They may pop up, too!

My first memories of comics are at a local, now defunct grocer, Cooper and Martin and at an also defunct mini market called Big Sack. Big Sack had the classic comics spinner with a "Hey Kids! Comics!" sign on top. Big Sack had a good variety of Marvel, DC, Archie, and Harvey. My first memories are from around 1977--of Teen Titans, Justice League of America, Superman Family, Batman Family, World's Finest, Wonder Woman, Superman, Action, Adventure, Brave and the Bold, Showcase, Avengers, Defenders, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Archie's Pals-n-Gals, Laugh, Sabrina, Josie and the Pussycats, Casper, Wendy, and Richie Rich, and Hot Stuff.
Cooper and Martin carried the Archie Digests and the DC Blue Ribbon Digests. The local pharmacy also had the Archie Digests and the Spire Christian Archie books.
Some of the comic ads I recall were for novelties you could order, seeds and Christmas cards you could sell and earn prizes, as well as in-house ads. I can vividly recall a full page ad for Batman Family 17 (I think) and World's Finest 250. Also a page with Shazam, Steel by Don Heck, and a Wonder Woman 1978 special.
The dollar comics were my favorite--World's Finest, Batman Family, and Superman Family. The first three comics I can recall reading were Justice League of America 149 and 150, Batman Family 16, and Teen Titans 50.
I remember an ad on the back of the JLA books for Super Hero watches. You could choose from Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider Man, or the Joker!

I remember getting excited when I saw a comics rack in a store and it was hard to pull me away from it. 7 11 was the main store--there was also "Mac's Milk," or "Mac's" which is like 7 11 but a Canadian chain.

My first comic purchase was at a gas station on the road somewhere in Alberta if I remember correctly. Amazing Spider-man #147.
Then my next big store purchase was a 1976 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland that had a King Kong painting on it.

There was also a small grocery store that for a short time had these hard cover monster books. I wish I can remember the titles-I picked up a King Kong Novelization. I am pretty sure they had some Godzilla books as well but I may be mistaken.


I began seeing tv ads for the Comic Shop-a Vancouver store, in the late 70s or early 80s and just had to visit. That was the first time I had seen a store that sold vintage comics. Always big fun to go to the city to visit.


Worst experience though was at a 7 11 where I was given a soft drink and as I opened it the thing fizzed all over a pinball machine. Boy was the store owner mad and kicked me out.

Here is my family's memories:

Western PA - mid 40's. My Dad gets 25 cents & rides his bike into town. He lives 2 miles outside of the nearest town. Him & his friends spend their money on comics, sodas, & candy or sometimes the movies. My Dad said with 25 cents he could buy a coke, a comic book & see the Sat matinee! They ride home & lay around their home made fort & pass around their comic books. My Dad's favorites were Capt Marvel & Plastic Man.

Eastern PA - late 60's. On Fri evening my Dad would take me to a news stand & let me buy $1 worth of comics. I would read them over the weekend. My favorites were Superman, Batman, Spider-Man & the Hulk.

Central PA - late 90's. I took my daughters to our LCS weekly in the summer & let them buy $5 worth of comics to read. Their favorites were Betty & Veronica & Supergirl.

Pulls on pjs, curls up with a blanket and looks up hopefully..."Tell us another story uncle Hal..."

-M

Thank you all from the bottom of my nostalgic little heart!

A Comic Lover’s Memories

Prelude (cont’d.)
 

I had another cousin, a nasty, rat-faced little bastard whose despicable behavior matched his appearance, whose family we would also visit every few weeks. He was not into sports, but liked army men and toy guns and the like, which I did, too, but I never really trusted him; he was the kind of perpetually scowling kid who talked back to his mother and stormed off in anger whenever he didn't get his way. Even then kids like that made me feel uncomfortable; I may not have always like what the adults told us to do, but neither did I like it when the world went askew because the adults didn't act the way they were supposed to.

The problem was that his mom would just argue with him as if she were a kid, a shouting match would ensue, and the kid would stalk off yelling, slamming doors and just basically being a turd in the punch bowl. It embarrassed his brother, it embarrassed me, my mom, and my brothers and sisters, and made every visit there a potential fustercluck. 

His mom was nice, he had the best toys of any of us and they even had an above-ground pool in their backyard!

What really stuck out to me, though, coming from a house in which comics were, at this point, not forbidden, but not really encouraged, either, was that his mom didn't mind if he bought comics. In fact, I think she gave him money specifically for that purpose!  Notwithstanding, he always seemed pissed off at the world.

It was at his house, though, where I first saw or even heard of Bob Hope comics, for instance; I guess he was a fan of Super-Hip, and I got to read two of those issues, from late 1965, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had never seen a Bob Hope comic on a newsstand anywhere, and never would. But I loved those two issues, which capitalized on both the monster and rock 'n' roll fads. I didn't know then, of course, but I had Arnold Drake, whose work I would later enjoy very much, to thank for the offbeat, satirical, clever style of those issues.

                    


Rat-Face was also a huge war comics fan, but in the age when DC war comics were the ne plus ultra, he bought only the Charlton war comics, like the War Heroes titles and the  “Fightin’” titles: Army, Marines, Navy, and Air Force. I can't remember which ones I read there. Charlton war comics blended together even to a young reader. I could never figure out why my cousin would buy stacks of these when he could have bought Sgt. Fury or any of the DC war comics, which were the gold standard. The thing was, sometimes the stories were decent and I would wish that they could have been drawn by better artists and printed on decent paper in vivd color.

      

Even at a young age you could tell these were from hunger; the pages were so thick they were almost the consistency of bark, and colors were so faded they looked like they’d been left out in the summer sun for a month. (“The Lonely War of Willy Schultz” didn’t debut until after he’d stopped buying comics.)



Rat-Face always had a stack of Harveys, too. Could never figure out why such a nasty-ass kid would be reading Sad Sack and Hot Stuff comics. I was more than happy to read those, too. Better than talking to my weirdo cousin.

Like Farrar, I too loved the little insets of the cast of characters on the covers, maybe because they further established the notion that they lived in a self-contained world. I always wanted to read the “minor” characters more than the headliners, as their stories were always the same-old same-old. You could have Hot Stuff and Sad Sack; Stumbo became my favorite.



         

I'm pretty sure this is the Stumbo comic that I read
more than once at my rat-faced cousin's house.

We prettyy much stopped visiting my cousins on a regular basis when they moved to another town, maybe in 1966 or so, and my mother had one of her periodic fallings-out with her sister, my aunt. I was fine with that, though. My cousin had gone beyond sour and had become bilious.

We actually wound up going to the same high school, but we didn't even acknowledge each other the few times we ever even saw each other. 

As I mentioned earlier, when I began reading and buying comics in 1962, distribution, as many of you – Some of you? A few of you? -- will recall, was spotty and inconsistent at best. That's why my visits to my cousins in Jersey City, just 16 miles away as the crow flies, but nearly an hour in the car on crowded streets, where piles of new and different comics awaited me, were so much fun.

I have many memories of trekking from candy store to candy store in my beloved hometown as I became more and more enamored of comics, usually in the heat of the summer, looking for a particular issue of a comic. Two of these stores were separated from each other by a beauty parlor, but they almost always had a different batch of new titles displayed every week. Never were you certain that a particular issue of a title would show up anywhere, even if that title had been showing up for months. And yes, the search was part of the fun, even though you didn’t always find the various Grails you were seeking.

It was not just frustrating, but disheartening to someone falling more and more in love with comics.

Then, in the fall of 1967, a new world beckoned, and I responded.



Next: Exploring a New Frontier