MUST LOVE SUPERHEROES

The secret origin of Ryan M Brady

Hi, all. Welcome to my first blog post, a place where I can yap/rave/rant about all things comics. No, no. I don’t plan to review comics or the movie of the week. To be honest, I’m way behind on everything. I don’t enjoy binging shows and I’ve been choosing what phase 4 MCU movies to view very carefully. I saw Shang-Chi (liked it) and then a large gap….. I saw Cap 4 (it was ok). Moreover, everyone and their Mom is already doing that at all times, on every social media platform.

No, friends, I wanna tell you about how it all started for me. You see, I grew up in the 90s in Philly a few blocks from the greatest comic book shop: Ontario St Flea Market. Now this place was a hole in the wall with no windows. The only indication it was even a comic book shop was a large 1980s Hulk decal on the window. So to me, it felt very exclusive. If you didn’t know, you didn’t know. You’d go in there past all the long boxes and there was the WALL: that week’s releases. Beautiful. And every comic was already bagged and boarded. Still the only comic shop I’ve seen do that. If you’re at all curious, Ontario St. Flea Market is the comic book store that Mr. Glass visits in the movie “Unbreakable”.

Now back to me…

I became obsessed with Batman when I got my first pair of Batman pajamas from my Grandmom. I was a toddler when “Batman Returns” hit and I was riding that wave hard. God bless my Mom cuz she rented Batman Returns for me when I was sick and the movie starts with baby Penguin getting tossed into the sewer by his parents. She also got me my first comic book when I was in kindergarten, a Batman issue naturally.

My two older brothers already had comics, so I could read theirs and they were the ones rolling up to Ontario St. to get more. Two major events happen in 1993: Death of Superman and Batman: Knightfall. And these are world-changing events to us boys. Superman can die? Batman is being broken? And there we were on the edge of our seats. My whole family was apart of this comics whirlwind. One time my parents went out, leaving the 4 of us home. We had a wrestling match of course, but when my parents came back, they brought with them a promo comic for “Marvel vs DC”. What? Where did they go that they were handing out promo comics of “Marvel vs DC”?! At the time we didn’t care because the first few pages, Ben Reilly Spider-man runs into the Joker and none of us could sleep that night.

At the same time, my Saturday mornings aren’t in bad shape either. Batman: The Animated Series has taken control of my life. That’s right: Batman The Animated Series, the greatest Batman cartoon of all time. (Notice

how I didn’t say “arguably the greatest”? There’s no arguing it. I’m on this hill and I’m gonna die on this hill). And Marvel wasn’t hurting either as I got the best Spider-man and X-men cartoon. Life was good. You’d wake up, watch superhero cartoons, then head to Toys R Us to buy the action figures from the cartoon, then come home and create your own stories with the toys. I’m sorry that you and my own kids won’t get to experience this. Really I am. Enjoy your phones, I guess.

Back to the comics.

So my brothers had the issues in chronological order but I was young and I blew all my money on action figures. But I still had comics. I used to get the $1 grab bags from the dollar store. Glorious. Lots of Valiants and Images. You have to remember this is early 90s so Image had just started and we were getting inundated with the Image effect. I had so many copies of Youngblood #4. My collection consisted of random issues of various titles. An Aquaman here, a few Avengers, a lot of Batman. I’d read a single issue of Justice League that would end on a cliffhanger, then jump to Spider-man. I was lucky if I had consecutive issues. And I’d keep them in a cardboard box, not so much a long box. More of a shoebox. My Valiants\Images I kept in a cereal box. They were more mature with violence and language, I was so afraid my Mom was gonna find em, I ended up tossing them, regrettably. X-O Manowar, I’m sorry.

And I’d pull out these same random issues and reread them over and over. I’d try to copy the artwork of Breyfogle or Aparo. It was a great time.

It wasn’t until I got my first job when I started collecting in earnest, I started my first pull list. Y’know your first job when you still live at home: you get a check for $500 and no bills, you go a little nuts. It must’ve been 2005-2006 because I remember starting with Marvel’s Civil War and being overeager, I not only bought the main story, I bought every tie-in as well (NOT NECESSARY).

“Ok, so you bought comics but when did you want to make your own?”

Oh, right. Well let me back up. Back to the 90s.

Jim Lee is on X-men. Jim Lee, just an incredible artist. He’s always drawn the way I believe comics should look. As a young boy, I thought “Wow, can you imagine how much fun it must be to draw comic books for a living?” But it seemed unobtainable. Where do you start? And then I read a book in elementary school about two friends who draw their own independent comic book in their treehouse about a superhero they’ve created. I am, of course, talking about Dav Pilkey’s “Captain Underpants”. When I saw that George and Harold were able to make comics, not for money but just because they loved comics, it gave me permission to do it too.

Sometimes I feel that growing up in my family in Philly at the specific time was ideal to who I am today. I wonder if I would still have fallen in love with comics if I grew up in today’s current landscape.

But then I see my own daughter leaping off the couch in a Batgirl cape.

-Ryan