You're right. It's just when I was younger I was a bit embarrassed that I read comics and it was only went I went to University that I embraced comics.

All my guilty pleasures nowadays are in Music - Lady GaGa, Anastacia, Katy Perry - as normally I am a Joy Division, Smiths, The Fall type of guy.

It's not comics, but I watch the Maury Povich show when he has the paternity tests. Really, I'm usually working and it's on in the background. They'll test four guys and when none of them is the dad, the single mother invariably howls like a doomed soul and runs off stage followed by a camera to document the tragedy. The 'Cheaters' episodes are reasonably entertaining as well. I'm normally a fairly sympathetic type and don't find any of the 'funniest videos' where someone slips, vomits or gets hit in the nuts to be funny at all, but for some reason baby mama drama which has greater repercussions gets a pass for me.

Crystar was a title which had an outsized legacy. That is, under normal circumstances it should have been utterly forgotten, but a few lucky breaks caused it to be slightly memorable. Things like Blevins working on it, and the Michael Golden covers on most of the issues, and the repeated guest appearances by more popular Marvel characters that failed to save the book.

And apparently the demon head on this cover got turned into the logo for a metal band?

http://www.comicbookdb.com/graphics/comic_graphics/1/244/76041_20080304003651_large.jpg

Not bad for a crappy toy tie-in comic, more than it deserved, really.

I did not know that about the Danzig logo. Man, Michael Golden used to be good.

BTW someone told me I need to put Micronauts on this list but they can kiss my ass. I like them, understand why, and think they were good. That ain't guilt.

Amen, brother, and you can add ROM: Spaceknight to that list!

Byrne used to be good too.

You didn't? But I thought I heard about it from you!

So wait, where did I hear it, then? Lemme google it...

Oh, okay, I think this is where I heard the story first:

http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/04/esoteric-comics-history-part-666.html

I especially like Danzig's non-denial:

I was also looking at the covers of Shogun Warriors, and some of those old childhood feelings came flooding back. Something about the tactile physicality of Herb Trimpe's art was enormously appealing to me. I actually got a very similar sense from Michael Golden's work on Micronauts. It was just like playing with the plastic toys on the floor of my room, breaking them apart, fitting them back together. . .

Okay, I better stop, because clearly I had mental problems in my preadolescent years, and I don't want to turn this into a therapy session.

But anyway, yeah, good stuff, those old comics!

I am not so much feeling like you are mental, there, Peter, I am feeling like I AM OLD.