My love for comic books began in a hospital. You'd never know to look at me now but when
I was young I was a small and sickly child.
I was born prematurely, weighing in at just over five pounds. I tended to get sick easily.
At five years old I developed a severe case of
dehydration. As a result I was put in
the children's ward for two weeks at St. Joseph's Hospital in Pontiac,
Michigan.
Children wards back in the 1950s usually consisted of about
a half dozen small beds in a single room.
Children who were sick, for various reasons, shared the rooms. The nursing staff would make frequent
visits, checking on each child.
I remember my hospital visit vividly. Those who were sick, but not operated on,
were placed in rooms shared with children who had their tonsils or appendix
out. Back then a tonsillectomy required
children to stay in a hospital for at least a week and their recovery was not
always a pleasant one. Children
coughed, their throats bled and they seemed to constantly cry.
I was one of the fortunate ones in that my bed was tucked
away in a corner. I had very little
contact with the other children except when I started to recover and was
allowed to play in the hallway-usually wheelchair races!
My mother would faithfully visit me each day. We lived 20 plus miles away in the small
town of Milford, Michigan.
Mom would
hitch a ride with my older half-brother Dallas who worked at Pontiac Motors,
who dropped her off at General Hospital in downtown Pontiac. From there she would take a bus to St.
Joseph's on the north end of town.
In order to kill time before the bus would arrive she would
stop at the local Salvation Army and Good Will stores to look through clothing
and other items and to buy me some reading material-comic books!
Both stores had large vertical racks that were stuffed with
hundreds of comic books dating back to the Golden Age. My mom would buy me two dollars worth of
comic books at two for five cents about twice a week.
Because she was unsure of what I liked she would purchase a
hodgepodge of titles ranging from funny animals to superheroes comic
books. Little did she realize she
created a whole new addiction for me-comic books.
My favorites were Harvey Comics with Casper The Friendly Ghost,
Spooky, Wendy The Good Little Witch, Dot, Little Lulu, Baby Huey and the
like. Following close behind were
Batman, Superman, Strange Tales and a smattering of war and monster
comics.
Occasionally a propaganda filled WWII comic book was thrown
in for good measure. Often they would
depict the Japanese as fanged or buck tooth caricatures and the Nazi as savage,
disfigured monsters.
A Japanese grade
school friend of mine, Ben, loved them for some reason-especially the funny-looking
Japanese soldiers. Go figure.
During the summer I would go with my mom twice a week back
to the hospital for her allergy treatments.
We'd always stop at the Goodwill and Salvation army stores, she would
shop, I would pick out a few comic books and we would be on our way.
While my mother got her treatment I would sit in the waiting
room content to read my latest stash of comics. Several months later I was back in the hospital, this time for
tonsillitis. I was one of the fortunate
few who recovered quickly from the operation with little pain.
Once again my family would supply me with a steady stream of
comic books further feeding my addiction.
Once back home and in school I shared my hobby with other kids, swamping
issues and regaling each other with the cool adventures in the various titles.
When summer rolled around, I fell back into the twice a week
regiment of accompanying my mom to the hospital. Only this time something happened that would radically affect the
type of comic books I would read from then on.
It was 1961. I was eight. After shopping at the Salvation Army we were
walking to the Goodwill store. Along
the way there was a magazine street vendor. Hanging on the side of his portable
magazine kiosk was a rack containing comic books. Needless to say, I had to take a look.
On the lower part of the rack, tucked behind a DC title was
a strange comic book. On its cover was
a quartet of people who obviously had super powers but they were not wearing
costumes!
I was intrigued.
Even more startling was the fact that one of them appeared to be a large
orange monster. They were battling a
large green creature which had broken through a city street. The title, of course, was the Fantastic Four
#1.
Little did I realize at the time
that that one comic book would profoundly affect me for the rest of my life.
Up until that point I had never bought a new comic
book. I was enamored with the Fantastic
Four comic and dug a dime out of my pocket and paid the vendor. I rolled up the comic and put it in my back
pocket.
