Tell Me a Tale - For Those Who Love Comics 7 7

[ttfitz]

On 3/4/2023 at 3:38 AM, themagicrobot said:

It made perfect sense to us at the time.

Said of so many ill-advised actions of the past. 

On 3/4/2023 at 3:38 AM, themagicrobot said:

Until 1971 and we adopted decimal currency there were 20 shillings to one £ and 12 pence to a shilling

You left off my personal favorite, the guinea.

[themagicrobot]

There were 21 Shillings to a Guinea. Guineas are still used to this day (As £1.05p) most often in the sale of horses/racehorses. How mad is that?

Not as mad as putting Spider-Man on the cover of a Western comic (to help increase its sales?). Amazing Spider-Man completists may be unaware they need this comic. Does that class as a "Tale"? Shall I get my coat?

 

[Shadow]

Nice thread!

During the early to mid-70's, I was reading things like Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, etc. By I hadn't caught the "collecting bug" just yet. At 10, I remember while visiting my grand-parents in Adrian, MI, I was drawn to this Aquaman book (DC Superstars #7) at the local drugstore. I can't tell you how many times I read it. (Still have it but also upgraded versions). But I still didn't know about collecting perse. Head into the next summer (1977 - Summer of Star Wars!) and a friend shows me his X-Men 107. I read it and was struck by Wolverine. 

Cut to 1978 and my best friend and I stumble across JLA 156. Looks cool as there are lots of heroes.  But he mentions that people actually collect these things and so it begins. I start right away with JLA, World's Finest, DC Comics Presents, and others but don't make the immediate leap to X-Men even though I thought they were great. It wasn't until X-Men 138 that I thought this "opened the door" for me to jump in vs mid-stream on a story line. (I was 14 I think... lol) Little did I know #141 was right around the corner and would blow me away with that storyline. Followed Byrne to FF and started collecting that title as well. 

I bought new books up until 1984 when I stopped during college. Got rid of a third of my collection from 1985 - 1988 to fund going to concerts. (Only one I regret in hindsight was Spiderman 129 which I had found in an old room at a family friends house in 1980 and they said I could have it. Probably only a VG to F but worth more now. lol) 

Jumped back into the hobby in 1994 as I had a career, wife and house. Friend convinced me to go to Motor City Comic Con. I saw JLA 3 and 30 and they were only $40 altogether. What appeared unattainable as a kid was in reach! And with that, I continue today with over 5500 books. I stopped buying new comics in 2014. Too much space taken up. Still enjoy my hobby. My wife finds it amusing I know the value of the collection but never will sell anything nor have any desire at this point. I'm sentimental so they stick with me. 

[Hudson]

On 2/28/2023 at 9:33 PM, Robot Man said:

Every summer my parents would put me on the Greyhound bus to visit my grandparents. My grandpa would take me to lunch in his ‘62 Lincoln. After lunch, we would go to the cigar store and allow me to pick as many comics off the rack as I wanted. One of those trips, I saw something I had never seen. MAD Magazine #72. I got it and it blew me away. Started me on a life time of actually collecting all of them.

My grandmother, an antique collector took me to shows and flea markets. Many times there were stacks of old cheap comics. I always came home with a nice pile. Her influence was very important to me and made me the collector I am today.

We also read in a tent in the summer with a flashlight but they were usually nudie magazines. 

Sir,

I was so happy and honored to see you post in this thread.  You are a living legend of collecting.  Just look at that awesome "sig line".  I have seen you on here for years and have seen you offer for sale comics that I didn't even know existed as well as many other collectible items that only a true collector would own.  I bet you have so many stories of great finds (things found in some old box at a flea marekt), that you could probably fill a book.  Thank you for sharing the tale of how it all started.

[Ken Aldred]

On 3/4/2023 at 7:39 PM, ttfitz said:

You left off my personal favorite, the guinea

That’s an easy one, though.  I narrowly escaped having to understand the more complex old currency as I was in the first year at primary school when we converted over to decimal. 
 

