A Question, Please

gailsimone:

I’m curious about something.

How many of you came to the DC or Marvel universes initially through either the films, or animated series?

Did you fall in love with superheroes through comics, or was your first real exposure to them from other media?

And finally, specifically, does your love for a certain character or team stem in any way from film or animation, by which I mean, are you a Batman or X-men fan, for example, at least partially due to the films or cartoons?

This is for a reason…thanks!

My first exposure was most likely through Batman: The Animated Series. To me that version of most of those characters is the definitive one. I read Batman in Kevin Conroy’s voice, Joker in Mark Hamill’s and even Alfred in Efrem Zimbalist, Jr’s voice. Batman was the first in a long string of animated series that I watched as a young kid, the most important being X-Men and Spider-Man. I definitely had some comics back then but I no longer have them and remember next to nothing about them.

The superhero thing eventually took a back seat as I got into other things. I enjoyed the movies that were coming out, but I still hadn’t read much. Only in the last 3-4 years have I got into comics in a real way. Again, the trigger was Batman: The Animated Series. I spotted the box sets on a shelf in HMV and through that, I somehow ended up watching the entire DCAU over a couple of months. After that was over, I couldn’t stop. So I hit the comics hard and haven’t let up since.