Right about now comic book
collectors are repressing a group chill.
Folding a comic book!?
Especially one as valuable as Fantastic Four #1!? Were you nuts!?
You have to realize that back in the 1950s and early 1960s
comic books were a disposable form of entertainment. No one realized at the time that a simple comic book, priced at
10 cents, would become a valuable collectible.
We continued onto the Goodwill store when I bought a few
more titles with my allowance. But, my
mind could not get off of the new comic book I had bought.
We arrived at the hospital after taking the bus and as my
mother received her treatments I unrolled the comic book and began to read it!
Wait a minute! These
so called heroes argued with each other!
In fact one of them resented having super powers! It boggled my young mind. Superheroes are supposed to like each
other! They never argue. And the Thing
doesn't like being the Thing!? What kind
of comic book is this!?
I had to see more of this strange phenomenon. And I did.
Over the following two years I began to pick up all of the fledgling
Marvel Comics titles. Still the
Fantastic Four was my favorite, followed by Spider-Man. For the next few years my stable of comic
books consisted of mainly Marvel Comics, although I still enjoyed other titles. but not as much as Marvel's
During the summer my mother and I would visit my Aunt
Esther's farm in Kentucky beginning when I was around eight years old.
We would usually spend about a month at my Aunt's farm. This went on until I was in my early teens.
While on our Greyhound trip to visit my aunt we would stop off at my Aunt
Dorothy's home in Dayton Ohio. Down the
street was a small grocery and, you guessed it, there were comic books!
Our trips from Michigan would start at the Greyhound station
in Pontiac where my brother would drop us off on his way to work. From there we would catch a bus to Detroit
to the main Greyhound terminal. Our
stopover was usually two to three hours.
I would walk around the terminal and frequent the pay phones
every few minutes. There was a whole
bank of them and by monitoring the callers I would check the phones just used
and pick up any spare change left over from calls.
By the end of our stopover I would have in excess of $10 in
dimes, which was a lot of money back then.
That would be my spending money while on vacation. One guess as to what I would spend it on?
My aunt's farm was located a little over one mile from a
small village. A Rexall Drugstore was
located there that also housed a soda fountain. Once a day I would walk into the village, stop by the drugstore,
buy a soda pop or milkshake, spin the comic book rack and select a few titles
and head back to my aunt's.
The next day I would start the whole routine over
again. By the time our visit was over I
had accumulated a large stack of comic books which I reread during our bus trip
back home.
Back home I had started a paper route and with part of the money
each week I would go to Foster's Rexall Drugstore on Thursdays and pick out the
latest and greatest comic books-mostly Marvel. Mr. Foster always made sure I saw the new comic books before anyone else. What a guy!
It was about that time that I began my long friendship with
the man who would help fan my comic book collecting flame, the owner of The
Shutter Shop, Mr. John Doliber.
Mr. Doliber was a comic book collector before there was such
a thing. His passion was Golden Age
comics. They were the books he grew up
with and he was fanatical about collecting them. In fact, almost his entire store's basement was stacked with
comic books.
Occasionally he would sort through his stacks and sell me,
at a reduced price, a key issue I was missing from my Fantastic Four
collection. Mr. Doliber was also a
frustrated comic book artist and he would spend his free time recreating his
favorite Golden Age comic book covers in pen and marker.
I too started drawing and to my surprise I discovered I was
quite good at it. I was no Neal Adams,
but I could swing a pretty mean pencil-or so I thought.
During the summer of
1970 Mr. Doliber asked me if I would like to attend a comic book convention
being held in Detroit and help him with his booth. I said yes, of course, and so I was off to my very first comic
book convention--and what a convention it was!
I got to meet Jim Steranko, Berni Wrightson, Rich Buckler
and a host of other famous and up and coming artists. There was an art gallery there and it seemed like I looked at the
art for hours. Hard to believe, but most
comic book pages sold for around $5!
I realized then that I wanted to become a comic book
artist. I submitted work to Marvel and
while I didn't get to work from them then Marvel editor John Romita Sr. sent me
a very nice letter encouraging me to keep trying.
