I was about 9 or 10. What about you?

I was about 6, and it proved really helpful for me. I learned so much vocabulary (not just simple words, Ibáñez is some kind of Spanish counterpart to Stan Lee, with the flamboyant dialogue), expressions, and culture in general. I owe part of my IQ developement to comics.

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Thanks to Kez for this sig!

I don't really remember my first comic book.
What i remember was that when I was 7 my parents (who thought "comic=for children") bought me polish version of "Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel" by Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski.
here's sample:

http://www.matuswamsieniepodoba.republika.pl/szninkiel_dwie_strony.jpg

Next month they bought me Donald Duck

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I am not sure what my first book was, but the first I remember was a issue of Classic X-Men bought from a comic spinning rack in a drug store. That is something I was thinking the other day. Those spinning comic racks you would see in grocery stores, convince stores, etc are a thing of the past. Now to get a comic, you have to go to a comic book store. It really limits new readers (i.e. kids) from getting involved in comics, since if they are not into comics their parents are probably not taking them into comic stores.

This has to be hurting the comic industry, the lack of wide distribution. I got my parents to buy a lot of comics on a whim from these spinning racks when I was a kid. Of course they were a dollar and not 4...if my kid asked for a 4 dollar comic and I wasn't a comic person, I almost certinally wouldn't buy it for him.

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I knew of comics from an early age, but my first comic was Spectacular Spider-Man 197 in 1993. I was 8 years old.

I saw the comic in the grocery store on the rack, and the cover was so rad I couldn't believe it. I told my mom I had to have it, and she said I could buy it myself if I did some chores. So I swept the driveway and front porch for my six quarters ($1.25 plus tax, I'm sure some of us remember when it was cheaper, but for me I always compare comic prices back to that first price point I was introduced to).

I read that comic to death, and when the cover fell off, I re-stapled it, although I didn't realize they stapled it with the pages flattened open, so I stapled it all weird.

From there the rest was history, I was buying comics every week with my scraped together money.

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See, grocery store rack....why aren't comics there any more...

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I've been reading Japanese stuff for a good few years now... which stemmed from me watching anime, catching up with the ongoing ones and reading the manga instead.

I only recently started reading western comics, like maybe a year ago. It's always been something I intended to do, but never got around to (Until now).

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I was 6 or 7 I think. My parents bought me the Captain Scarlet and Thunderbirds comics that came out ever week. Used to love reading them. Not sure exactly why I stopped. I have a feeling they thought I was a bit old and stopped buying them for me eventually.

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I read some comics as a kid, but my parents read something about comics being evil (thanks, Spawn) and then I wasn't allowed to have them anymore. I always kind of knew about some of the bigger things that happened but never paid too much attention.
I just jumped in and started buying right in the middle of House of M... if that was 2004, that would make me... 23ish?

a few years at $40/week and I got out. (I MAY have discovered some other, evil ways to procure them but the less said about that, the better)

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

I think I was around 5 with the Harvey comics (Richie Rich, Casper, etc). I switched over to Marvel (and a few DC) a few years later. I remember buying 25 cent comics from the rack at 7-11 and discount bags of random issues at flea market stores.