Sub-mariner Comics #1 - 8.0 blue label 0

[Badger]

WHILE YOU WAIT...

 

As a punk kid going to the old Houston Cons there was always one dealer who had the coolest selection of old comics...Burrel Rowe. Most of you know my relationship with Burrel, he was my mentor and inspiration for doing what I do. The first comic that I ever purchased from Burrel was...Submariner #1. 1976... I was thirteen. The Mile High collection had not been found yet. Camelot was still a dream. But Burrel had his home office, garage apartment. The center of the comicbook universe as far as I was concerned. My first visit there, dad drove us. Burrel lived about ten minutes away. We pull up in front of a normal two story house. We knock and Burrel answers. We meet his wife and walk through the house. There is nothing comic related anywhere! Hmmm...

 

Then we go out to the garage. There is an upstairs apartment that Burrel uses as his home office (his day job was as a lawyer. He wrote most of the water district law for the State of Texas). As you walked up the stairs the walls were lined with artwork and framed comics. On one wall were all of the Famous Funnies Frazetta issues framed together. The upstairs consisted of a main office room and a side guest bedroom. The twin beds in the bedroom had custom headboards with frames. On our visit one headboard had Batman 1-10 and the other had Superman 1 - 10. His desk sat right in the middle of the main room with bookshelves lining the wall behind. The shelves were filled with binders in which he stored all of his comics. In hindsight this wasn't the ideal way to store comics, but at the time they all looked so damn cool and high-tech.

 

Anyhow, we dug through comics for the next few hours, talking and browsing. My dad became more fascinated with them as the day wore on. He had always been very supportive but had never taken an active interest. But that day he really got involved. And at the end we walked out with a Submariner #1. It was a beautiful VF ish copy. It had a very light crease on the front cover and very pretty pages. $500! A lot of loot back then. I have since seen many copies that are nicer. I owned the Larson, a killer white pages 8.0. But I still have this thanks to my dad and Burrel...

 

That is a great story and a great book! Thanks for sharing!

[Silver Surfer]

That's a heck of a book and the fact that you still own it 40 years later is even more impressive.

[pemart1966]

Well...at least we've seen one nice #1 in this thread

[MusterMark]

Amazing story, Richard!

Thank you so much for sharing it.