Hepcat

Yeah, but how do you catch a ghost anyway?

Here are scans of my earliest Lone Ranger comics: 41 42 43 44 48

To Outlaw Kid:

I/we did so many things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1957-65 in London, Ontario that I never see kids doing today: * Walking just over half a kilometre to kindergarten unaccompanied by any parent/adult in the fall of 1957. Walking unaccompanied the nearly two kilometres to grade school in the fall of 1958. * Just leaving the house in the morning to go out and play with friends, whether it was baseball, football or whatever activity in the park, or hide-and-go-seek or any other game right out on the street. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes as much as a mile away to a particular park or street. The key though was that there was no need to report to parents, so long as we were home by the time it got dark. * Trick or treating on Halloween with my buddies without any balls and chains(a.k.a. adults) in tow. Using a pillowcase to maximize my haul. * Being given bus fare and taking the bus downtown by myself for French, Lithuanian or accordion classes at the Ontario Conservatory of Music. The latter of course required lugging a full-size accordion on the bus. * Hitting up my parents for a dime to go to the skating rink or swimming pool with friends. No parents to supervise of course. Pools had lifeguards. What more did you need? * Hitting up parents for the twenty cents to go to the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees with two movies and cartoons or Three Stooges shorts at the neighbourhood theatre. * Going out for little league football (Chester Pegg at the Normal School Grounds) without the parents knowing anything about it. I mean why would they care? * Reaching into ice water coolers in variety stores to select soda pop in dripping wet proper ten ounce refillable glass bottles. Such joy on a hot summer's day! * Roaming streets looking for empty pop bottles for the two cent deposit. I needed the money for cards, comics and potato chips because I was always collecting something. * Going to the local library several times a week to check out books and read the newspaper and magazines such as Boy's Life, Model Airplane News, Life and Look (or was it Post?). I didn't watch much TV at all since we didn't get a TV until the summer of 1961 in the first place and we picked up only one channel anyway. Nor was I allowed to watch TV on school nights either. * Looking through the spinner rack at corner variety and drug stores to select ten and then twelve cent (eeeeek!) comic books. Specialty comic shops weren't even imaginable, let alone comic books that cost over 25 cents. * Sneaking peaks at the titty magazines in corner variety stores. * Flinging baseball, hockey, etc. cards up against brick walls in winner take all games with nary a thought as to future "values". * Selling newspapers and chocolate bars door-to-door. * Having an early morning or after school paper route. * Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my dad, or six bottles of pop for the family. * Hitting up my parents for dimes and quarters to buy firecrackers before Firecracker(Victoria) Day. I mean what's wrong with young boys letting off firecrackers? Playing with caps all year round. * Playing with marbles, Yo-Yos and Duncan Spin Tops. Sidewalks would often be taken up by young girls skipping rope. When was the last time any of us saw any little girls engaged in this splendid aerobic activity? * My skateboard was a first generation wooden one with steel wheels very much like this Nash Shark model here: We didn't do any tricks with it. We just did our best to navigate down hilly pothole infested roads (such as Cove Road) without wiping out. * Doing wheelies on my bike. That's something rarely seen these days. Whether wheelies are no longer fashionable or whether kids don't get the chance to pop any wheelies under the ever present gaze of helicopter parents is a question I can't answer. * Playing nickel pinball machines at local variety stores or diners. Then the killjoys banned pinball machines as potential gambling devices for about a decade. * Building model kits and slot cars. Racing these slot cars at the hobby shop track downtown (Cowans Hardware). Kids don't build models anymore. Kids these days aren't interested in anything that doesn't provide instant gratification, i.e. anything not TV screen related. Just check out the clientele of the few remaining hobby shops. They're all aging boomers. * Firing up the .049 Thimbledrone engine of my Cox Spitfire gas powered plane in the house. What a racket! It was line control but I never mastered the trick of flying it without crashing immediately. I had to order a new body from Cox to replace the one I'd shattered beyond repair. * Playing with pea shooters. My parents giving me a BB gun and a bow and arrow with a steel point. * Carrying a jack knife around for games such as knife baseball. * Going for a dip in the creek behind the house on Phyllis Street which my father had dammed up to form a swimming hole. * Camping out in a tent overnight with friends in the backyard. * Climbing trees. Oh, I'm sure modern parents would all be aghast. They want the kids safe in front of the TV with video game consoles at all times. And that's why so many kids are obese and end up with deadly peanut and bee sting allergies. Keep kids squeaky clean and of course they don't develop their natural immunities. And of course when these overprotected kids eventually leave the nest to go to college or someplace, they're all snowflakes with such fragile egos that they need "safe places" where they can be insulated from dissenting opinions. Deny kids deadly pea shooters and (heaven forbid!) metal lunch boxes and they end up arming themselves with real knives and even guns to go to school. It's the principle of the dam. Keep denying kids whatever is "unsafe" and the pressure just keeps building up and building up till it explodes. The ultimate irony of course is the parents who demonize sugar which of course is a perfectly natural substance and not any kind of a toxin. (Yes of course their inactive kids don't need the extra calories.) These kids then take to experimenting with alcohol, pot, crystal meth and cocaine at first opportunity. It's the boy who cried wolf syndrome. "Hey, remember, you were the ones who told us sugar was so bad! You think we're going to listen to you now when you tell us to avoid booze and drugs? And what about all that Scotch and gin you drink and those sleeping pills and pain killers you pop all the time? Sure, sure, we kids are going to listen to you old farts. Yeah, right."

Wow! That's Mighty Mouse really coming to the rescue.

A few more of my Superman 80 pg. Giants: CGC 9.2

Five of my Gorgo comics: 2 6 10 11 14

Here are four of my Batman 100 Page Super Spectaculars:

To my favourite PT Boat and skipper: '

Another cool Harvey!

Here then are scans of a couple of covers from my favourite Timely title:

Great write-up and I love the pictures! Sadly drug store soda fountains had almost completely disappeared from my neck of the woods (London, Ontario) during my formative comic buying years in the early 1960's and they were certainly gone by 1980. These days I know of none whatsoever in the Toronto to Hamilton to London area. Since I never took up drinking alcohol, I'm still all about ice cream sodas, sundaes and milkshakes like any proper comic reading kid. Therefore I'd be glad to learn about any drug store soda fountains that still exist anywhere in North America. Are any still around in your neck of the woods? I'm sure I'm not the only one here who misses old-fashioned soda fountains so let the rest of us know!

The Cardinals should have signed Bill Greason to a contract and had him dress for the game. Who knows, if it turned into a blowout they might have even been able to get him into the game!

Oh wow! Bugs Bunny and Sgt. Rock Giants neither of which I have! Here's another cool one: 3

Cool old date stamp!

Another cool Harvey Giant:

To another biggie:

Another really good Skywald:

I actually think the start of the Atomic Age overlaps with the end of the Golden Age. For DC anyway the Golden Age extended to very early 1951 with the last Justice Society appearance in All-Star Comics 57. I therefore see the Atomic Age as being roughly from 1950 to 1958 when the DC's first new hero title, Challengers of the Unknown, was launched.

Plus the fact that some "sales" are shill transactions to pump up the price. Keep updating that list of sales though.

And a good Harvey:

So then you're implying that ComicLink is the best venue for collectors to buy?

Yeah I guess comics from 1958-59 are pretty Silvery. I'll remove them if Adam Strange rules they're ultra vires. But how about these then?

A couple of good Skywalds:

I understand. Breaking comics out of slabs is an annoying chore but it's something I nonetheless get around to doing.