Let's get a few things straight: I'm not some big-time comic book enthusiast here. Yes, I probably know more generalities about comics than your average person (i.e., which characters belong to DC and which ones are the property of Marvel), but in terms of purchasing and collecting, my interest has always focused solely on Spider-Man and more specifically Amazing Spider-Man, since it's the flagship title of the series (though I don't own small quantities of some of Spidey's sub-series like Spectacular Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man).
My first comic book purchases came as an 6-year-old, when as a bribing device, my father would promise to take me to the corner candy store after 5 p.m. mass on Saturday nights and with a $1 in my hands, I could pick anything I like. I gravitated towards the spinning rack of comics, and was fascinated by the artwork on one issue in particular: a giant red and blue spider was attacking a strange looking man dressed in green and yellow trapped in its web. Even stranger, the man had additional arms himself - robotic-like tentacles. It was issue #296 of Amazing Spider-Man, and the man in question was one of spidey's most-famous villains, Doctor Octopus. Apparently the issue was about some kind of psychological disorder Octopus was experiencing where he became afraid of spiders, hence the cover image. To be honest with you, as 6-year-old, I really didn't become too engrossed with the plot, but I just though that image was so cool:
What was even cooler was how a few weeks later when I was back in the same store, there was another Amazing Spider-Man comic there, with a different cover. This one was labeled #297. It was then I discovered that comic books were issued sequentially, as part of a larger series. When I would make my weekly corner store visits with my father after church, I would usually buy whichever cover I thought looked interesting at the time - so this ranged from Captain American to Archie and Jughead - but I would always prioritize the newest Spider-Man, since I already had #296 and #297, and I liked the idea of counting upwards with this one particular character.
