My Ages of Fandom

Chapter One: I Was a Teenage Marvel Zombie!

Hi all. I missed last week’s post because, well, I wasn’t feeling very inspired. Sorry about that, but sometimes that’s the way things go.

When I started this newsletter just about exactly one year ago, I wrote an entry called “My Secret Origin,” in which I looked at the beginnings of my love for comics – namely, the comics I was given by my maternal grandparents every time we saw them (once or twice a month) and the comics I read in doctor’s offices while waiting for my dreaded allergy injections. Those comics included Disney titles, Dennis the Menace, Harvey Comics, and Archie Comics, but after a few years, my grandparents had switched me to super-hero fare, Superman, Action Comics, the Flash, and Iron Man among them.

This was my first-ever super-hero comic:

And my first-ever Marvel comic:

In sixth grade I met a couple of other kids who also liked comics. They had a few current issues of Iron Man as well Justice League of America. Since I’d already read my one issue of Iron Man over and over again, I was more drawn to that than JLA. I wanted more. My grade school was one mile from my house – but right around the corner from the school was a strip mall with two stores that I knew had comics racks. One fine afternoon I skipped the school bus home, walked to the stories, and bought this comic:

I’ve checked, and this comic went on sale in July 1974, but I am absolutely sure this was the first comic I bought for myself, and that I bought it after school. I suppose it’s possible that it was still on the racks in September of that year. Anyway, I walked the mile home on a two-lane road with no sidewalks, and when I got home my mother read me the riot act, because, of course, she had no idea why I wasn’t on the bus when it stopped near my house.

Somehow I was not dissuaded, and before long I was spending every dime I could scrounge up on comics. Fortunately I had a regular allowance for doing household chose, and my parents were good about paying me for other jobs like mowing the lawn (which took three hours and paid five bucks) and washing their cars (two dollars for that, but worth it on a hot summer’s day). My friends and I would walk or ride our bikes to Dutch Square in Monsey, NY, and buy a few comics, some candy, and maybe a can of soda.

I quickly developed that lifelong habit so many fans share: stopping by our favorite stores every week to see whatever was new. Before long I was collecting Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, The Defenders, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, plus various Giant Sizes and Treasury Editions. A couple of my friends good hooked as well, and they filled out much of the Marvel line by buying Fantastic Four, Avengers, Daredevil, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, and others. My kid brother bought The Incredible Hulk and Power Man. Somehow none of us bothered with The Mighty Thor, the monster titles or Conan the Barbarian.

DC Comics? Well, one of my comics-loving friends bought Green Lantern, The Flash, and some DC war titles, but they didn’t do much for me. I was completely hooked by Marvel, and I didn’t think much of DC’s offerings. They seemed corny, gimmicky, even childish compared to the Marvel line. Marvel also had a murderer’s row of writers and editors who all could do Stan-speak pretty well, which meant that every letters column and editorial page had that welcoming, warm tone that I found so engaging.

What about the X-Men, you ask? They were in the middle of that long run of reprints when I started buying comics for myself, but thanks to their guest appearances in Captain America, Marvel Team-Up and elsewhere, I started picking up their series with this issue:

Eventually I would come around on DC, but not for a while. I stuck with Marvel pretty much exclusively through the 1970s.

Next time I’ll look at my early run-ins with underground comics, ground-level comics, and the indie comics book of the 1980s.