Graphic Story, Part 1

Warmer still, and the rain's on its way, they say. 
I got into comics like every other American boy, when I was 12. That's when my friends started suddenly raving about their new comic book faves, acting as though they'd been fans for years. Waving the colored little pulp mags in my face, like, "Look what I have, and you can't get one now!" Sure enough, when I walked by the local newsstand-record-and-book store in my little hometown, the comic rack was right in the front window. And all the Spider-man and Fantastic Four issues were always gone by the time I got there. Nobody bought Captain America/Iron Man, though. Or DC titles like The Flash. There was no point looking at Superman or Batman in those days. TV series and years of market domination left those titles aimed at audiences even younger than 12. Well, that's what we told ourselves, anyway. The high school kids were getting the FF and Spideys, in those days, so reading one as a sixth-grader was considered advanced, at least by us. My friends were getting their copies from sources they never revealed. Neither had older siblings, so that remains a mystery.
Anyway, Flash had story lines by two greats: Julius Schwartz on story and art by Carmine Infantino. So it was well worth the read. Plus, the myth of Mercury has worldwide appeal, so it was a good title, as long as those two titans of the comics world were doing it. Cap and Iron Man shared a comic book, and they were straight-ahead comic book stories that lacked the hip appeal of Marvel's first line, but they were good enough for me. King Kirby did Cap's art, and Gene Colan did Iron Man. I loved those titles, partly because they were all I could get my hands on that weren't silly to me. Oh, yeah, Hulk sold out, too, but that title never appealed to me. I don't know why.
Later, I learned (after interrogating one of my friends) of a old fashioned grocery store up the road a ways that sold "reader's copies" -- in other words, they were reselling used back issues. The store was on the way to my Grandma's (the other one, my mother's mother), but not one my mother ever wanted to stop at, for some reason. But I begged and begged, and actually got an hour in the store as my 13th birthday present. That's where somebody had left battered copies of Spider-Man at Ditko's peak. I would take them home and read them like they were writ in gold. They were just gems. I couldn't believe I even held them in my hands, much less owned them. Something like that stays with a guy.
But I grew up, discovered girls, and forgot comics entirely in high school. And by then FF and Spidey had lost their luster, with the departure of Kirby and Ditko as artists, so they weren't hip anymore. Also by then, I'd taken up reading adventure stories, with Doc Savage and Tarzan (Ballantine had reprinted all of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classics -- I must have read a half-dozen or more). Conan the Barbarian had covers too racy for my parents to tolerate, so I let the "cool guys" have those (but I stared at the tiny cover art by Frazetta, totally obsessed, when no one was looking). As luck would have it, Ballentine published a Burroughs bio* and retrospective of his work in mass-market paperback when I was a high school wage earner. It had Frazetta ink drawings all through it, and I think I "read" the binding off that one!
By college, I dormed with a guy who was a local to the campus area, and he had a car! He knew where to get the records and mags in the nearest town (the campus was rural), and that's where I tasted being a 'fanboy". Barry Windsor-Smith had brought out a "book-length" Conan in black and white, around that time. I loved it, as a college kid would, somewhat dispassionately. Frankly, I'd found music a much better source of pleasure (see previous posts), and I stunned my college friends by using spending money for Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East, instead of rather sick Vampirella titles (I bought a couple to try and fit in. Great art, but disgustingly cynical stories, at least to my taste.) My cool jazz and "middle period" Joni Mitchell records (For the Roses, Hejira etc.) were always getting borrowed by guys who hated the music, but used them to try and seduce their dates. At least for a year or so, before the girls figured out what came next after Joni or Miles. (That's where the Free Jazz record mentioned a few posts back went for -- revenge. As if it was my fault! No, I didn't try the technique myself. I'd found a girlfriend, who told me flat out it was creepy to lend records, knowing what they would be used for. You figure out the rest what happened to my poor Ornette disc!) Oh, well.

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*The Burroughs bio is Master of Adventure by Richard A. Lupoff. It is now published by Bison, with a new forward by Michael Moorcock. The Bison Frontiers of Imagination series is a collection of sci-fi/adventure classics.


LJ orig.: 11/06/06