During that same time period I made friends with a boy my
age named Paul. Paul's parents owned an
auction house and my mother and I would stop by about once a week to visit and
see what was up for sale.
Paul's dad kept a foot locker filled with old comics and he
would let me go through them and pick out what I liked at 15 cents a
piece. A little steep for the time but
I gladly paid the price for issues I was missing.
Then the unthinkable happened. I discovered girls and lost interest in comic books. They were too 'immature' for me. I sold my collection to a friend and for the
next few years I never touched a comic book.
I started college, got a girlfriend, worked and did the whole 'teenage'
thing. After two years of college I was
ready for some time off.
In 1973, at the age of 20, I moved to Homestead, Florida to
visit my brother who had moved there to work for Southern Bell. I wound up staying while my brother and his
family moved back to Michigan. Mom
decided to move to Florida and for a time we shared an apartment.
I worked at a local five and dime, got my own place and on
my first trip to the local food store: Minor's, I stepped back into the world
of comic books.
Minors had a small wire rack with old comics selling at 15
cents each. Over the next year I
reacquired many of the old comic books I loved as a kid and began buying new ones at a local drug store.
After two years I received a scholarship from the University
Of Miami and moved on campus in 1975, sans comic books. Graduating in 1977 I moved back to Homestead,
met my future wife, married in 1979 and moved to Grapevine, Texas where I was a
staff illustrator for a Christian publishing house.
The job lasted only a year as the upper management and
myself had a difference of opinion about editorial decisions. It was also there that my manager, Mr. Ward,
made it clear that superhero comics were an 'abomination to God'. After all who ever heard of humans with
super powers? Although it seemed
perfectly normal for animals to wear clothes and talk in 'normal' comic books
to him.
Mr. Ward brought in some Golden Age comic books that his
grandmother had left him and unceremoniously declared that he would be
destroying the superhero comics but keeping the funny animal ones. If what he told me what he had was true many a
mint superhero comic book collection was destroyed.
It boggles the mind!
My wife and I lived in Texas for two years. One day we stopped in at a local used book
store and as fate would have it the store owner had just procured a box of
comic books.
I was immediately drawn to the John Byrne X-Men and
Frank Miller Daredevils. I bought most
of them. My addiction to comic books
had reasserted itself!
Not long thereafter I found a comic book shop not far from
my new job with Homelite. The shop,
Remember When, had a weekly comic book pull service and I quickly signed up for
The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans.
Each week I would buy two or three back issues, mostly the X-Men.
In 1981 we decided to move back to Homestead. We owned a home there that we rented
out. We stopped by Jacksonville,
Florida on the way to visit my wife's older sister Paula and her husband Sherwood. We wound up staying with them and within a
month I was working at an Ad Agency: Hal Davis and Associates.
Over the next nine years I learned a lot about advertising
and graphic design-all the while buying new comic books each week at a local
comic book shop: Xeno's.
Frank and Mary Xeno were the owners and through them I met with
and associated with other comic book fans, some comic book professionals and
even for a short period wound up doing freelance work for Frank's fledgling
comic book publications through Bill Black's Americomics. My work never saw print. Frank and Bill went with some foreign
artists in order to save money. Both
titles only lasted a few issues.
Occasionally I would find a stash of old comics at flea
markets, used book stores and garage sales.
I traded some new titles to some friends who just wanted some reading
materials for their Silver and Bronze Age comics. A large percentage of my current collection consists of books traded
during that time.
After leaving the ad agency I worked for Educational
Community Credit Union in the marketing department. The comic book speculator glut of the early 1990s was in full
swing and in order to pay for my comic book addiction I worked one night a week
at Xeno's, pricing old comic books.
Customers got in the habit of stopping by and asking me
about old comics and back issues sales went up nearly 500%. That was great. The only problem was I wasn't getting my work done. I asked the store manager if he would object
to me writing a single-page "What's Hot and What's Not" newsletter
for customers to read instead of taking up my time. He agreed.
