Me and Comics (Part 1)

I've been reading comics, off and on, for a lot of years. My first memory of comics was probably when I was about six years old, living in San Jose, California, before my folks divorced. I can recall asking my father to read me one. Where it came from, I don't know, as I clearly wasn't buying them then (and he certainly wasn't). I remember it was a Batman one. I was a Batman fan from watching the Adam West Batman series on TV in the afternoons (anyone else old enough to remember watching it as a kid and having no idea it was meant to be camp?). I just remember the tale in the comic had either Batman or Robin getting rather violently knocked out and kidnapped. And then there was an automated motorcycle involved, with a recording, I think, that told either Batman or Robin that they had to get on it and let it take them to wherever it was the mysterious bad guy wanted them to go. I also remember my father getting uncomfortable and stopping and feeling the story was a little too dark and violent for me. I think it might have been some kind of anthology book, because I think he switched over to a Plastic Man story instead.

I don't think it was until about second and/or third grade that I started getting comics again. By this time I was living in Auburn, California. My folks had split, and we were living with what I would come to know as stepfather #1. And we were poor. REAL poor. Not sure where Mom came up with the change for my sister and I to occasionally buy comics, but when I got some of that cash, that's what I wanted. There was a little super-hero stuff in there. I recall some Fantastic Four now and again. And I remember having a couple of issues of the Invaders, that cool WWII comic with Captain America and his patriotic pals (this was the first place I really heard about Nazis, apparently, because I remember reading these and thinking it was pronounced "Nazzy"...as in Cap saying "Get back, "Nazzy" rat!" By the way, wasn't that an Elton John song?). But my interests were more aligned with the happenings at Riverdale High, and the lives of Archie and his pals. With them, but, more importantly, with Richie Rich.

See, being dirt poor and living a pretty stressful childhood, having an outlet to escape to a world where a kid could live in a big mansion with a butler and have a $100,000 a week allowance was exactly what I needed. I grabbed new Richie Rich issues whenever I could, either at the supermarket carousel or at the stand at the pharmacy across the street from the laundromat we used (sometimes I'd get lucky enough to find enough dropped change under the machines to run over and buy one). When reading those, I didn't have to be some poor kid struggling through the Jimmy Carter economy and living off food stamps, and living IN a small trailer (or, for one summer, the back seat of a yellow Ford Galaxy 500 parked next to the trailer). That Poor Little Rich Kid (tm) with his really big head was my way, at least in my daydreams, out of that. And there were a lot of his adventures to choose from. I just did a quick bit of web search and found out that at one point during the 70s (which would have been when I was reading), Richie Rich was starring in 32 different titles every two months. Man, no wonder I never ran out of new ones to buy.

But as time went by (and we got less poor), my fancy turned to super-heroes. During the 5th and 6th grades I'd moved to Sacramento, and my trips to the local 7-11 near our duplex to get comics became hunts for Iron Man, Avengers, Shogun Warriors and Micronauts issues. I was a Marvel boy all the way. Never bought any D.C. And though I met Tim in the 5th grade at the small school I would end up attending until high school graduation, we didn't become friends until the 6th, and when we did, we discovered our shared love of comics. And many of the same comics, too. He was an even bigger fan of Iron Man than I was, and he introduced me to other comics like Moon Knight.

During this time I made an unimaginable discovery. That is, my sister did. One day she came back from a trip to our local mall, Birdcage Walk, with my mother, and she came in the door and told me she'd found a store--a whole store--that sold nothing but comics. I was stunned, and, frankly, didn't really believe her. How could such a thing be possible outside my nerdy imagination? Comics were things shoved in a corner in a spinning rack. You couldn't have a whole STORE that sold just comics. It just didn't match up with reality as I knew it.

