Mr. Joseph Mallozzi, @BaronDestructo on X Weblog. Josephmallozzi.com
I mentioned penning a short account of the period. First of all, thank you on behalf of everyone who is completely enjoying the offerings you are putting up on the history of Comic Books. Its bringing back many memories for many many people.
Since I refuse to give the richest man in the world 15 bucks a moth to post longer articles and still be shadow banned….I have to send to you this way. Thank you again. Tom
NOTE: For those of you not familiar with Mr Mallozzi, he is the ex writer, show runner, chief bottle washer for many Science Fiction television series such as the Stargate franchise. He is also currently the creator of the hottest Sy Fi thing anywhere. #Amalgaverse.
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You have done quite the bit of work presenting a wide collection of comic book historical material lately. A lot of it with just the right sense of humor. I thought I would spend a moment and jot down some notes from the period of roughly 1960 – 1963 or so.
During those early years of the chaotic 1960s decade I was a snot nosed bike riding, baseball card collecting, and yes…..comic book fanatic. The target market. Along with virtually every other kid my age. Well, the boys anyway, And there were a whole bunch of us little skinned kneed cavity prone boomers running around,….let me tell you.
Before we hit that magic date of 1960, I think its important to share a bit of what shaped us.
The comics I remember through the 1950s were all the odd things that somehow fell into your hands. Mostly the kinds of things that would appeal to our fathers. Batman, Superman….etc. Oh, wait, I forgot. The Mummy. He was everywhere. We weren’t all that interested. Batman was sort-of-cool, but not really.
Hollywood was busy pushing the Wolfman, Dracula, and Frankenstien, They were everywhere. Comic books, models that we put together and painted, halloween costumes, all out blitz for what everyone thought we wanted to consume. Or more correctly, what they wanted us to consume.
Mothers didn’t work. I can’t remember a single Mom that did. They tended to the kids and raised the family. The moms of the time were very education oriented. They wanted us to read. Anything! Just read.
There were comics. Easy to bring home. After all, moms went to the grocery store every week. Spending 25 cents was doable on a regular basis and the comics were always by the check out counter. Sort of. Sort of. Ill get to that later.
Then as now, grocery store space near a check stand was limited. The moms bought what was handy. What they knew. Superman, Batman, Archie, the comics of the 30s ;and 40s. What they were familiar with.
“Gee thanks mom”…..we all said. We were good polite kids, even at an early age. Most of the comics got a quick glance over, and that was about it. Nobody was talking about any of them in school, or sitting around a tree house discussing the Green Lantern. No.
There was one more family dynamic at play. The Fathers! Our fathers, most all of them were WWII veterans. They didn’t talk a lot about it, but it shaped them. They also went through the Great Depression. 10 cents was 10 cents. Reading comic books, buying comic books was a complete waste of time and money. You should be out going door to door trying to mow lawns or something.
They did, however, mostly….have a very keen interest in science fiction. Perhaps it was what was left over from their own childhoods, maybe the never ending Hollywood feeding of nuclear themed television and movie sy fi horror, I don’t know. I do remember there always being the Amazing Astounding Tales type of anthology magazines/books on the reading stand next to his chair. Those periodicals were on the reading stands of my friends fathers as well. We didn’t touch them much.
Fathers of the time weren’t the huggy feely type you see in the old TV reruns. They would talk about Science Fiction though. It was good rare “Dad time”. If The Blob, or some cheesy Giant Ant movie made its way on TV. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman comes to mind. “Harry…..Harry”.
This was the backdrop us 50s kids grew up in. What we didn’t realize is the effect the changing culture was having on us. We were rebellious little shits. We didn’t want Archie and Jughead, we didn’t want Superman contemplating his moral code. Re skinned villains, re skinned themes. POW! BANG! CURSE YOU!. Ho hum…. we wanted reality. We wanted more.
What our parents and Hollywood were feeding us was appreciated, but not hitting us. The artwork was dull, the themes adult, the dialog written by and for a generation or two above us.
We soldiered on through the decade…..and then 1959-1960 hit. ( Insert Link Wray’s Rumble about here).
Everything changed.
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I said we would get to the better selection. Comics were 10-12 cents. Mostly. Grocery stores had small selections. They just weren’t all that into it. They stocked magazines for adults. Mostly Redbook, Good House Keeping, Readers Digest type things. Their customers were stay at home moms. The selection and shelf space was devoted to them…..the ones putting things in the cart.
We kids were getting older. We had bikes now!. We could get around. They didn’t have what we consider 7-11 type stores or gas stations that sold anything other than gas and oil.
What we did have, however, were good local small stores tucked out in the neighborhoods. Usually run by Chinese immigrants, at least in the No California area where I was at the time.
Its been over sixty years for me, but I can draw that store perfectly in my mind.
You walked in, past two long aisles and the owner or his wife at a raised counter, turned right and back at the end of the aisles was a massive comic book section. Two large displays taller than six feet and a good 6 feet wide. Each.
The newer comics in front and down low, of course, and stuffed behind them older issues.
There was everything. Sure sure….the old Superman Batman junk, we didn’t want that stuff. We wanted Spiderman! We wanted the Fantastic Four! We wanted all of it….and Marvel had our number.
