Comics, the 1990s, and me.

Comics, the 1990s, and me.

Jul 16

Good ol’ Dick Hyacinth makes a call for microhistories of comics buying in the nineties. Intrigued by his premise, and bored at work, I’m gonna give this a go.

The first comic book I remember purchasing for myself of my own free will was Justice League Europe #1, at a drugstore about five minutes from my home in South Holland, IL. This drugstore (a Rexall?) had a spinner rack and that particular issue appealed to me because I already had the notion in my mind that it would be advisable to purchase the first issue of something so that you could follow the whole story.

I was twelve or thirteen at the time; the issue is cover-dated April 1989, but it must have come out before then. It seems possible if not likely that this spinner rack had slightly older issues on it as opposed to the latest and greatest. At the same time, I recall my interest in comics being inspired largely over my excitement for the Tim Burton Batman film, which came out on June 23, 1989.

So. I was twelve. Before that, I was a vague fan of anything involving superheroes, due in large part to their dominance as corporate brands, from toys to Underoos to Saturday morning cartoons. I loved the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, but only the Spidey parts; I never watched The Hulk. I also loved the Super Powers cartoon. I had those figures and the Secret Wars toys as well.

Most memorably, when I was about four or five, my parents bought me this amazing ride-in Batmobile with a plastic toy radio and steering wheel shaped like a bat and everything. It was MIGHTY. The toy no longer survives, but photos of me gleefully sitting in it do, along with a Super 8mm film of me finding it hidden behind the Christmas tree and exclaiming in my whiny kid voice, “The Baaaaat-mobeeeeel!”

Anyway, I remember hunting desperately for issue 2 of JLE at that drugstore, before someone or something turned me on to the area’s closest comic book store, Amazing Fantasy Comics. At the time, it was located in a very tiny strip mall next to a Dominick’s grocery store in Calumet City, IL, ten to fifteen minutes from my home.

I’m not the best on specifics in terms of memories, but I do have a vivid composite recollection of stepping into that store as a young pre-adolescent–that paper smell of potential and excitement. I still get a bit of a buzz from it, to this day.

Throughout my teen years of collecting, I was basically a superhero junkie. More DC than Marvel. Way more, actually; I don’t think I consistently read any of the mainstream Marvel books, but I did do the Justice League, Batman, Green Lantern titles at DC along with others.

Because I was Mr. Issue One, I ended up picking up some esoteric, almost edgy books for a thirteen-year-old superhero nerd. I read The Shadow Strikes, the Pasko relaunch of Blackhawk, Joey Cavalierri’s Huntress, and others I can’t recall at the moment. I have all these stumpy little runs of books that started with great ballyhoo in the nineties and ended with a whimper a year or two later. Some are quite good, like the Gerard Jones/Mike Parobeck El Diablo; others aren’t.

I was very much swept up by the Image boys, especially Todd McFarlane. His Spider-Man title was a heady mix of number one (new story! no back issues!) and tittied-up, hacky splash, almost too much for a teenage boy to handle. I bought it avidly, contributed a letter that got published, and even stood in line to get his autograph at the Chicago Comicon one year (before it became Wizard World). I remember thinking myself quite clever to have him sign a random issue of Quasar for which he did the cover.

(Gosh, that looks a little ass, doesn’t it?)

Quasar was a great series–Mark Gruenwald doing cosmic. I have a bunch of issues from the beginning of its run to well into it. I also had a letter printed in that comic.

(Did anyone else have letters printed in Marvel comics and then get a copy of the paste-up board that was used to create the actual issue? This happened to me with both Quasar and Spider-Man, which is why I recall the letters so vividly; I’ve carted them around as I’ve moved from Chicago to LA to Orlando in the past three years.)

I also know I had other letters printed; I fancied myself a “letter hack” in those days, dutifully spending my Saturday nights deep in the basement with my longboxes, sometimes writing letters for every comic book I read in a given month. I still have all the letters, someplace. Now THAT would make for a fun post.

With research, I’m sure I could develop a pretty accurate history of my buying habits throughout late junior high and high school. I graduated eighth grade in 1990 and I know I collected right up until some point in my senior year of high school.

For part of high school, I had a pull list at Amazing Fantasy. However, I became grossly irresponsible about my purchasing, due in no small part to being a snot-nosed kid who couldn’t drive himself to buy comics. (Even when I could drive, I don’t recall ever driving myself to the comic book store, although I have to assume I did it at least a few times.) My dad would take me to the comic book shop every couple months and we’d haul out literally $100 to $150 worth of comics, which at the time was a very sizeable stack.

Then I switched to mail order, through Westfield Comics. Again, no exact date on that, but I remember sitting at home after school poring through their black-and-white catalog, then sheepishly bringing the form to my mother for a check.

(My parents basically bought me whatever comics I wanted through high school. They also gave me money for other forms of entertainment. In exchange, I essentially worked full-time every summer as a janitor and ended up giving them a lot of the money. I think that’s what happened, at least; details are hazy.)

I remember sending strange, wannabe-flirtatious letters to someone who worked in the mail order department at Westfield. I admit this was sad, but what can you do? I was a teenager at an all-boys Catholic school. I was not equipped to deal with women, nor was I exposed to any save Sister Joan in the Campus Ministry department. Oh, and a young spanish teacher who wore these knee-high leather boots, which we cleverly termed her “fuck-me boots.”

I’d get these big boxes in the mail from Westfield, and at some point in my senior year, I just stopped. I don’t recall a specific moment when I stopped; it just happened. This would have been 1994.

Then in college, I went through a phase where I started buying off the racks again, prompted by my intense interest in the internet and reading the Avengers mailing list. This was about my senior year, so 1997-1998. I was very into the Busiek/Perez Avengers relaunch; all those Heroes Return titles were good stuff. Again, I had pull list issues and eventually stopped after about six months of reading and buying.

At some point in the very late nineties, I went to Chicago Comics one random afternoon where my friend Eric was a manager. (I worked with his wife. They were/are maybe the coolest couple I have ever known.) He gave me a huge discount and weighed down my arms with a stack of amazing trades and graphic novels–everything from Ellis’ Authority to Castle Waiting.

And so ends my nineties–largely off the smack, but still into the occasional trade paperback.

What’s interesting, looking back at it, is how my collecting days really began at the very tail end of the spinner-rack drugstore days and the heyday of the direct market–those halcyon days of the nineties when Jim Lee could wipe his ass with a comic and it would count as a “worthwhile investment.” Then at the end there, Westfield certainly presaged the current predominance of discount mail-order services online.

I read lots of good stuff–it certainly all kept me entertained at the time–and yet, deep in the bowels of my ancestral south suburban Chicago home, I know there are seven longboxes full of…THE NINETIES.

It excites me. And terrifies me. In equal measure.