My understanding was that it was a little bit extra, a shilling, in order to create a separate unit for the poshers to distinguish themselves from working class proles like me. Always seemed that way on TV and in films, anyway.

Edited March 5, 2023 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

This is more about the present than direct nostalgia, but I think what I’m trying to get at here is that circumstances change and often it’s simply not possible to continue with the same approach, but all that matters is perhaps finding some alternative which allows you to continue your deep, lifelong connection to these wonderful, imaginative stories.

The complications associated with being autistic have become progressively worse with age, especially severe burnout, which is a common symptom, and I’ve narrowed my range more and more over the last couple of decades, cutting out conventions, local comic shops, until eventually I had to give up the hunt altogether. Thankfully, the world has progressed and I can read comics digitally, if anything, getting deeper into the storylines than I used to do, not worrying about condition or damage or any of the OCD aspects of the physical comic world. Pure appreciation; what the thread’s about. Through Humble Bundle I’ve already got years and years’ worth of material from Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Image, Rebellion / 2000 AD and Kodansha Manga to read, to name a few, at bargain prices.

I look back fondly on the start, of course, when I’d excitedly await the next month’s DC 100 pagers or Byrne X-Men comic back in the 70s as a bright-eyed kid, or, later on, going farther and farther afield to pick up some nice, old, raw comics and slabs at a convention.  So, one looks back on many happy memories, but change and conclusion are both natural and unavoidable, and I’m content at this stage in my life with what’s still available to me. 
 

Edited March 5, 2023 by Ken Aldred

[CAHokie]

I am not for sure exactly how old the ASM 300 was when I got it but I know by that summer I would go to the comic book store, named “The Hobby Shop” for the first time. Most of it was for pets and aquariums but a section was for comics.

My uncle was visiting from out of the state and asked me what I wanted so I said comics. I went inside and looked at the racks of comics and was told I had 5 minutes to pick out 3.

5 minutes to make the most important comic book decisions of my life? Ok, scanning the racks I had no idea what to go with until I spotted an awesome Spiderman comic with Werewolves on the cover!!! Ok, this was an easy pick. I couldn’t believe it but it looked like Spiderman might actually die in this comic!

 

My time was quickly coming to an end, when I spotted someone named The Punisher! Who is that? Who cares, he looks awesome and is kicking everyone’s rear.

Time is up, quickly, grab something, anything. Ok, well this looks cool, I guess.

 

Spiderman and The Punisher ended up being my favorite two characters for life. If I would have picked up an X-Men or Avengers would it have been them? Or worse, what if I would have picked out DC comics???

Edited March 6, 2023 by CAHokie

[KCOComics]

Some great stories here. I'll get around to reading them all over the coming days, but I love hearing people's stories. 

As for me, I don't have a singular moment that started my collecting.  As I get older and watch my kids grow up, I spend a lot of time reflecting on my youth....and comics were a huge part of my childhood!

I have an incredible father.  He was a construction worker who worked extremely hard. He was strict and all the neighborhood kids were terrified of him. He gave the impression of someone who was quick tempered and not to be taken lightly. Mostly, because he was quick tempered.....and not to be taken lightly. 

But he did have a soft side with my brother and I.  At night, he would tell us stories. And while he was very well read and a great story teller, the most captivating stories, were retelling the fantastic four comics he grew up reading.... My father was born in 1955, so he would have been 10 (almost 11) when FF48 hit the shelves. I always think about how powerful that story must have been to him, that he remember it well enough to tell his kids 25 years later.... And that wasn't the only story he retold. Just the one I have the best memory of. 

I was into marvel cards and we watched the Batman cartoon after school like most kids from the early 90s.  But as I got older, my relationship with comics changed and became more personal. 