I had no way of knowing that that decision would profoundly
affect my life from that point on.
After a few issues it became obvious that my newsletter
(Comics' Corner) was catching on fast with fans. What started out as a single page, one-side publication soon
blossomed to a single-page, both sides to a two-page, both-sides, four-page,
both-sides publication that all of Xeno's stores carried. As the word got around other shops in the area wanted
to carry the newsletter and before I knew it I had a sizable audience.
After roughly a year of publication one of Xeno's customers,
Karl, approached me about doing a cable TV show about comics that we would both
host. After a couple of failed pilot
episodes and discovering that 'public access' cable is not about really being free,
it depends on whose palm you grease, my TV career hit a dead end.
Something far more important happened because of it. While setting up our pilots I suggested to Karl
that we contact some comic book companies for samples of their books to review
and use as giveaways. I made up some
stationary and the first company I contacted was Valiant Comics.
Valiant was riding high on popularity and it just so
happened they had created special issues (gold covers, etc.) as prizes for
their readers who promoted their books.
It was a match made in heaven.
Soon Valiant Comics came streaming in.
After our failed attempt at a cable show, Karl had to bow
out because his job required more time from him. I carried on with Comics Corner. I figure if Valiant Comics would supply review samples why not
other comic book companies? I sent out
a bundle of letters and before long, boxes of review samples started showing up
at my door.
This was before e-mail had become a common form of
communication.
I figured since comic book collectors usually collected more
than comics I expanded my coverage to include toys, trading cards, books,
etc. More letters went out and soon
boxes of review merchandise showed up almost every day of the week. My newsletter continued to grow in
readership and merchandise continued to arrive.
Much of the items I received I either gave away or had contests
so readers could share in the goodies.
When the 100th issue of Collectors' Corner (I renamed it to better suite
its purpose) I approached publishers and manufacturers about donating items for
a massive giveaway.
They responded-boy, did they respond! So much merchandise arrived that I not only
had a Grand Prize but First, Second, Third and Fourth prizes! The Fourth Prize winner went away with over a box
filled with merchandise. Imagine what
the Grand Prize winner received!
Things went along smoothly through the 1990s. The newsletter was doing well. The comic book industry survived the
speculator and black and white glut, Marvel barely avoided bankruptcy, the
Dark Age of comics brought real life to comics, Vertigo Comics introduced
'mature' titles, comic book companies came and went and suddenly the internet
hit like gangbusters.
Collectors' Corner survived because of ad money from
retailers. As paper and printing costs
rose, I downsized the newsletter, mailed out electronic PDFS and eventually
converted the entire publication over to a website and blog.
When Comics Corner was first born very few publications of
its type existed. It catered to a small
demographic of people and did quite well.
As the age of the internet approached more and more collectors created
basically 'fly-by-night' websites hoping to score review samples from
companies.
Most were found out and
unfortunately those of us with legitimate websites and who had been publishing
for years were clustered in with them.
Some websites claimed 'millions of readers per day' which is
ludicrous. I've discovered many of
these so-called mega-sites count their readership from strikes of websites linked
to their own.
Collectors never really
visit their sites but visitor counters count them as if they did. Many sites have gone so far as to fake their
numbers by using software that constantly hits on their sites so their numbers
look far larger than they are.
It is getting more and more difficult to convince companies
that Collectors' Corner is the perfect avenue by which they can contact
collectors. It seems everyone is
interested in numbers over quality. So
it goes.
I've never claimed to have a huge readership. But, those that do visit my sites are serious
collectors and they buy collectible merchandise-lots of it.
Publishers and manufacturers need to take note of those facts.
Enough ranting. While
my week to week new comic book purchasing days are long gone since I retired, I
still purchase a few titles now and then. Honestly
comic books are getting too expensive.
I love looking through my old issues. I encourage others to take up the hobby and
I'm satisfied that I will have wonderful comic book memories until the day
I die.
I sure hope there are comic books in Heaven!
