With summer tentatively scheduled to arrive next week, let's set up a stack of old comic books, grab an ice-cold glass of lemonade...and then remember to place the lemonade way, way far from the comic books. Accidents will happen.
Sure, diggin' comic books is a year-round thing for me, then and now. But when I was a schoolkid in the '60s and '70s, there was something extra-special about reading comics in June, July, and August, unfettered by the silly responsibilities of homework. I stocked up on comics for vacations (a subject embraced in a previous Comic Book Cover Gallery), but I also read 'em in my back yard, sprawled on a deck chair, a fresh supply of funnybooks funded by quarters earned mowing lawns.
Even better: Summers were the domain of DC Comics' annual Justice League-Justice Society. I looked forward to that event like a little kid counting down sleeps to Christmas Day. In the words of a guy associated with a different comics publisher: 'Nuff said.
So here's a selection of some comics I enjoyed during some summer months circa 1966-1977. Not everything here was necessarily published in summer, but I have memories that associate each and every one of 'em with that time of year (like the 1965 issue of Superman I read over and over while staying at my grandparents' house in Missouri in 1966). The only one pictured that I never owned is the little Aurora Comic Scenes book starring Batman, which belonged to my cousin (who did let me keep his Lone Ranger Aurora book).
I started college in August of '77, and while I continued buying and reading comics into my freshman year, I stopped before the summer of '78. I graduated in 1980, and resumed buying comics almost immediately thereafter.
But today's gallery is all about comics I devoured in between school years, when I was a lad unburdened by great power or great responsibility. Lemonade at the ready, perched at a safe distance. Take me to Earth-Two, man. The summer's here and the time is right. Up. Up. AWAY!
(As always, images courtesy of The Grand Comics Database, which is grand indeed.)
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