What made it different? Why did we flock to this new brand of Super Heroes?
First of all, they weren’t heroes at all. Ok, ya, sort of, but they were flawed. They weren’t preachy, they weren’t a Leave it to Beaver episode that always had to have the moral hook at the end of the show.
The Comics hitting the shelves featured regular guys trying to do the right thing, but only if it didn’t get in the way of other stuff. You know, the important stuff. Like girls, or taking down a bully that had it coming. But enough about Spiderman. To me, and a lot of others, if many tree house discussions are taken into consideration, the Fantastic Four hit home the hardest.
Talk about flawed heroes. These guys would all be in therapy in 2026 and so Zanexed out not much would be going on in the way of world saving.
Poor Thing, Poor Reed, Poor Flame. You just know Sue Storm was a day drinker. Its a wonder they were able to get out of bed in the morning. But they did.
All of them. The Hulk? Talk about not being happy with having a super power. And it just goes on and on.
They were regular guys and gals, facing regular day to day life. Morals were fungible, relatable stories.
The artwork was bright, colorful. The dialogue up with the times. The stories crafted to include current goings on with thought actually being put into the science fiction aspect. Death Ray?….pfffft. How about a Cross Dimensional Manipulation Beam that rips your image leaving you wishing for the quick release of a Death Ray! Curse you Dimensional Manipulation Beam Master!
Marvel had their finger on it alright
Now here was the problem. Reading this today, you are thinking “wow, 12 cents, that was nothing…they could get all that stuff”.
Dream on bucko. I think at the time I had an allowance of 25 cents a week. That was about normal. Kids didn’t have any money. Our work around was collecting bottles off the side of the road. 3 to 5 cents apiece. Let me tell you. From every direction. Through every back street. Every ditch along the road….there wasn’t a bottle to be found after us kids hit the streets. You could get 25 cents easy. In only a couple of hours work.
And it all went to the Chinese Store. All of it.
That worked fine for me and my brothers. For a while that is. I mean we had other needs. Candy, soda, etc.
It was different back then. As a 10 year old with a bike, I was employable by the local newspaper. A paperboy could make a good $15 dollars a month. Today the thought of a kid riding around knocking on strangers doors to collect money, scooting down dark alley at dusk throwing papers would bring out the pearl clutchers. Lets twist the knife a bit. WE DIDN’T WEAR HEADGEAR EITHER.
I was rich. Tired, but rich. Thats just the route I went. You could do the same mowing lawns at a dollar a lawn. Other things. We all had jobs. Nobody gave us anything.
Its hard to relate the scale of the amount most of us amused during that period of time. Boxes and boxes full. Neatly organized. We were’t collectors, we were buying what we liked.
We were starved for content. Having grown up with nothing but Captain Kangaroo, Sharri Lewis and Lamb Chop, and gulp….the Mickey Mouse Club for TV offerings. You’re damn right we were rebelling!
This continued through this critical period of development, the golden years of comic books for us boomers. Through 1963. I stop it there as a critical re alignment happened.
Star Trek hit in 1964. Science Fiction ruled the day. IMO, its never let go.
We were all becoming teenagers about that time. Girls started looking better, we started caring about our clothes. (See girls above). Comics were still quite cherished, but nobody was hanging out in tree houses anymore. The faucet just sort of switched off. What switched on, were Science Fiction paperbacks. Remember that reading stand of our fathers I mentioned earlier?
Star Trek brought dads back in the living room and the books came out. Where we kids had boxes of the comics, dads had boxes of old science fiction material. It was a great time. The NASA orbital flights were firing off, television and the movies were pumping out quality science fiction that wasn’t all 1950s guys in jeeps tearing out of the hills screaming “run…the giant ants are coming”. It was getting sophisticated. Thought provoking.
Personally, I don’t remember looking in my massive comic collection of boxes after about 1964. Certainly not through high school. Eventually I got a draft number and enlisted in the Air Force to stay ahead of the draft.
Interesting to me, at least, it was in the service …..sitting around day rooms etc, that some of the guys would talk about comics. Some even still reading certain ones. You don’t really have anything to do during down time, so I started reading what was laying around. I sort of was looking forward to getting back to the states and eventually maybe even looking through my old collection. Hundreds of them. Nostalgia.
It was 1975 when I got out. I remember the conversation clearly. “ Hey mom, where are my old boxes of comic books and baseball cards?”
“Oh, I threw those all away when you left home.”
Ya….I know…..I know.
Yes, a lot of this is pure nostalgia. Singular experience. It was pretty typical though for us 50s kids and the explosion of Marvel Comics.
Marvel also did something brilliant. Stan Lee would talk to us kids every month in the back of the comics. They would put letters from the readers. They made a community out of it. Talk about the future, all sorts of stuff. It made us feel like we were a part of something. Something D.C. never could get right. Even today, Ill skip over what ever they put out movie wise. No connection. They blew us off as kids, and that carried into adulthood.
For those of you reading this, what sounds like an old man’s ramblings on a fairly obscure subject of no importance….you are right.
There are those that are interested in the history of this period, to that end I wanted to jot down some reflections. We will all be gone soon enough.
There are keepers of the history like Joseph Mallozzi out there and I hope this look back is of interest to them.
