Except for a brief pause when I was in college, I have been buying comic books since I was six years old in 1966. Over 55 years! I'd read comic books before that--older siblings, don'tcha know, armed with issues of Metal Men, Tales To Astonish, Our Army At War, Superman, and an 80-Page Giant starring Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane--but in '66 the Batman TV series inspired an obsession with superheroes, an obsession I've never seen any need to outgrow. And that interest manifested in a need to own superhero comic books.
As a kid in the '60s, my "buying" of comic books generally meant I would pick a four-color prize off the spinner rack and either Mom or Dad would supply the twelve cents necessary to complete the transaction. The earliest specific purchase I can identify is Batman # 184, plucked from the rack at a grocery store in Aurora, Missouri while on vacation in the summer of '66. Tales To Astonish # 84 followed in short order, located and acquired at (I think) a feed store in Verona, MO, with a copy of Superboy # 132 purchased in there somewhere, from the same store that sold us the above-mentioned Batman. It's possible I got the Superboy before I got the Batman. Six-year-old me was less than exhaustive in keeping records of this stuff. Slacker.
I don't know if these were my first comics purchases--and, as noted, they definitely weren't my first comic books--but they are the first two I can ID with certainty as books I selected myself. (My 1966 Signet Batman paperback may have been my first comic book purchase, though it wasn't technically a comic book. I scored that one at either Switz's variety store or J.M. Fields department store back home in North Syracuse, NY, presumably prior to the summer visit to grandparents in Missouri. Unless it was after that, in which case it wasn't first. Damn my record-keeping skills at six!)
In North Syracuse, my go-to purveyor of funnybooks was Sweethearts Corner on Route 11. A (very) partial list of comics I got at Sweetheart includes Justice League Of America # 55-56, Fantastic Four # 73, Not Brand Echh # 4, The Spectre # 1, The Avengers # 42, Judo Master # 96, Teen Titans # 11, X-Men # 36, World's Finest Comics # 162, Wonder Woman # 175, Inferior 5 #1, Doom Patrol # 115, Metamorpho # 15, Spyman # 1, Green Lantern # 57, House Of Mystery # 173, and JLA # 61 (with "Operation: Jail The Justice League!"). My Aunt Rose bought me a copy of JLA # 57 at a drugstore in Liverpool, the next suburb over from North Syracuse. Every grocery store, drugstore, or other retail outlet with comics on display became a destination for me to increase my stash o' treasures. Adventure Comics # 368. The Amazing Spider-Man # 48. Action Comics # 356. Aquaman # 30. Dell Comics' oddball Super Heroes # 4. A three-pack of King Comics titles at Clancy's Silver Star. MORE!
A cover-compromised copy of Superboy # 129 (my favorite individual issue of any comic book when I was a kid) was my introduction to coverless comic books (and yet another possible candidate for my first comic book). Many, many more examples of such contraband would follow. In the late '60s and well into the '70s, and even the '80s, I grabbed these illegal, discounted comics as often as I could, with VanPatten's Grocery in North Syracuse my biggest supplier.
Summers were a fantastic time for kids who loved comics. The annual team-ups of the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America were obvious highlights. A 1967 trip to Vermont netted me World's Finest Comics # 168. Before traveling (usually to Missouri again), Mom and Dad would let me pick out a stack of new comics to read on the trip. During an extended time away from Syracuse in the summer of 1968, that same Missouri grocery store took in my 12- and 25-cent payments in exchange for Marvel Super Heroes # 15-16, Not Brand Echh # 10, Avengers # 56, Avengers King-Size Special # 2, Sub-Mariner # 7, Superman # 207, and DC Special # 1. Extending the '68 vacation's route to a California visit, I picked up Adventure Comics # 384 and Aquaman # 41, the latter over the objections of a female second- or third-cousin who didn't want me to buy a comic book in her presence. (This was an early step in my long history of being occasionally puzzled by the opposite sex. And by, y'know, people. Of any gender.)
Throughout the '60s and '70s, summer vacations offered a seemingly endless bounty of comic book purchases, from Astonishing Tales # 2 and a giant-sized issue of The Brave And The Bold in Florida in 1970 through Show-Me State acquisitions of Secret Origins # 5, JLA # 107, and...it's a long list. A rest stop at the Greyhound station in Cleveland got me Marvel Feature # 1, the first official appearance of the Defenders. The Springfield, MO bus depot provided DC's The Shadow # 1. I loved 'em all.
Other than trades with comics-collecting pals, and a bounty of tattered '60s books passed on to me from my sister's boyfriend, I don't remember the what or where of my first back issue purchases. Mighta been at the flea market in Syracuse, or at North Syracuse's wonderful World Of Books. I was an old hand at back issues by the time I got to the Super DC Con in New York City in 1976. Among other dealers'-room transactions at Super DC Con, I picked up Funnyman # 5, which was one of the oldest complete (i.e., not coverless) comic books in my collection at the time. I still have that one.
