Bought a comic book for 10 cents, then grandma didn't like it. I recall standing in front of the burn barrel (remember those?) with her chanting, "burn it," to a very reluctant me. In it went, eventually. I still remember the subject of the comic (very benign) due to all the drama over it.
Our parents encouraged us to buy comic books cause it meant we were reading. Eventually, though, my mother would drag stacks of comics out of the closet and throw them away. I still have 2 burn barrels next to my workshop. And 5 big boxes of comic books on a shelf in the workshop. Remember Superman #75, "The Death of Superman"? I have 10 of them.
ReplyDeleteI'm with ghostsniper. My parents were happy that I was reading. There was a little corner store where I bought mine. The owner would get month old copies that had half the front cover torn off and sell them for $.05, which was half price. I also ended up buying two, big cardboard boxes full from one of the older kids in the neighborhood for a buck. Ah, the good, old days.......
ReplyDeleteMy "supplier" used to give us the old comics at the start of a new month. The name of the comic on the cover was always cut off. I asked him about it and he told me the comics were guaranteed sale. At the end of the month the route driver would pick up the clipped titles from any unsold comics and credit his account.
DeleteHe said nobody wanted the piles of old one.
Probably take a few piles of those old ones now.
Back in the early 50's I had lots of pre-"comic code of approval". Good G.I. WW-II and Korea comics with blood and gore.
ReplyDeleteDidn't read comic books, did some MAD mag though.
ReplyDeleteR Crumb- way cool
ReplyDeleteI owned a 1970 Kenworth cabover that had a big pic of R Crumb's "Mr. Natural" captioned "Just Passin' Thru" on both sides of the bunk.
ReplyDeleteWay way way cool!
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/498562621224244382/
An old friend from high school contacted me (fifty years later), and told me that while hauling his comic book collection down to the dealer for sale he came across a box of my comics that somehow he still had. "Did I want him to sell them with the rest of his stuff?".
ReplyDeleteSure, I had too much junk in the house as it was.
I got a check for about $2,100. And those were the 'reading copies'. The 'Collection/Never Read' comics had gone up in the house fire in 2004.
That was my first thought, the value of the burn pile.
DeleteAlong with a lot of light weight comics, I read all the Classics Illustrated, which instilled a life long love of classic literature. They should bring those back.
ReplyDeleteAlong with a lot of light weight comics, I read all the Classics Illustrated, which instilled a life long love of classic literature. They should bring those back.
ReplyDeleteYou can get Manga Illustrated classics these days. They're pretty good!
DeleteI'm almost 75. I think of all the Mickey Mantle rookie baseball cards that ended up in the spokes of my bike. My father was the comic book freak. I imagine we'd have a mansion someplace if we had all of the ones he bought back in the 50's.
ReplyDeleteMy dad used to distribute comics and I had a Spiderman No. 1. Who knew.
ReplyDeleteI also have a lot of early 70's underground comix in the safe..Furry Freak Brothers and a lot of others. Maybe someday...
My parents would only let us get the Gold Key Classics and Disney comics. Then they all got tossed when we came back from overseas, because Mom didn't think they were important enough to count against the household weight allowance.
ReplyDeleteIn 1975, when I was stationed near San Francisco, I helped a high school friend complete her collection by sending her a copy of Submariner #1 that I found in Berkeley, at a store called the Federation Trading Post. I remember they had a life-sized cutout of Mr. Spock by the door, and also sold still photos and other memorabilia from Star Trek as well as comic books.
I could read any comic book I wanted to, but it was "MAD" magazine that Daddy strongly disapproved of, as being nothing but trash.
ReplyDeleteEach Christmas and each birthday, us kids would get books, including "HARDY BOYS" and "NANCY DREW" mysteries, plus we had a complete collection of the Junior Classics novels (i.e., NOT the comic books version), and each week, our family would visit the Post Library at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to check out and exchange books.