Our pal Seth Hahne, of GoodOKBad fame, came up with this 31 Days of Comics challenge, one of those things where each day of the month you're given a different category that you then make a choice of a comic to fill that category. I figured it would be a fun bit to do, so here we are! Click here to see each of the categories so far!

We continue with Day 23, which is the First Comic You Ever Bought.

Read on for my pick and then you can share yours!

My answer for this one is pretty surprising. You see, while I had been collecting comics during the 1980s, it was really more of a passive engagement. Like I wrote in an earlier 31 Days of Comics piece, I had actively pursued reading G.I. Joe during the 1980s, but that was achieved by the fact that my older brother collected them. In addition, my mother was a librarian (still is, as a matter of fact) at the local library, so I would borrow collections of old comic books there all the time (whatever collections they had back then, which weren't a ton of course). And my parents would get me comic books on occasion. And my friend who lived next door actively collected DC Comics so he would always lend me his.

So the amazing thing to me is that I didn't actually buy comics on my OWN until 1991. My older brother was no longer reading comics so if I wanted to pursue it, it would have to be on my own. And I think there likely was a period around 1989-1990 when I wasn't really reading comics period. Which really sort of amazes me in retrospect, given, you know, what I do now.

Anyhow, one day in 1991 there was some news report about Tim Drake becoming the new Robin or Superman getting engaged or something like that and I figured that I should get back into comics, so soon afterwards my dad took me to the dentist for a check-up/cleaning/whatever and afterwards I asked if I could stop by the local stationary store and buy a comic book. He said fine (he, of course, did not realize what this would be starting) and I picked up a copy of Batman #464...

Luckily, as I noted, I had been reading comics for years at this point, so I was not thrown, because otherwise, beginning with part 3 of a three-parter involving Batman teaming up with an 130-year-old Native American Shaman to stop the man's grandson from killing people as part of a ritual that involved retrieving ancient Native American relics probably wouldn't be the place to start reading Batman comic books.

Years ago, I purchased a page of original art from Norm Breyfogle from the issue. This page...

The notable thing about this particular issue, though, was that it had an insert promoting DC's new !mpact line of comic books, using the old Archie superheroes. I remembered thinking, "Oh, I could start collecting these from the first issue."

And so it began...