Volume 1, Issue 1:  A Long Time Ago From A Hospital Bed Far, Far Away………..

My love of comics began as the result of a somewhat traumatic childhood event.  I was seven years old in July of 1978 and my Saturday morning started like previous Saturday mornings.  I was up at the crack of dawn, a large bowl of Count Chocula cereal was ready to be devoured and the ritual of watching Saturday morning cartoons was ready to commence.  As I was watching  All-New Super Friends Hour, The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour, Land of the Lost, and reruns of Space Ghost and the Heruculoids I started to feel out of sorts.  My malaise started with a temperature that seemed to steadily increase as the morning wore on.  While my temperature was increasing my neck started to really ache and I had a hard time moving my hips and legs, my sensitivity to the sunlight became extremely uncomfortable.  My mom wanted to get me off the floor, my usual location while watching cartoons, and onto the couch but I could not move.  I was in really bad shape.  I remember my mom carrying me out to the car to take me to the hospital and the spinal tap and vomiting during a CAT scan, but not much else until  I regained consciousness in my hospital bed.  I had IV’s in my arm and I was really disoriented and scared.  My mom told me that I had an infection and had to stay in the hospital for a while.  The infection turned out to be spinal meningitis and I needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital.  I was miserable, scared, sick and bedridden.

So where do the comics come in?  My mom ended up bringing me a huge stack of comic books to help me pass the time.  Up to this point in time I was not a big comic book reader, I had read Spider-Man, Justice League of America, and a few others, but over the few weeks I was in the hospital and rereading these comics my love for the medium had been set in motion.  Out of this stack of comics there were a quite a few that I was constantly rereading, and would later have a profound influence on the types of comic books that I would later collect.

Conan the Barbarian #88:  Writer: Roy Thomas  Illustrators: John Buscema & Ernie Chan

I love, love, love pulp fantasy and science fiction and this is where is all started.  My discoveries of the works of  Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fritz Leiber, Phillip K. Dick and others, I owe to this comic.  The issue itself is nothing spectacular but it was nothing like I had ever seen before.  Swords, magic, evil sorcerers and Conan exclaiming “Crom!” while kicking the bad guys butts.  My seven-year old self couldn’t get enough.

Machine Man #4: Writer: Jack Kirby   Illustrator: Jack Kirby

     Machine Man was something completely different and what made it different was the art.  What can be said about Jack Kirby that has already been said?  Kirby is a genius plain and simple.  I love his backgrounds and depictions of machines.

Machine Man is offbeat science fiction and what I like about it is how Kirby weaves his worldview into his stories.  Machine Man is not the greatest of Kirby’s creations but it is one of mine.

Star Wars #13:  Writer: Archie Goodwin   Illustrators: Carmine Infantino & Terry Austin

     Star Wars may be the first comic that I somewhat officially collected.  I would beg my mom each time we went to the store if I could get this comic, if they had it.  I was, and still am, a huge Star Wars fanboy (I hate that term) and totally geek out when people talk about it.  The previous summer I had gone and seen the movie with my dad and younger brother and I was hooked.  Everything after that was all about Star Wars.  I mean everything.  For me the Star Wars comic was just a continuation of the movie and that was awesome.

Batman #301  Writer: David V. Reed   Illustrators: John Calnan & Tex Blaisdell

I have a love/hate relationship with Batman(more on this later).  As a kid I loved him.  I grew up watching the 60’s t.v. show and Batman comics were also bought every so often, so I had a decent stack of them at home already.  I was Batman for Halloween a few times, I had Batman toys, clothes………I think you get the idea.  I was obsessed.  The only thing I was more obsessed about at the time was Star Wars, with Batman a close second.

The House of Secrets #151  Writer: Various   Illustrator: Various

I had never seen a comic like this before.  There were no super heroes, spaceships, Wookies, and the bad guys were really creepy and the “good guys” didn’t win.  This comic scared the bejeebers out of me and I have been hooked on horror comics since.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heros #241 Writer: Paul Levitz   Illustrator: James Sherman

Superheros in space!!  Sign me up.  I remember being a little confused about Superboy not being Superman and if this is the future why he was still a boy.  That little oversight didn’t really matter much.  The Legion had really cool powers and the Death Star was in this issue (not really the Death Star but close enough).

SGT Rock #318  Writer: Robert Kanigher   Illustrator: Joe Kubert

Sgt. Rock, Bulldozer, Ice Cream Soldier, Wildman, Little Sure Shot and the rest of Easy Company was another genre of comic that I had never experienced.  Taking on the Nazi’s and shooting down airplanes with M1 Garands and Thompson submachine guns.  This comic was non-stop action!

To top it all off, there was dinosaurs in a story that Sgt. Rock told his men to keep their moral up before they fought the elite SS troops coming their way.  Then there was the art.  Joe Kubert is another of my all time favorite artists.

I still have the majority of these comics in my collection.  Some have no covers, a few have been colored in, panels cut out and few have been read so many times that they literally disintegrated.  I have replaced some and built collections around them.  What my seven-year-old self did not know was how important these comics would be to me as an adult. I didn’t really start collecting comics right then and there, that would happen a few years later but the seeds had been planted.

I have this ongoing love affair with comics. I love talking about them, reading about them, and discovering that next great story or favorite artist.  I’m not a DC or Marvel guy, or like super heros more than sci-fi, I just enjoy a good story.  And when I read a good story I feel like that seven year old me laying in that hospital bed discovering something amazing for the first time.  Comic books are just as an indigenous American art form as jazz music is in my opinion.  They have been influenced and influence our society and culture on many levels.  Our hopes, desires, fantasies, and fears have been depicted in this medium as social trends in America have changed.  They are like mythology.

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