My Childhood Comic Book/Nerd DNA (Patreon)

I stumbled across some images in a file and realized they tell a story. I have probably written/posted parts of this story here already but I'm in a nostalgic mood, so, let's just go with it. For all I know I'm rewriting an old post. Revisit, rewrite. As long as it's fun to read, right?

This might be part one of a series. I don't know. Maybe I'll fill some things in to the timeline if/when they come to me (I probably won't get into the Archie/Harvey comics I read as a kid, although I really should) and/or continue the timeline into my later teens. This will probably lead up to my pre-teen days. Anyway, have at thee:

1. CHILDREN'S DIGEST (image above): My mother got me a subscription to Children's Digest, which had a lot of comic-related material, including Peanuts, which I was a huge fan of from the newspaper funny pages (pretend there's a photo of an early 70s NY Daily News comics page here as number zero). Most importantly, this is where I first read English translations of Tintin, which was serialized in the magazine. 

2. MARVEL COMICS

The first four comic books I remember buying were Fantastic Four #159, Marvel's Greatest Comics #55, Amazing Spider-Man #142 and Marvel Tales #50. I had been collecting before I picked these up from a spinner rack at a local grocery store, but these were the first I spent my own money on, and for that reason they've stuck in my memory. Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four were overall my two favorite comics back in the day, and my first dollar spent on comics went towards the latest issues of each title, along with the latest reprint titles. Interestingly, both Spider-Man comics featured Mysterio as the villain, which may have been the reason I was always a big fan of the character. And I got plenty of bang for my buck (literally) with the Kirby FF reprint, featuring Spider-Man, Daredevil and Thor. I re-read these issues multiple times in the month before I could get my hands on the next issues. 

In 1975 a young Marvel reader could follow the modern continuity easily. Each title was separate and followed it's own throughline without interference from the wider Marvel Universe save for guest appearances and occasional brief crossovers. And you could read the backstory and past history of the characters in those reprint titles, which also included Marvel Triple Action (Avengers), Marvel Double-Feature (Captain America and Iron Man) and Marvel Super-Heroes (The Hulk). For the same price as a "new" comic you could buy a back issue, and because fandom hadn't completely taken over superhero comics at the time, continuity was simple enough that between the two formats you could understand everything you were reading (along with the help of ham-fisted exposition dialog, caption descriptions and editorial captions, which were heavily in use at the time). It was a good time to be a comic book reader, but ten years old is pretty much always a good time to be a comic book reader. 

3. BATMAN: FROM THE 30's TO THE 70'S

When I was around 11 or 12 I got sick and was stuck in bed for a week or so. My friend Michael Kemper lent me some comics, both in the form of hardcover books. I was knocked out to see comics in a big, deluxe oversized hardcover format, now something we're all familiar with but at the time a pretty rare thing to come across, at least for the average kid. The only collected comics I was familiar with at that point were pocket paperback editions of MAD, Peanuts along with various newspaper strips (I only remember having Peanuts, Don martin's Captain Klutz and a couple of MAD reprints). 

Unfortunately, I was not a DC Comics or Batman fan (despite being a fan of the Batman 60's TV series reruns). So I begrudgingly read the Batman collection, none of which really did much for me, except for the story, "Bat-Mite Meets Mr. Mxyzptlk", which as most of you know, sparked a bewildering love for Bat-Mite, culminating in my writing World's Funnest decades later. I just loved that dopey story as a kid and it stuck with me, I can't tell you exactly why. But that story affected my life (of all things!), so, that book is in the DNA. And later down the road, I became a Batman reader (as part of my coming around to DC Comics in the 80's), and if not a huge fan of "The Bat", I am a fan of the goofy 50's stories and various miscellaneous comics featuring the character. And Sarah and I almost got to write an episode of the Batman animated series, which, unfortunately, never happened. But we did wrote a Batman Beyond, and Ace the Bat-Hound was in it, so, it sort of kind of connects because Ace's debut story is collected in the 30's to 70's book. If that makes any sense. I'm not editing this, forgive me. 

4. EC HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950's

This was the other hardcover comic collection Michael Kemper loaned me. This book was part of the Nostalgia Press reprint line of classic comics and newspaper strips, which I was also ignorant of at the time. I don't know if I'd really known about EC Comics at the time. I might have read about them in The Monster Times, but whatever the case, this is where I first read anything from EC. Let me tell you something -- I agree that horror comics aren't scary, that the best they can achieve towards that end is to be usettling or effective, to be creepy or eerie (ha ha). The exception is when you're an easily unnerved kid in 197-whatever reading EC Comics for the first time and not knowing what to expect. I had nightmares from several of these stories, and they freaked me out as I read them. "Shoe-Button Eyes" (drawn by Graham Ingles), Carrion Death (drawn by Reed Crandall), "Midnight Mess" (drawn by Joe Orlando) and "Foul Play" (drawn by Jack Davis) were the ones that really disturbed me. There was the George Evans-drawn story with the blood chugging out of a kitchen sink, the mutant guy with a third eye (Angelo Torres, printed for the first time in this collection, iirc). Oh, and the black market meat story drawn by Davis. I had never seen gore in such detail up until that point. Severed heads, dismembered bodies, punctured necks -- and all treated as a horrific joke, which was a tonal disconnect I couldn't get a grip on as a kid. And then there was Johnny Craig's Whirlpool, which just seemed hopeless and distressing, and the one where a shack narrated the story about a cannibal. Possibly the biggest slap in the face of repulsion/attraction I'd experienced by that time. I read it several times. I had several nightmares. I didn't know they made comics like that. Where the hell did Mike Kemper get a hold of this thing? 

Years later, when I started working at the Fantastic Store, I made enough in cash and trade to heft home the Tales From the Crypt boxed set from the Russ Cochran library. Over the years I've managed to collect the entire library. It's comics, a library and practically furniture. EC didn't make the greatest comics in history, but they're tremendous fun, wonderfully drawn, influential and important. Whatever happens, whatever I might have to sell off to get through the years, these books will be among the last I'd ever touch short of saving a loved one (that probably doesn't include myself). 

A while back, a reader was incredibly kind enough to send me a copy of this book, which goes for a pretty penny in good shape. I was really happy to have it and re-experience it, if you get what I mean. Unfortunately it got ruined in a mishap some years later. It's not a book I feel a need to own, but it's one I'd definitely pick up for the collection someday if the Magic 8 Ball of life smiles upon me. At this point it's an object like an old jacket or photograph as much as a text.

Maybe more on this, later. Feel free to chime in on your earliest comics DNA!