Let's do the First Contact with......
Manga
Doraemon!!!Nuff said. I don't recall buying any of his books. Just via 1st contact. Reading at barbershop, saloon and cousin's place.
I do remembered my mother bought me coloring books of Dr Slump and Doraemon however.
My first manga that I actually came up money with is Dragonball volume 2 back around primary 5 (or even 4) althought I first read it under a pirated name "Xiao hou wang". Of course back those days, everyone is buying pirated "Tong Li" brand so all the other weird named versions just slowly dies off. I don't remember getting Vol. 1 until I got Vol. 5 or Vol. 6.
My other manga purchases, when I am in Primary School that comes later on, is probably in the following sequence:
- City Hunter
I only bought 1 volume (vol.4) . Which was a seriously censored reproduced version by a Singapore/M'sia press. I like the art but the various censorship didn't do a good job in story telling. My brother bought a HK edition of 1 & 2. I think it's pretty gritty and grim and I like it quite a bit but owing to gigantic gap in between, we didn't continue until another bootleg press pick it up until Latter of my secondary school days. It's based on the Taiwan version so it's Ryo rather than Mumble (Mon Bo).
- Kujaku-Oh
This is the first book that I bought that I got no idea how the storyline goes and bought at book 1. I love anthologies stuff and supernatural back then. It's a creepy book and the mood setting is fantastic. However like City Hunter, the interest is killed via the lack of availability and I drop the book at 2 (despite the fact that the Yuan Biao Peacock Prince movies are being shown at that time). I never carry on, only reading via rental read (during NS days) because the art wasn't fantastic (in my opinion).
- Ranma 1/2
It has a unique storyline. Kung fu with comedy. I bought 4 volumes of it but I probably discontinued after PSLE. It's borderline cheesecake for the 1st few volumes but I seen the latter stories on Comic Weekly so it didn't really turn me off. However, in secondary school days, I somehow didn't try to buy much manga except for periodicals thus I dropped the book. I never finish reading it completely but I did read whatever that's on Comic Weekly until the last issue of Ranma 1/2.
- Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken
Everyone loves adventure. Plus they marketed it with a subtitle as "Xin Qi Long Zhu" (which means "New Seven Dragonballs"). It's a great adventure story. A good shonen manga with good character designs. Too bad, we opt to drop this manga around vol.8 because of missing volumes. I tried to restart in '97 when someone gave me the final volume but it's too bad because CY stop printing some of the numbers in between.
- Comic Periodicals
My first manga periodical should be the one by Chuang Yi (I think it was City Comics. You can find alot of them at Bras Besah. LOL) back in their bootlegging days. So who say someone with a past, can't turn a good leaf??? Their content is pretty plain. Just comics. Dragonball is of course their strong point.
However after a good 5 or 6 issues, I switched to Comic Weekly (a Malaysian publication which might be pirating or with permission from a HK publication which is obviously breaks some laws but who cares about that those days???) as their Dragonball is faster than CY's by a good 2 to 3 chapters (in the begining). Their format originally was almost Newspaper Size, close to how gossip/showbiz magazines are like. They didn't went down to magazine size until they decide to go weekly (it was fortnightly or once every 3 week) which is around 4 or 5 issues later.
They got a mixture of anime and game news as well as shojo manga occasionally. Owing that they are M'sia published, the censorship was ridiculous and ridiculously done (but nothing beats the S'pore Bootleg Cityhunter). I continue to buy Comic Weekly after they stop their Singapore counterpart (issues/distribution) and but availability is a bitch. I probably stopped during O'levels period because I cannot go to Bedok to them pick up.
I threw all of them out and sold the last of them to Karang Guni last month. It was a mixed feeling but I was relief because I finally gotten some space back.
By the Way, Comic Weekly is still ongoing. Lol. I still wonder if they got license to print.
Oh ya start tune for the Secondary School Days version.....which was kind of hazy to me......
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