When you read a comicbook, do you treat it like a precious commodity or like a "People" magazine that's going in the bathroom wastebasket tomorrow? The answer in a minute...
Avengers #1 | September 1963
With the San Diego Comic-Con International getting set to rock July 20 to July 23, these are the kinds of things I start to think about. I've probably attended the Comic-Con a half dozen times, usually as a panelist or speaker or something. There was the "M.A.N.T.I.S." series launch, followed by the "Dark Skies" series launch, followed by "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" and then, the high hopes for the launch of Stan Lee Media. Throw in "Lois & Clark" and "Mortal Kombat" and I think that about covers it. Many of the memories are particularly good because we would always attend as a family and spend a lot of time walking the floors with our kids. Because of that, we own massive amounts of Pokeman cards we can't even give away now.
Anyway, thinking about such fun times, it's only natural to remember the thrill that hooked you on comics in the first place. Everyone probably has a favorite comicbook and a favorite memory. You're looking at my favorite issue above.
I had read comics long before "The Avengers" came out, of course, but it was the one that made me realize how hooked I was. I'd started with DC, like most people back in the day and "Superman" and "Batman," but then Marvel came in and knocked me out. Lee & Kirby were like two athletes in their prime; graceful and powerful at the same time, and they moved with precision and finesse. It was a combination that has never been matched for the impact it had.
Like everybody else in those days,
I was in awe of Stan Lee and his prolific writing career. So it's been quite a thrill for me to have become friends with Stan since moving to Hollywood. We met doing an NBC pilot together nearly a decade ago, "Missing Link," and based on that experience, I was hired to help Stan launch his internet company, Stan Lee Media. These days we meet for regular lunches in Beverly Hills and we're even working on a new project together. Stan's just a very good friend now, but he's made me deeply appreciate how much comics have meant to me over the years. I imagine he's had the same impact on many of you who are reading this. By the way, Stan is also the person who taught me to spell it as one word, "comicbook," and not two, "comic book."
I digress... I titled the post, "How to Read a Comicbook" and meant it only partly tongue-in-cheek.
It's just that these days it's all about collecting. Comics go in mylar protective bags with stiff archival quality backing boards. They are rated and preserved and sold like the commodities they've become. It wasn't always like that.
Take a look at that "The Avengers" comicbook and you will see the miles on it. I bought it brand new, of course, couldn't afford more than one copy and had no concept that it would ever be worth anything. I bought it because it looked so cool, and I read it over and over and over. I probably read it twenty times. In our neighborhood, a bunch of kids had formed a comicbook collective and there was one kid who kept all the comics in old cardboard boxes in his bedroom. You brought your comics there after you were done with them, borrowed other comics. Nobody could afford to buy them all by themselves. This meant each comic got read dozens of times. I was fortunate enough to be the last guy in the neighborhood who ran the "comic club" and I got to keep them all.
Of course, like an idiot, when I was in college I broke up with my girlfriend who fled to relatives in England. When I decided I wanted to get back with her, I sold most of my comics from those boxes to raise funds. I got $273 bucks back then and sold off some lots that would break your heart, like "X-Men" #1-#50, "Fantastic Four" #1-#75, "Spider-Man" #1-#50... you get the idea. And, the kicker is, I never did raise enough to get to England, and never did make it work with that college girlfriend like I'd planned. And, without taking anything away from that relationship, I have to admit I really, really miss those comics.
Fast forward another decade to when I first moved to Los Angeles. I had an office mate at KCET named Paul Crosswhite. We were working together at the PBS station as magazine correspondents. Paul was a huge comics fan, too, and we immediately hit it off. I went over to Paul's to see his collection and was horrified. He had them stacked all over the place and they were in terrible condition (and by this time we knew you could sell them to collectors). Paul, however, had an anarchist's view of the whole thing. The first act he would commit upon buying a comic was to bend the cover back completely and read it as aggressively as possible. He saw his comics lousy condition as a badge of honor that they had been read so many times they were showing their wear and tear. I think Paul was onto something.
I still have a lot of comics that are bagged and tagged. But the last group I bought, I gave them the Crosswhite treatment and read them like I was eight years old again. It made me feel the passion I'd lost. It was good, very good. The storytelling and the artwork were fantastic. Beautiful work.
By the way, if you actually have a copy of that comic above, "Tales to Astonish" #77, you will find the name of a kid named Bryce who proudly had his name printed inside as a charter member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. That was better than an Emmy...
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