I was away from comics by maybe 10. My parents discouraged them.
Baptists... Immorality... I dunno. They were never too clear about why Batman might be OK, but Superman was some kind of sacrilage, and besides, comic books were for the illiterate.
Regular books, however, I was given in profusion. That part worked out okay.
And eventually, about the age of 50, I actually bought some comic books that I had wanted to read, way back when I was 10 years old. Evidently it was important to me on some level because I had not forgotten in 40 years.
They were indeed 40 years old because this series had not been published since I was about 10 years.
I doubt that even one of you will remember the short-lived (but award-winning) series from Gold Key called Magnus: Robot Fighter.
Like Batman, Magnus was 100% mortal and could not rely on super powers to achieve his mission. He combined the acrobatic skills of Daredevil with the kung fu skills of Jackie Chan, enormous courage and significant mental prowess, to defeat an impressive variety of robots possessed by evil doers or otherwise creating Mayhem on the Earth of 4000 AD.
I had only seen one or two of these Comics back in 1965, but they attracted me because they were different from run-of-the-mill Superhero fare.
The artwork in the original run was the best in the business and the premise was pretty unique. Fifty years later I think they still hold up.
The storylines were not the classic literature that I imagined in my 10 year old brain, but in the end I'm still glad I bought them and read them.
Magnus was not a success in the marketplace. Gold key only ran it a few dozen months, they were not all done by the same great artist, and some of them were simply reprints of earlier editions with cover changes.
Needless to say I picked up some excellent condition books for a song.
Also, unknown to me, Magnus was picked up some 40 plus years later by an independent company which reimagined the whole concept quite a bit, with totally unique stories and artwork (brought into the digital age of course.)
The complexity of the new artwork is wonderful, though it loses some of the charm of the ultra stylized and crafted original. The storylines were modernized somewhat.
As it turns out it was short-lived. It was dropped but picked up yet again, and a third series of Magnus robot fighter came forth. The art style of the third series got a little overboard for me but all of the plot lines were incredible. It turned out to be, unfortunately, very short-lived as well.
The comic book Market is a Fickle mistress and I'll tell you some much less significant books prospered over the years as Magnus languished.
But the problem originally was Gold Key and Gold Key was never a superhero marque like Marvel or DC. They were a funny-book house. Dramatic stuff was not their forte & I think they may have been a little embarrassed to get into Magnus in the first place.
In the end I bought the whole series and read it, and I was happy, and I bought the second series and read it, and the third series as well. That however pretty much completed my foray into the world of geriatric comic book collecting.