Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (15)--Nearly the Last Exit in Brooklyn

The comic collecting bug is biting me pretty bad. This weekend, I went to a desolate neighborhood in Brooklyn for a warehouse sale advertised by a flyer I found at the last comic show. It was a beautiful sunny day and I ventured down to 36th and Fourth Ave. under the BQE. I wish I could say it was worth it, but all they had was lots of Bronze Age stuff (mid-70s-80s), hardly any Silver. There was an Inferior Five I would have bought, but they wanted $10. It wasn't even bagged or boarded. I did find a box of $2 comics and bought four Four Star Spectaculars. This was a reprint series from 1976 which included four stories from the 1950s. This way I found lots of stories from the Silver Age, mostly Superboys, but also some Wonder Womans, Green Arrows, and an obscure cowboy hero called the Vigilante.

One highlight was a center spread advertising the CBS Saturday morning line-up for 1976. At that point I was a junior in high school and didn't watch as much Sat. morning TV. Interestingly, there were more live action shows at this point like Shazam and Isis. The best cartoons then were the Bugs Bunny reruns. This layout made me think of that annoying child actress Pamelyn Ferdin who played Felix Ungar's daughter on the Odd Couple. She also did the voice of Lucy on several Peanuts cartoons. She had been on one of these live-action Saturday morning shows (Space Academy) and I hated her. Maybe because she was working all the time, but there was something about her that just drove me nuts. But I digress.

I had a Off-Broadway matinee that afternoon, so I left after about an hour with my four-star spectaculars. I read them while eating as chicken sandwich at Burger King on Fourth Ave. In a Superboy story, the Boy of Steel is menaced by space pirates whose costumes contain a special explosive material. If Superboy attacks them, they will blow up Smallville and themselves. Whaddya know, suicide bombers in 1960s comics.

After the matinee--and sighting Andrea Martin on the street at Union Square--I resolved to go to Time Machine and get more comics since the trip to Brooklyn was so unsatisfactory. At Time Machine I found what I thought was a Superboy 88, but upon examination, I discovered someone had taped the cover over an Adventure 276 from 1960. Roger wasn't there but the guy who works with him threw the bizarro comic in for free when I bought another Superboy, three Flashes and two Green Lanterns for only $25. He called this bogus comic a Frankenstein Superboy.

Four Star Spectacular 1, 3, 5,6
Flash 176, 180, 184
Green Lantern 27, 37
Superboy 115

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life (4)--Trading Up

Several months ago I bought 20 old Red Circle comics from ebay because one had art by Jack Kirby. It had a reprint of a series Kirby did called The Fighting American. The other 19 didn't interest me. Strictly second-rate heroes like THUNDER Agents and the Mighty Crusaders from the 1980s without the camp value of the Silver Age books of the same title. I had been meaning to trade the 19 for the longest time. Roger at Time Machine said I should hold onto them because you never knew, they might be worth something someday. But why not just trade them for something I really wanted?

Work has been stressful lately, so I figured I deserved some new comics. I lugged in the Red Circles to Time Machine at lunch. For 19, I netted five Silver Age ones I really wanted--three in lousy shape and two much better--and bought two extras. Roger dumped the Red Circles in his 99 cent bin. I also had a Jetsons which I didn't care about and that was worth $2. My new acquisitions are four Thors from the Silver Age with art work by Kirby and one Flash from the same period featuring the wedding of Barry Allen, Flash's secret identity to Iris West. On their wedding day, the evil Professor Zoom manages to switch places with Flash so that the latter is trapped in a prison cell in the future. The villain is about to marry the unwitting Iris--who doesn't even know her real fiance is a superhero--when Flash runs into the church and kidnaps what appears to be the bridegroom. It all works out in the end, but Barry Allen explains to Iris "It was all a mistake"--that's it, his whole rationale--and she buys it! And this woman is a reporter? Lois Lane would have put all over that story. Barry does tell Iris his big secret several issues later.

Thor is another series I am collecting since it is one of the few Kirby titles I haven't snapped up. Later I went to Midtown Comics. For some reason, they have only Bronze and Copper back issues in their display bins. They save the good stuff for online. But on this occassion I found six or seven Kirby Thors in reasonable condition for $5 each. I bought one. Then a few days later I went back and they were all gone. How frustrating.

