Comics have been a part of my life for years without me realizing it. I've been reading newspaper comic strips since I was old enough to borrow the newspaper's Entertainment page from my lolo. I grew up reading Pugad Baboy and Pupung in the newspapers.
I got into foreign comics in college. I'm a Marvel girl through and through, although I do enjoy Vertigo comics as well. I only read DC comics for Batman. Comics are amazing because they combine visual art with storytelling: drawings, colors, layouts, fonts, dialogue, and plot (ideally) come together.
The one challenge that I really have with reading comics from major publishing houses is that it's so damn hard to catch up with everything that's happening. They have been around for so long, which means so many different storylines and retcons. You'll have to look out for what's canon & what's not. And don't even get me started on the titles: the X-Men, the Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, for starters. There are way too many titles to slog through if you want to get caught up to the current issues and I JUST CAN'T. The pressure is too much to know everything about everyone everywhere!!
On the upside, there are so many different interpretations of a single character that there's bound to be something you like.
Still, that's why I prefer finished titles or specific story arcs, one-shots, and graphic novels. The only ongoing series I really follow is Fables. It's easy to catch up on that because it's relatively new—right now they're only on issue 135/136.
I just got a Marvel Encyclopedia from my mom as a Christmas gift, so maybe I'll finally have the time to know where exactly the frick we are in terms of canon/noncanon. ♥
