Comic Book Memories

Although I've read comics for as long as I can remember, I was actually fairly late to being a comics buyer. It wasn't until I was 11 years old that I started actively saving my allowance and making regular trips to someplace that sold the things -- first the Waldenbooks in Lakeforest Mall, then later Collector's World in Quince Orchard Plaza. The malls are still there, though those two stores are long gone.

Prior to that point, my comics collection grew in fits and starts. I'd wheedle a comic or two out of my parents when we'd take long car trips, and I remember the Sears Wishbook sold a set of 3 dozen or so comics; my parents got me that for Channukah one year. And, of course, any time I did happen to have some money in my pocket when we happened to wander by some place that sold comics, I would get one. But at a certain point, something clicked in my head and I realized I didn't have to wait for my path to cross a comic before I could buy one: I could set my own path.

The Transformers were the immediate impetus for my revelation. Like all 11-year-old boys in that place and time, I was totally into them, so when I saw that they had a comic, it was a no-brainer. But there were more comics than just the Transformers.

I remember being in that Waldenbooks with some outrageous sum of money (probably $5) and figuring out which comics I was going to buy. This was serious business; whatever I buy this month, I will probably want to buy the next month, and the following, and so on.

I don't remember everything I purchased that day, but the three comics pictured above were -- I think -- all among them. At any rate, I know I bought all three about that time.

The Transformers I kept reading all the way until the end ("#80 in a 4-issue limtied series"), even when it got really, really bad (no offense to Bob Budiansky, but the title really floundered after the first 2 or 3 years right up until they brought Simon Furman over from England to shake things up).

Thor 362 was a watershed comic -- this is where Skurge the Executioner makes his famous stand on Gjallerbru Bridge, holding off the very hordes of hell so that Thor may escape with the souls he has rescued from Midgard. Walt Simonson's run on Thor is one of my favorite runs ever, and this issue is a high point. But my 11-year-old self didn't care for it, and I think it was years before I picked up another issue of Thor. As an aside, I remember being similarly unimpressed with the Miller Daredevil -- issue 188, with Black Widow battling the Hand as Daredevil fights for his sanity in an isolation tank -- that I picked up on a car trip a few years prior. If I ever build a time machine, the first thing I'm going to do is go back and slap some sense into me.

The good news is that I wasn't completely oblivious to talent. Marvel Tales was, at that time, reprinting the first 50 issues of Spider-Man in order. I picked up the reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #43, and to this day, John Romita's first year or so on the title -- from the time he took over with issue #39 to finish out the Green Goblin unmasked story up through "Spider-Man no more" in issue #50 -- is my definitive Spider-Man. This is the issue that set me down the path of being a heretic who prefers Jazzy John to Sturdy Steve.

Posted by Jason Fliegel at May 2, 2008 11:23 AM