I was dyslexic, so reading was hard for me. But comics, I could read. And I read tons of them. Punisher, spiderman, Batman, Silver Surfer and all the X title (men, factor, force)  Because of my Dyslexia I was in special Ed classes, which made you feel different from the other kids.  Comics served as an escape. I could just slip away into intergalactic battles for the Infinity gauntlet. 

 

As the movies came out and comics got popular, I hated it. Comics were something that I enjoyed almost in secrecy.  Highschool kids didn't advertise that they were reading Spiderman.... But as comics became more mainstream it suddenly wasn't just the dorks showing up at shows and shops.  It made me bitter. Like something was being taken from me. 

Having kids has helped me to reconcile that. Because of the movies they are into comics. And I can tell them the stories I grew up with, like my father did with me. 

 

[ttfitz]

On 3/5/2023 at 5:28 PM, Ken Aldred said:

That’s an easy one, though.  I narrowly escaped having to understand the more complex old currency as I was in the first year at primary school when we converted over to decimal. 
 

My understanding was that it was a little bit extra, a shilling, in order to create a separate unit for the poshers to distinguish themselves from working class proles like me. Always seemed that way on TV and in films, anyway.

Yeah, I think that's how it ended up being, but my understanding of the Secret Origin of the Guinea was it started out as a gold coin worth a pound aka 20 shillings. But as the price of gold went up, the value of the coin increased. After some number of years of the value bouncing around, it was locked in at 21 shillings. Shortly thereafter, I think, they stopped making the coins (at least out of gold, anyway) and the unit continued to be used, as you said, for more "posh" applications, as well as to have a unit with a built-in "vig" or commission (as in the buyer would pay in guineas and the seller get paid in pounds, with the difference going to the middleman).

I think I mostly ran into in things like Sherlock Holmes stories, which always was a bit confusing, "Why in the world would they have a kind of money that was just a little bit more than their standard money???"

[Gaard]

During the mid 70s, I lived 2 blocks from The Book Stop in Grand Rapids...a used paperback and comic book store. I knew the owner (John) and his sons that worked there (John Jr & Joe). At the time, I was an avid DD collector and a completist, They knew this and would take the new back issues of DD they got in, put them behind the counter, and let me look at them first to see if I needed any for my collection.

On my 13th birthday, I walked down there, which I did most days, and when I walked in, John wished me a happy birthday. Back then people weren't worried about perverts/ weirdos/serial killers, so it didn't really concern me that I had never told him it was my birthday. He asked me if I had opened my presents yet and I told him I hadn't and proceeded to thumb thru the many boxes of back issues.

*** Oh, how I miss the days where you would walk up to the counter carrying a stack of back issues. The person behind the counter would get out their Overstreet and look at each book. When done looking at a book, he/she would write, in pencil, the price on the upper corner of the back cover.

Anyways, unbeknownst to me, my sister had gone to the Book Stop weeks earlier and asked John to locate a DD #1 for her, explaining that it was for my upcoming birthday.

On the night of my birthday, my sister handed me a box. Inside were a can of pork -n- beans, a bottle of Tahitian Treat, and a Daredevil #1.

side note ... it wasn't long before I had accomplished my goal of completing the full run of Daredevil. Sadly, a few years later ('80), I sold them all when I went off to college. I would've sold them back to The Book Stop but it was gone by then. I heard they moved to Texas.

[1950's war comics]

My LCS was 4 miles away and i used to ride my bike there every week with my paper route money years 1974/75, i bought a lot of Marvel Tales and Marvels Greatest back issues because of course i could not afford the originals ... one day my bike had a flat and i didn't yet have a spare so i walked all the way to my LCS and back

[1950's war comics]

it seemed that one song in particular was always playing every time i went to my LCS back then, whenever i hear this song it reminds me of my LCS

 

Miracles (Jefferson Starship song)

 

"Miracles" is a song written by Marty Balin and originally recorded by Jefferson Starship, appearing on its 1975 album Red Octopus.^[2]

"Miracles" peaked at number 3 for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the highest-charting single the band ever recorded under the name Jefferson Starship or its previous incarnation Jefferson Airplane

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 3/8/2023 at 8:43 AM, 1950's war comics said:

My LCS was 4 miles away and i used to ride my bike there every week with my paper route money years 1974/75, i bought a lot of Marvel Tales and Marvels Greatest back issues because of course i could not afford the originals ... one day my bike had a flat and i didn't yet have a spare so i walked all the way to my LCS and back

I did the same. I tried to jump back on at an older age, and I tore that bike up, not sure a bike can hold me now and I'm only 222 lbs.

