Men all beautifully told by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. This is the comic that I consider started me collecting. I can say Showcase got me interested in comic or Uncanny X-Men 120 or 127 was the start of my collection or even a Batman Family story set in Earth-2 where buildings melted like candles and adult Robin and Huntress fought a big waxy guy was the first story I really talked about but to say what was the comic that started me actually collecting comics I look at a summer of reruns, picking up Uncanny X-Men #137 off the wire spinner rack after a few hours on the road and catching up the action on as the sunset on the long drive home.

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  24. The comic that hooked me as a kid was Fantastic Four #200. What a comic- the best Reed/Doom fight ever, the last Kirby cover, and fantastic artwork by Keith Pollard and Joltin' Joe Sinnott.

    The comic that brought me back to reading comics was really Cerebus. I read other comics, to be sure, but Dave Sim's Cerebus really hooked me back into comics for good, and I'll never leave again.

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  25. The comic that hooked me was Superman 161. Superman starts fighting forgotten WWII soldiers who think the war is still on, but it turns out they're aliens! Classic twist.


    kennedyr84@gmail.com

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  26. I read and loved ALL the Peanuts comics in book form, but frankly, unless you want to get into semantics, Pat the Bunny was my first true love, comic book wise. Oh, I hope I win!
    Jim says "Richie Rich"--count him in too! He had real reasons too! he says, "He was sooooo rich!!!!"

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  27. From what I remember, the first comic I bought (or more likely probably whined until my mom bought for me) was Star Wars #30 (I would have been 4). It was in the convenience store next to my friend's mom's crappy consignment store that I hated hanging out in. I don't remember a time when I wasn't reading comics since that day....

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  28. for me it was an issue of "the nam" about tunnel rats: claustrophobia, death and the camaraderie of war. i was around 7 years old.

    mcoypogi
    at
    hotmail.com

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  29. The first comic I ever got was some late 80s issue of Detective Comics that was obviously post-Jason Todd's death, because the cover was the ghost of Robin appearing from his grave pointing down at Batman who was just all-out bawling...Clayface was the villian.

    http://www.hakushouse.com/images/Comix/P5140002.JPG

    It was a shock to my like five year old brain who was watching the Adam West Batman on days I went to my grandma's because we didn't have cable at my house.

    The next "epiphany" would've been in late elementary school/early middle school, with 'The Tick' on TV. I found out there were comics, searched them out and that opened my world up to a lot of indy and black and whites of the time: SCUD, Milk and Cheese, Tug & Buster...etc.

    That sent me into a couple years of out-and-out comic snobbery where I was the kind of dummy that didn't like mainline superhero stuff because it took itself too seriously. Embarassing!

    brandonsoderberg@gmail.com

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  30. I probably started reading Garfield on my friend's floor in the very beginning, and then began my all too familiar path of newspaper strips to superheroes to giving them up and then coming back.
    I love your honesty, because while in my adult life I'm a serious cartoonists with serious snooty tastes (Concrete brought me back to comics) when I was a kid I LOVED Rob Liefeld comics! Cable and Deadpool in particular.
    His hyperviolent, crazy distorted muscles and guns were the perfect tonic for a frustrated homo outcast like me in my formative years.

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  31. The first comic I remember reading was Batman #237, but it was Fantastic Four #254 that really hooked me on the comics bug.

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  32. I guess my first comic was an early 70's issue of Thor. I've never been able to stop buying them (comics) since.

    Mike Thompson
    marlthom@yahoo.com

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  33. Peanuts.

    I couldn't have been more than three years old when my grandfather gave me a slipcased set of five paperbacks collecting random Peanuts strips. Each book focused on a different character. The Snoopy one was my favorite, of course. I used to sit on his lap and he'd read them to me.

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  34. Gi Joe. And Dark Horse comics like Aliens, Predator and Aliens got me started.

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  35. Archie Comics' TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE ADVENTURES #23. What a cool cover for a little kid, bought from my local drugstore, back when you could still find comics on the racks at regular places.

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  36. Ritchie Rich :) Email in glog profile.

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