But soon, I made the trip myself and found out that she hadn't been cruelly pulling my leg. I found Comics & Comix, my first comic book store. Approaching the store told the truth--in its display window were lines of comics, big cardboard stand-ups of super-heroes, and even super-hero tee shirts. I walked (in a daze) inside. If the place still existed today, and if I were to go back there, I'm sure I'd think it was quite small. But to me, then, it was huge. And there were aisles (if you call "aisles" just segmented rows of long racks) of comics. New comics, old comics. Comics I'd never heard of. And there were people in there shopping. Not just kids. Teenagers. Adults. All buying comic books! What alternate universe had I fallen into?!

I'll always remember that first day there, and what I bought--Iron Man #138, and Avengers #200. I specifically remember the Avengers issue because I had gotten #199 on the 7-11 rack, and then it skipped right to #201 next time I went back. I hadn't gotten to read #200, and it turns out it was because it was an oversized issue that apparently was too much trouble to have in the rack. And in looking around, I found that this place sold BACK ISSUES. Up until then, I thought that if you missed an issue at the store, it was gone forever. Not long after that I scraped together a whole $1.50 and bought Shogun Warriors #1. I remember the price so well because the geniuses at Comics & Comix made their pricing simple by opening the comic up and writing the back issue price, in pencil, on the first page, upper-right-hand corner. Guess this was right before the collectible craze really kicked in, as not too long after, anyone who knew anything about comics knew you could be shot for doing such a thing to a back issue.

I definitely became a regular at Comics & Comix from then on. And they had this great new idea, too, called the "comic saver". You could actually tell them which comics you wanted each month, and they'd pull them for you and keep them behind the counter until you came to get them. That way, if you couldn't talk your mom into driving you there again for a while, your precious Captain America & The Falcon issues wouldn't sell out on you. And all my stuff was Marvel throughout junior high and into high school. That DC stuff? No interest. Marvel was COOL. And it got much, much cooler when, after discovering them in a Rom: Spaceknight crossover story, I decided to check out these interesting-looking X-Men. I turns out I jumped in right about the time when everyone else did. I fell in love with Marvel's mutants, just as John Byrne left the book and Dave Cockrum returned, and Chris Claremont's writing drew me and so many thousands of others in. It was the beginning of the age of the X. This was a time when, on Wednesday mornings (the day new comics arrived), people would literally be lined up outside waiting for the store to open, just to get that latest X-Men issue the day it came out. This was also back when there was only ONE X-Men book (imagine such a thing!), but that was not to last for long.

My collection started to grow. As did Tim's. And we also found other friends in school into comics as well. We even formed something, our freshman year (shoot me now) called the Sacramento Marvelite Association. We each had cards (yes, I was a card-carrying loser...) with a drawing (by Tim) of our favorite Marvel character (Hawkeye, from the Avengers, was on mine) and our name. We collected dues from the whopping six of us involved. And we used that to buy ourselves an Overstreet Comic Buyers Guide, the big book that came out at regular intervals (this being an age way before the internet) that told you how much your comics were worth. So we all had our collections, and knew how much each of our books was worth. But more importantly, we had a hobby in common, and a small group of friends with which to share our feelings about our favorite comic characters and their tales. Our favorite MARVEL characters, of course. I still recall when Marvel released the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, a 12-issue series (and I think #13 was added as the "Book of the Dead", if I'm remembering right) that, in alphabetical order, gave us comic fans bio write-ups of every single hero and villain in the Marvel Universe. We knew that thing inside and out by the end. We were Marvel scholars. No longer having to debate such matters, we now KNEW who the strongest character in the Marvel Universe was (as the M.U. write-ups told you, among many other things, how much each character could lift). And knowing so much about Marvel, we of course wanted to keep up with everything going on in Marvel, so we managed to buy just about everything new that the company put out. Most every series, every mini-series (no matter how bad), every one-shot. "Make Mine Marvel"? You bet your ASS.

But as I said, my very first comic book memory involved a D.C. comic. And history does have a way of coming back around on you. D.C.'s second chance at me was coming, and coming soon. And all because of a guy named George Perez.

(TO BE CONTINUED, TRUE BELIEVER!)