Barry Pearl's Guest Post - Tales Of The Marvel Age: Prologue...

 

This is a beginning, a preface, to a series of entrees about collecting the entire Marvel Age of Comics as they were originally published.  These entrees would be the most interesting if you too posted how you began collecting and, as we go on, your most interesting stories. One of the great reasons to post here is that while my stories take place mostly in Forest Hills, in the borough of Queens, New York, your stories will be, for me, international. 

 

 The purpose of this first post is just to give you my background, mention that I dislike comic book retailers and let you in on my second biggest lie! 

 

My journey begins with my Aunt Gussie and Uncle Leon who opened up a candy store in Woodside, Queens.  These stores are now extinct.  Upon opening, they sent me a box of goodies: candy, toys, and, on the very top, a brand-new Lois Lane comic where she was a witch!  That was Lois Lane #1, April 1958.  My brother read it to me.  The first comic I ever read was the "Caveman from Krypton" which appeared in World's Finest #102, June, 1959.

 

 

 Soon, the most important comic I read was Challengers of the Unknown #5 or so.  It would be years before I knew who Jack Kirby was but this was the comic that made me love comics.  Why?  The Superman and Batman comics of this era were mostly "gimmicked."  Superman would be old, fat, bald, blind or without powers; Lois would be a witch, fat, old, etc., Jimmy Olsen would be a turtle and Robin would seem to have died. 

 

The Challengers had adventures.  They went places, they were "living on borrowed time" and threw caution to the wind.  I loved that.  And then it stopped.  I know now that was because when Kirby left, the series lost its energy.  I began to look for similar comics and for me that was cheap and easy. 

 

Remember my aunt and uncle owned a candy store, or to me, it was a comic book library.  I went there and could spend a Saturday eating ice cream and candy and reading (and yes keeping) comics!  A hundred a month!!!!!!

 

 

So, when Fantastic Four #1 came out I began to see it often had the "Challenger's type" adventure stories in it.  (I still had no idea who Jack Kirby was.)  It also had personal story arcs that took time to develop.  Except for the Justice League, most DC comics, at that time, had two or three stories in each issue.  Marvel had one full-length story where the story and the characters could be fully developed.  DC also had fillers, short stories that were very plot originated.  Marvel eliminated those.  In their anthology titles (Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales) Marvel had double features.  Their tales were most often continued so the stories and characters could be advanced.

 

 I didn't ignore DC, I read all their comics for a decade.  However, I kept the Marvels because, frankly, I enjoyed re-reading them more, especially the stories that took a few issues to tell.  I should mention that I lived, with my family, in a small apartment, and did NOT have room for every comic I read, so I just kept the Marvels.  My aunt and uncle closed the store about 1970 and both soon passed, but I kept collecting... about 6,000 comics it total.  I had begun to write a book on this era, featuring a description and credits for every single one of those comics. 

 

I stopped collecting in 1978 and had packaged up all my comics, in plastic bags and in cartons, as there were no comic boxes then.  I stored them for nearly a quarter of a century before getting back to them.  More on that later. 

 

 

Having the complete Marvel Age in my home has led several companies, including Marvel, Taschen, Pulp Publications, Tomorrows, Alter Ego, Abrams ComicArts and many others, to use scans from my collection and to have me write about them. 

 

Along with Nick Caputo, Michael J. Vassallo and Roy Thomas, I co-wrote Taschen's huge 75 Years of Marvel (and their Stan Lee book) where they used a huge amount of my scans and they allowed us in an acknowledgment section to list the people who had recently helped us with the book.  If you get a copy, you will see that I listed my Aunt and Uncle who were long gone.  Here's my second biggest lie:  My niece wanted a copy of the expensive book and so I asked Taschen to send one to Gussie and Leon, care of my niece, so that she could get one. 

 

When she got the Taschen package it dawned on me that I got My Aunt and Uncle's first box of comics with their names on it and she would get their last box with their names on it, 65 years later. 

 

Thank you Aunt Gussie and Uncle Leon.  You would be so happy to see what you started.

Posted in: Cartoons