[Gaard]

On 3/8/2023 at 9:43 AM, 1950's war comics said:

My LCS was 4 miles away and i used to ride my bike there every week with my paper route money years 1974/75, i bought a lot of Marvel Tales and Marvels Greatest back issues because of course i could not afford the originals ... one day my bike had a flat and i didn't yet have a spare so i walked all the way to my LCS and back

You're from GR, right? Mind if I ask which store was your LCS? There were 3 that I frequented - The Book Stop, Collector's Corner, and Argos Book's. I'm sure their were more places that sold comics, but I don't remember them.

Argos was too far away to walk, so I rode my Schwinn there. It wasn't really in the bad part of town, but you had to pass thru it to get there. After I was kung fu kicked off my bike on the way one time, I pretty much stopped going there.

[Robot Man]

On 3/8/2023 at 6:43 AM, 1950's war comics said:

My LCS was 4 miles away and i used to ride my bike there every week with my paper route money years 1974/75, i bought a lot of Marvel Tales and Marvels Greatest back issues because of course i could not afford the originals ... one day my bike had a flat and i didn't yet have a spare so i walked all the way to my LCS and back

In the snow?   

[1950's war comics]

On 3/8/2023 at 7:04 AM, Gaard said:

You're from GR, right? Mind if I ask which store was your LCS? There were 3 that I frequented - The Book Stop, Collector's Corner, and Argos Book's. I'm sure their were more places that sold comics, but I don't remember them.

Argos was too far away to walk, so I rode my Schwinn there. It wasn't really in the bad part of town, but you had to pass thru it to get there. After I was kung fu kicked off my bike on the way one time, I pretty much stopped going there.

i'm from Lansing, Curious book store was my LCS, three stories tall ! mags in the basement, books on the ground floor , comics up top

it's still there but hardly any comics nowadays, i don't know how he has stayed in business all these years

[Gaard]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:36 AM, 1950's war comics said:

i'm from Lansing, Curious book store was my LCS, three stories tall ! mags in the basement, books on the ground floor , comics up top

it's still there but hardly any comics nowadays, i don't know how he has stayed in business all these years

When I got my license, I drove to Curious a few times. I remember going up to the 3rd floor to look at the comics. I stopped going after a few times - guy kept watching me like a hawk when I would go thru the back issues. Bad vibes.

[Robot Man]

On 3/5/2023 at 7:22 PM, KCOComics said:

Some great stories here. I'll get around to reading them all over the coming days, but I love hearing people's stories. 

As for me, I don't have a singular moment that started my collecting.  As I get older and watch my kids grow up, I spend a lot of time reflecting on my youth....and comics were a huge part of my childhood!

I have an incredible father.  He was a construction worker who worked extremely hard. He was strict and all the neighborhood kids were terrified of him. He gave the impression of someone who was quick tempered and not to be taken lightly. Mostly, because he was quick tempered.....and not to be taken lightly. 

But he did have a soft side with my brother and I.  At night, he would tell us stories. And while he was very well read and a great story teller, the most captivating stories, were retelling the fantastic four comics he grew up reading.... My father was born in 1955, so he would have been 10 (almost 11) when FF48 hit the shelves. I always think about how powerful that story must have been to him, that he remember it well enough to tell his kids 25 years later.... And that wasn't the only story he retold. Just the one I have the best memory of. 

