What got you into Golden Age Comics?

[adamstrange]

Mainly it was from seeing RareHighGrade's books being posted here.

FFB, I just saw your above post. I'm glad I can take partial credit for your fall into the abyss.

Will you still be saying that a year from now when he's blown all his money satisfying his GA addiction, his business is in ruins, his wife has left him, his house has been foreclosed and he's living on the streets with nothing but his shopping cart full of GA books?

 

tth2, can you clarify?

 

I read this several times but I don't really see a down-side here.

[FFB]

Mainly it was from seeing RareHighGrade's books being posted here.

FFB, I just saw your above post. I'm glad I can take partial credit for your fall into the abyss.

Will you still be saying that a year from now when he's blown all his money satisfying his GA addiction, his business is in ruins, his wife has left him, his house has been foreclosed and he's living on the streets with nothing but his shopping cart full of GA books?

 

Of course, because think of how freaking happy I'm going to be with that shopping cart!!!

[FFB]

Mainly it was from seeing RareHighGrade's books being posted here.

FFB, I just saw your above post. I'm glad I can take partial credit for your fall into the abyss.

Will you still be saying that a year from now when he's blown all his money satisfying his GA addiction, his business is in ruins, his wife has left him, his house has been foreclosed and he's living on the streets with nothing but his shopping cart full of GA books?

 

tth2, can you clarify?

 

I read this several times but I don't really see a down-side here.

 

Someone understands me.

[tth2]

Mainly it was from seeing RareHighGrade's books being posted here.

FFB, I just saw your above post. I'm glad I can take partial credit for your fall into the abyss.

Will you still be saying that a year from now when he's blown all his money satisfying his GA addiction, his business is in ruins, his wife has left him, his house has been foreclosed and he's living on the streets with nothing but his shopping cart full of GA books?

 

tth2, can you clarify?

 

I read this several times but I don't really see a down-side here.

You're right, I forgot that paper makes a great insulator.

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

Mainly it was from seeing RareHighGrade's books being posted here.

FFB, I just saw your above post. I'm glad I can take partial credit for your fall into the abyss.

Will you still be saying that a year from now when he's blown all his money satisfying his GA addiction, his business is in ruins, his wife has left him, his house has been foreclosed and he's living on the streets with nothing but his shopping cart full of GA books?

 

tth2, can you clarify?

 

I read this several times but I don't really see a down-side here.

You're right, I forgot that paper makes a great insulator.

 

Plus he can always use a GA DC (perferably a Flash comics or other lame title) to start a fire and keep warm.

[johnenock]

This one is easy for me but not as interesting as some of the other stories...Comic Book Marketplace. Especially the column "Adventures into Wierd Words". I particularly remember the all pre-code horror issue. Oh, and I liked "Scarce as Hen's Teeth". What a great mag. And don't forget that they were telling everyone about Bronze Age books since around '95.

[TheEyeSees]

Richard O'Brien's incredible 1977 The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1937-1945 is still a vivid memory for me (I remember staring at the cover scans for hours).

 

Couple that with my first trip down to locations in Los Angeles like Cherokee Books, Collectors Showcase, and Bond Street Books...and well, I was hooked on GA for life.

 

STEVE

 

FYI, anyone who is interested, Richard O'Brien's book (mentioned above) just came up on ebay:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/WOWOW-IT-IS-ALL-ABOU...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

If you don't have it, its worth it.

[Flee-Marquette]

I was in an airbase flight terminal waiting to come back to the states in 1972 and I was perusing the comics at a shoppette looking for something that I hadn't read. There was a spinner rack next to the comics that had paperback books and I noticed a bright yellow book that had comic word balloons all over it. It was "All in Color For a Dime" by Lupoff and Thompson. I wound up purchasing that and reading it on the flight. I had a vague idea that comics had existed for awhile, but seeing the pictures and reading about the Golden Age titles made me want to learn more. I couldn't afford and did not have access to older books so I wound up buying some reprint titles and books on the history of comics. I stuck with collecting silver-age but hoped to one day pick up some golden-age stuff. Flash forward to the late 80's. I had gotten rid of my collection while in college and was busy with a career, etc. While killing some time at an antique show, I found a pile of comics that were labeled "Old Comics $5 each". They looked like they were from the 50's and had funny animal and jungle covers. One particular comic just jumped out at me.

I bought it and the rest of the pile and was back into collecting comics again, this time with a golden perspective.

[Scrooge]

I'm with you John. CBM was the tipping point.

 

Growing out of the country, I've never had any opportunities to bump into a store with GA back-issues any more than I was able to see SA or BA books. Foreign stores tend to have available recent modern and select back-issues, mostly unsold stock (at least in stores not in large metropolitan areas or not in the capital (Paris, London, ...)). I've never then had a tactile relationship with the items themselves nor did I have a cultural relationship with them either.

