Category: Collecting

In my previous post, I related how I got started reading (and to a limited degree, collecting) comics.  I also stressed how normal and typical this was for any kid growing up in the 50’s and 60’s.   What, then, turbo-charged my interest from an average reader into an obsessed collector?

In order to answer this, I must first digress to provide a brief explanation about periodical distribution in that era:

Magazines are delivered to stores by a network of distributors.  The stores are expected to pay their distributor for copies sold, and they receive a credit for copies unsold.  Rather than return the full unsold copies (which would be costly, heavy, and a pain) the store owner would rip off and return the top fourth of the book’s cover for credit.  Tidy and efficient, right?

Back to our story:  My dad had a friend named Joe Teague.  Joe’s parents owned a drug store in Indiana, and they had a problem – what to do with the  piles of “returned” comics flooding the back room of their store?  Joe decided to help his parents out by regularly taking those books and giving them to me when he visited!  Due to his generosity, my supply chain experienced exponential growth.  On an average visit, he would deliver 3 0r 4 two-foot stacks of comics to my room.   Sure, they weren’t in mint condition, and yes, there were a lot of doubles, and certainly many of them were dogs (such as Timmy the Timid Ghost, above, and many other Charltons), but to a little kid it was comics nirvana!

I can still recall happily sitting inside a “fort” made from stacks of these comics, without a care in the world.  Life was good!

Anyway, I attribute my comic book addiction to this deep immersion therapy, and I have remained in its thrall to this day.

 

How, dear reader, did your humble correspondent get hooked on these four color wonders?

Well, first you have to realize that in the 50’s and 60’s comics were readily available, cheap, and virtually all kids read them.  While reliable distribution of titles was spotty and inconsistent at best, you could find them at drug stores, newsstands, the Mom & Pop stores so prevalent on the East Coast, super markets,  “5 and 10” stores such as Woolworth’s, department stores, and even as giveaways at the shoe store!  Almost every kid had some to read, share or trade.

I was no different.  I was a somewhat sickly child, so I paid frequent visits to the doctor.  The wait was interminable, so my mother would allow me to buy a small pile of comics to read while we waited.  After some time the books occupied a place of honor on my bedroom bookshelf. This was the start of my collection!

Alas, it was not to be.  Each time my pile grew to about 6 inches, my mother would make me get rid of them and start anew.  She considered them  – as did most people, to be fair – to be throwaway material, no different from the  movie star periodicals she enjoyed.  Clutter was to be avoided in the well-kept home of the Postwar Era!

But even at the age of 5, I resisted to the degree possible.  I told myself, “I’m gonna get those again some day!”  Little did I realize this would become my life’s mission.