I was into marvel cards and we watched the Batman cartoon after school like most kids from the early 90s.  But as I got older, my relationship with comics changed and became more personal. 

I was dyslexic, so reading was hard for me. But comics, I could read. And I read tons of them. Punisher, spiderman, Batman, Silver Surfer and all the X title (men, factor, force)  Because of my Dyslexia I was in special Ed classes, which made you feel different from the other kids.  Comics served as an escape. I could just slip away into intergalactic battles for the Infinity gauntlet. 

 

As the movies came out and comics got popular, I hated it. Comics were something that I enjoyed almost in secrecy.  Highschool kids didn't advertise that they were reading Spiderman.... But as comics became more mainstream it suddenly wasn't just the dorks showing up at shows and shops.  It made me bitter. Like something was being taken from me. 

Having kids has helped me to reconcile that. Because of the movies they are into comics. And I can tell them the stories I grew up with, like my father did with me. 

 

Your dad sounds like mine. My dad was a WWII vet and an LAPD crime photographer. A tough dude you didn’t cross. But he had a soft side too.

My mom had bought me a cheap electric guitar and I played it every day until my fingers bleed. My dad hated hippies and rock n roll. On my 15th birthday he woke me up gruffly and told me to get into the car. Wouldn’t tell me where we were going. We pulled up at a pawn shop. In we went and he pointed to a wall. Said, “pick out the one you want”. My eyes lit on a white Stratocaster and the guy pulled it down. It played like butter. I saw them exchange some cash out off we went. I guess he saw my determination and drive.

Suprisingly, he wasn’t very strict. He let me and my brother have shoulder length hair and do what we wanted as long as we didn’t break his very few rules.

And, yes, he bought us comics behind my mom’s back from time to time.

I sure miss him. Give your dad a big hug while you still can…

[1950's war comics]

On 3/8/2023 at 7:50 AM, Gaard said:

When I got my license, I drove to Curious a few times. I remember going up to the 3rd floor to look at the comics. I stopped going after a few times - guy kept watching me like a hawk when I would go thru the back issues. Bad vibes.

i remember that too !!  back in the mid 70's was before most stores put a sign up saying "only two kids allowed in the store at one time" and justifiably so as 14-16 year old boys are prone to shoplift , 

i am sure he got ripped off many times which ruined the vibe for the young honest customers

all the good comic he kept behind the glass at the counter , i remember he had a fine X-Men #1 for $20 which was way out of my budget .....

[Gaard]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:53 AM, Robot Man said:

Your dad sounds like mine. My dad was a WWII vet and an LAPD crime photographer. A tough dude you didn’t cross. But he had a soft side too.

My mom had bought me a cheap electric guitar and I played it every day until my fingers bleed. My dad hated hippies and rock n roll. On my 15th birthday he woke me up gruffly and told me to get into the car. Wouldn’t tell me where we were going. We pulled up at a pawn shop. In we went and he pointed to a wall. Said, “pick out the one you want”. My eyes lit on a white Stratocaster and the guy pulled it down. It played like butter. I saw them exchange some cash out off we went. I guess he saw my determination and drive.

Suprisingly, he wasn’t very strict. He let me and my brother have shoulder length hair and do what we wanted as long as we didn’t break his very few rules.

And, yes, he bought us comics behind my mom’s back from time to time.

I sure miss him. Give your dad a big hug while you still can…

My dad as well....a WWII vet and a body shop owner. Also, he was buddies with many of my teachers. (that's one of those things which is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time)

Not one of my fondest memories, but I remember when I got kicked off my bike on the way to the comic shop one day, I promised myself not to tell my dad. He wasn't what you'd call a 'turn the other cheek'-kinda guy. I don't really know what he would've done, but in the mind of a teenager, it would've just made things worse. The better choice, in my mind, was to just stop going.

It'll be 22 years next week since he passed. My son never got to meet him, but he's heard all about him many, many times.