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life (3)--Theology and the Mighty Thor

I couldn't help myself. I went back to Time Machine on Fri. while I had some time to kill before taking the train to Hudson for the weekend--BTW, we still haven't caught all the woodchucks and there are so many freakin' deer now they cross Route 9 with impunity in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. But back to Time Machine. The owner Roger was getting ready to close up--it was 7PM and he closes at 7:30PM on Fridays. One of his regular customers was standing by the register and asked if I minded if he smoked. I said no and started going through the back issues. Blondie was singing Call Me on the loudspeaker--it was an 80s mix. The Tide Is High is my favorite. The customer was telling Roger about the days when Deborah Harry was a waitress and he was one of her customers. I found several Mighty Thors which were in deplorable shape, but those are usually the only kind of Silver Age mags I buy. There were also some Flashes with exquisite Carmine Infantino covers and a few nice Curt Swan Actions and Supermans.

I also snapped up an fairly good Strange Adventures--No. 181 with the title Man of Two Worlds, also the title of DC editor Julius Schwartz's skimpy autobio which I had just finished--and a Mystery in Space featuring Ultra, the Multi-Alien with a coupon cut out of the last page. It didn't significiantly decrease the value since it did not interfere with the story. Anyway, the Flashes were like $10 each and I was not going to spend more than around $20. The beat-up Mighty Thors came in for $3 each, with the Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures, the total was $23. I decided to forgo the Flashes, Action, and Superman as too expensive.

All the Thors were drawn by Jack Kirby, king of the comics, and the artist whose work I collect the most passionately. All were from 1967-68 when I was eight and nine. I didn't have these particular issues in my collection then, but some around the same date. In one storyline, Thor loses his god-like powers, except his super-strength, and joins a circus as a strongman. Little does he suspect the evil ringmaster plans to hypnotize him into stealing a fabulously priceless and heavy golden bull. I guess it was the circus strongman angle that attracted my burgeoning gay sensibilities.

Thor # 150 had a detached, ragged front and back cover, but a beautifully detailed rendering by Kirby of Hella, the Goddess of Death, looking like a creation of Christian from Project: Runway with a fantastic flowing cape and amazing mask and headpiece, shooting out in all directions, in dark green. The original owner of this Thor #147 had taken a pen and made Thor blackish-blue and drawn lines in the title letters. There was a stamp on the cover--Oct. 23, 1967. It made me wonder who bought it on that date and how did it get to this shop on 14th Street?

I haven't read all of them, but interesting questions are raised by Thor's deity-hood and that of his father Odin. Were Stan Lee and Jack Kirby saying the Norse Gods were the real creators of the universe and our Christain theology was a myth (at least within the parallel comic universe where Thor was real). Odin is often called All-Father and his home Asgard is referred to as the realm eternal. Odin is all powerful and in Thor #145, he rails like the Old Testament deity--"Odin is a vengeful liege...Odin is an angry liege...Odin is now and forever, supreme! And woe to him who strays from righteousness." But Hercules also makes frequent appearances as does his father Zeus. Who would win in a fight Zeus or Odin. Kirby takes up the mythos again in his series for Marvel The Eternals, with comparable figures of an all-father and a rebellious super-powered son. This theological discussion was debated in the letter pages of Marvel comics. I will have to do more study on this. Maybe I should go on that NPR show, Speaking of Faith.

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life (2)--Sunday Funnies

Today is new comic book day, so I go into Forbidden Planet to check out the new goods. DC Comics has come out with an entirely new series I absolutely love which is in the form of a Sunday newspaper comic section like what we used to call the funnies. Remember those? This features epic 14 X 20 inch story pages of Superman, Batman, Kamandi (I have almost all of the Jack Kirby originals), Hawkman, Deadman, Green Lantern, Metamorpho, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Metal Men, Flash, Sgt. Rock, Teen Titans, Adam Strange, and the Demon teamed with Catwoman. Best of all, Metamorpho the Elemental Man is drawn by my absolute favorite artist Mike Allred--who has a cool retro sensibility--he's the guy who does Madman, which will conclude its current series next month from Image Comics. And this Metamorpho strip is written by Neil Gaiman (Geeky enough for yez?)

This will be a weekly series from DC for 12 weeks. Wow! I can collect them all! I remember the funnies used to be my favorite part of the newspaper. Saturday nights my dad used to drive us to this general store-sort of Wawa place to get the Sunday paper. We would go after dinner and get ice cream and pick up the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was a weekly ritual, I remember sitting with him in the front seat and my sister in the back. We'd go in the store and pick up this enormous newspaper with the colorful funnies wrapped around the front. Sometimes if I had enough allowance money left--I got 25 cents a week--I would buy the latest Action Comics with Superman AND the Legion of Super-Heroes. So it had to be the early 70s, when the Legion was no longer the only feature in Adventure Comics, but had been relegated to second-class status behind the Man of Steel in Action.

I haven't read all of the comics yet, but I love the Green Lantern which has a real cool early 60s vibe like The New Frontier, a graphic novel series I've been meaning to read.

I also picked up issue 5 of the Marvel adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for my friend Lydia who is a Jane Austen fan.