 

Heck, it's no secret that continentals and French in particular are very culturally proud to the point of isolationism, protectionism and plain snobbery. Sure, we all know Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman but it was mostly through their celluloid form, which garners them no more attention or status than a classic Star Trek character or a classic Avengers episode. What's more is that DC bungled reprint rights in the french zone and the newsstands were dominated by Marvel reprints. While DC is and was DC, Marvel is Marvel but isn't Timely or Atlas in the same sense. There is a disconnect between the two eras for Marvel unlike DC whose history reaches back to Action 1 and 'Tec 27. This left me rather clueless about the Majors and therefore that much more about the also-rans.

 

Still, with a group of friends, Marvel was our main comic interest which faded over time as our summers got busier and busier, we couldn't find time to play D&D any more, we were no longer in the same classroom, we had different friends ... Comics became a solitary pursuit. Fast forward to 1992, a new friendship rekindled my interest of comics circa the foundation of Image. Jim Lee on the X-Men and McFarlane on Spidey all drew me back in! No more fugly reprints of Kirby's X-Men and it also allowed me to delve back into Byrne on Alpha Flight, Layton on Iron Man, Perez on the Avengers, Buscema and Alcala on Conan: these were my Golden Age.

 

Fast forward a couple years to 1995 and my coming to America with renewed interest and access! I loaded up on random back issues, saw the wealth of material actually available but a combination of humdrum story lines, multiple cross-overs and events spanning entire lines quickly sapped my energy and interest for such gimmicks. Then in 1999, and the why is lost to the mist of times, on a whim, I purchased a discounted copy of Alter Ego. It was issue # 2 which featured an interview with Jack Burnley. It was my first eye opener into the GA era. Quickly, I went back to the store and bought up all existing issues and all issues of CBM the store had. I then scrounged around the Internet to buy every issues of CBM I could find and spent a blissful summer reading through these mags. My store fortunately had the Gerber photo-journals. I traded in some books for Volume 1 and established a payment plan over a couple of weeks to buy Volume 2. And then wow If I thought CBM / CBA had opened my eyes, this was Clockwork Orange style. Where did all these books I had never heard nor seen come from? What were their history? Who's Hillman? What are Centaurs? Where Archie books really ever that different? Marvel published this!?!

 

Consider that the average comic book buyer at a store only cares for moderns and at that only about the books they buy, I was very pleased I had found CBM and Alter Ego to tell me more about the books in the Gerber guide. Michele Nolan, Pat Calhoun and our own Jon Berk never had bigger fans than me! I kept on wondering: who is this Berk guy who seems to own every obscure books ever published and not only that, knows everything about them: who published them, who drew them, what color tie they wore when drawing this issue, ... you name it, he knew it!

 

What's more, to add to the mystique of the era, here were columns about books that may or may not have been published, had been mentioned / heard of but have whose existence had not been firmly established. Talk about the New Frontier: there is research to be done and discoveries to be made. Then came out Bob's article about the "missing link" books that showcase_4 recently posted in the Which would you choose thread? I've never meant a history topic I didn't like (if well-written about). My appetite for that information grew by leaps and bounds. A quick check around though confirmed a fear: prices were high for these books. Indeed, I was checking Michael Naiman's Marketplace update not realizing that he was focusing on higher profile / higher grade books.

 

Eventually the article about the synchronic collection in CBM 62(?) came out and I thought that would be a perfect way for me to discover as many different books as possible and would also provide me with a goal and discipline in my buying since, to be honest, I was clueless as to what I should be going for? Really, how could one decide, especially, since I had no guiding hand in this. CBM articles were constantly talking about key books out of the reach a doctoral student's means about to get married.

 

Over the intervening years, since that first GA / AA purchase in July 2001, I have learned more, am still learning and discovering. I came also to believe that being a child in 1937 - 1939 must have been bliss. The country had rediscovered its eagerness to live as the economy was recovering. The fun of the jazz age came back, certainly tamed but no less evident in the cultural additions of that period. As a child, you would have been caught in the ever-expanding merchandising movement. Consider that you would read Flash Gordon's adventures in the paper, could see him on screen, soon you would also buy his stories in comic books, read his adventures big little books, buy his ship, his laser and other equipment, hear his adventures on the radio (too bad he never had a pulp). Comics have turned my eyes to that period and has allowed me to discover the wonders of pulps, old time radio, comic strip, ... from that period of rejuvenation in the history of this country. The excitement we notice so much in the nascent comics industry was evident elsewhere and provide a nice refuge at times.

 

It's been a long journey for me to get to the GA but I like where I ended. I still enjoy reading moderns and European material but the GA / AA has countless surprises still in store for me that I can look forward to discover in the next 20+ more years of fun exploring the funnies. In the end, I will place the blame of the madness fully on Gary Carter, Roy Thomas, Michele Nolan and Jon Berk.

[adamstrange]

Nifty story, Scrooge.

 

You certainly took one of the more indirect routes in becoming part of the small circle of GA collectors. One day I suspect that there will be a set of Scrooge groupies spouting the maxims and catch phrases of their guru and author of the A Month in the Life thread.