Throughout all of this, I continued to buy both new and coverless comics at various stores in the Syracuse area. Page counts varied, prices increased. The familiar 12-cent cost became 15 cents by the end of the '60s. 15 cents became 25 cents, then slid down to 20 cents before resuming the 25-cent level. Onward and upward. DC had 100-Page Super Spectaculars for 50 cents, later for 60 cents, before that format collapsed.
I kept on buying comics through high school, and into my freshman year of college in 1977-78. Writer Steve Englehart's run on Batman in Detective Comics # 469-476 (which I purchased in installments at Gold Star Pharmacy in North Syracuse and at Liftbridge Bookstore in my college town of Brockport, NY) knocked me out, but it spoiled me for everything that came after that. I hadn't outgrown comic books. I had just moved on.
I came back to comics after graduating in 1980. It wasn't an immediate resumption of superdoer fandom, but I'd retained my interest in superheroes (manifested in exulting in Christopher Reeve's portrayal of Superman on screen). I stayed in Brockport for a couple of years after attaching the B.A. to my name, and I started visiting a new local store called Comic Book Heaven, "Where Fantasy Reigns But You Never Get Wet." Frank Miller's work on Daredevil and Marv Wolfman and George Perez's revival of The New Teen Titans hooked me anew, and I've been buying my comic books again ever since.
Living in Buffalo from 1982 to 1987, I was within walking distance of the fabulous Queen City Bookstore, where I regularly stocked up on new issues, and scored a ton of coverless and/or crappy condition '60s DCs out of the bulk bin. Returning to Syracuse in '87, I became a regular patron of Twilight Book And Game Emporium, owned by Bob Gray, one of my old comics-trading pals from the early '70s. When Twilight closed at the turn of the century, I switched to Comix Zone in North Syracuse. I pick up new comics at Comix Zone every week.
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| A few recent acquisitions from Comix Zone. |
What do I buy at Comix Zone? Well! My current pull list includes all of the AHOY Comics titles, plus Batman, The Amazing Spider-Man, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Superman, Justice League, Action Comics, Detective Comics, The Other History Of The DC Universe, Money Shot, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four Life Story, Groo Meets Tarzan, The Marvels, Checkmate, Shazam!, Superman Batman, Amazing Fantasy, Infinite Frontier, and more. I'm way behind in reading them--I have two very tall stacks of comics awaiting my attention--but I keep getting them, and I enjoy most of them.
I rarely buy comics from any resource other than Comix Zone. Other than the (very) occasional eBay purchase, the only notable recent exception was when DC published a line of 100-page comic books for sale exclusively at Wal-Mart. Hadda have some of those, and it was kind of a kick to buy comic books from a mass-market retailer, just like when I plucked comics off the rack at Sweetheart in the '60s and '70s...
...or grabbed an 80-Page Giant (featuring Tales Of The Bizarro World) at the grocery store in Aurora in 1968...
...or snapped up The Brave And The Bold # 78 at a Piggly Wiggly in Kansas...
...and The Brave And The Bold # 91 (featuring artist Nick Cardy's absolutely gorgeous rendition of the Black Canary) at the GEM store (Government Employees' Market) in Syracuse...
...or discovered the Golden Age Plastic Man via DC Special # 15 at a drugstore in the Northern Lights shopping center...
...or badgered Mom to take me to Carl's Drugs in Liverpool, for the specific drugs this Carl craved, like Adventure Comics # 428...
...or bought the sultry Vampirella (while also sneaking peeks at Penthouse) at White-Modell...
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| I actually got this one at World Of Books, but...close enough! |
...or E-Man # 10 at a pit stop in Arkansas...
...or The Joker # 1 and an issue of Charlton Comics' Yang at a convenience store in Clifton Park, NY...
...or Shazam! # 1 and Howard The Duck # 1, both hoarded by deluded speculators across the country, both purchased by me off the rack, both at Gold Star Pharmacy, the former in 1972 (when Gold Star was still Henry & Hines) and the latter in 1976. Speculation? Comic books are for reading and cherishing, you fools...
...or Detective Comics # 438 from the literal stack of Detective Comics # 438s at Two Guys department store...
...or Doctor Strange # 50, with art by Steve Englehart's former Detective Comics collaborator Marshall Rogers, discovered at a candy shop on Victory Boulevard while visiting my girlfriend on Staten Island...
...or my truly crappy-condition Batman # 100, courtesy of an antique shop in Brockport.
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| This image shows a comic book in much better shape than the copy I own. |
The comic books of my life. The Wal-Mart books sure looked cool, too, and they were part of that decades-long tapestry of colorful, action-packed wonder.
I'm not a collector anymore. If I don't like a book, I stop buying it, and I often get rid of a comic book after I've read it. I'm a fan. I still have some of the books I bought as a kid, for 12 cents or 25 cents or whatever. The prices are a little higher now; they start at $3.99 to $4.99 and go up from there, though some retailers (including Comix Zone) offer discounts for subscribers. It's okay. You can't assign a value to dreams, and comic books remain the stuff that dreams are made of. Screw the Maltese Falcon. Gimme my comic books.
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