Speaking of Savage Tales #1 ...

[dan bailey]

(it was referred to in passing in the Obscure Characters &, just now by yours truly, Classic Comics You're Purchased Recently threads) ... What's the big freaking deal about it, anyway? Even as a kid it, & maybe the couple of ishes after that, were pretty much Holy Grail stuff for collectors, & unlike a lot of then-recent releases in that category in the '70s (Howard the Duck #1, anybody?) it's still apparently as hard to find as hen's teeth & seems to be priced accordingly when it's in stock at all.

At the time, I seem to recall the title kept getting delayed or even cancelled, then revived. Did Marvel print only a comparatively small number of copies? Did the Maggia-controlled distribution system reject the company's attempt to establish a foothold in the b&w market? Was Jim Warren behind it all?

Expiring minds want to know!

[scratchie]

Well, issue 2 came out 2 1/2 years after issue 1, so it doesn't sound like issue 1 was setting any sales records.

[Scott Shaw!]

I think it got very poor distribution and those outlets that got it didn't quite know where to display it. Since it wasn't a horror magazine, many dealers put it with their "men's sweat" mags.

San Diego didn't receive the first issue of SAVAGE TALES at all, which is strange because, at the time, the city was one of the country's prime areas to try out new products of all kinds. (Ever hear of "King Smedley's Beer", for instance?) Anyway, I actually took my life in my hands and went out to the local magazine distributor to see if I could buy copies for myself and all of my pals. They looked at me like I was insane; they never carried it at all!

I think I finally came by my copy by driving up to one of the big comic shops in Los Angeles.

Aloha,

Scott!

P.S.: About the same time as SAVAGE TALES, I drew a story for an underground comic called SAVAGE HUMOR! -- SS!

[Allan Harvey]

Well, issue 2 came out 2 1/2 years after issue 1, so it doesn't sound like issue 1 was setting any sales records.

I spoke to Roy Thomas about that a couple of years ago for an article I was writing. He said: "Savage Tales was a failure because Marvel feared to push to have it displayed with Code-approved comics. We heard it was kept out of Canada. Martin Goodman [Marvel's publisher] had never wanted to do it in the first place, and seems to have looked for an excuse to pull the plug."

[Lone Ranger]

A few years ago, I bought a big box of Marvel b&w magazines from a local buyer. It was a steal as I paid $15 for nearly 40, mostly horror, mags.

It included a copy of Savage Tales #1 - sadly, it was the 80s version.



Not quite the same thing.

[Cherokee Jack]

A few years ago, I bought a big box of Marvel b&w magazines from a local buyer. It was a steal as I paid $15 for nearly 40, mostly horror, mags.

It included a copy of Savage Tales #1 - sadly, it was the 80s version.

http://www.pegasus.dk/uploads/pegasus_200/033147dgagun.jpg

Not quite the same thing.


But not entirely a bad magazine. You had early Nam stories, Goodwin/Severin, Trimpe drawing airplanes. Gray Morrow, Sam Glanzman, Goodwin/Mayerik, and more Severin with other writers, including (I think) Bob Kanigher.

But you also got Chuck Dixon and those godawful covers.

[CaptChucky]

I spoke to Roy Thomas about that a couple of years ago for an article I was writing. He said: "Savage Tales was a failure because Marvel feared to push to have it displayed with Code-approved comics. We heard it was kept out of Canada. Martin Goodman [Marvel's publisher] had never wanted to do it in the first place, and seems to have looked for an excuse to pull the plug."
That was a shame, as it was a good comic. This allowed Marvel to publish outside of the Code, which I think was a good thing. But for people working in the business then, it was probably still a little too close to the Wertham era, and paranoia probably kept them on the safe side.

[MDG]

I spoke to Roy Thomas about that a couple of years ago for an article I was writing. He said: "Savage Tales was a failure because Marvel feared to push to have it displayed with Code-approved comics...."
Interesting, since Warren had been on the stands for 6 or 7 years at this point, and Myron Fass's crap was also out there. I seem to remember that these were displyed with 4-color comics (unless the comics were on a spinner).

I wonder if this lines up with the time when Aurora's Monster Scenes mode; series--which included Vampirella--was pulled off shelves?

MDG

[Allan Harvey]

Around that time, Warren was doing very badly. The magazines were dominated by reprints and shoddy production. James Warren was less-than thrilled to hear about Marvel's plans to move into "his territory". DC failed spectacularly with their own magazines (Spirit World and In the Days of the Mob), so Marvel were forced to tread carefully and it took a few years -- and the loss of Goodman -- for them to fully commit to a B&W magazine line.

[dan bailey]

Around that time, Warren was doing very badly. The magazines were dominated by reprints and shoddy production.


Hmmm ... not really, though that would have been true a year earlier. The GCD shows Savage Tales #1 as cover-dated 5/71; Twomorrows' invaluable (at least in my horror-loving household) Warren Companion index says Creepy had stopped running reprints (for the first time in 16 issues) with #32, cover-dated 4/70, a month after Eerie did the same with #26 (which looks to have been the 2nd issue of the mag I ever bought, fact fans).

[Rob Allen]

And Skywald started publishing b&w magazines with one dated 12/70. They had some 50s reprints at the very beginning but soon dropped them. Savage Tales #1 had some good company on the newsstands of early 1971.

[InfoBroker]

... and Savage Tales #1 predates DC's Kirby magazines by several months.

-jb the no-so-savage ib-

[Allan Harvey]

And Skywald started publishing b&w magazines with one dated 12/70. They had some 50s reprints at the very beginning but soon dropped them. Savage Tales #1 had some good company on the newsstands of early 1971.

B&W magazines were probably just an idea whose time had come. Marvel had dipped its toe in the water a couple of years earlier with the first Spectacular Spider-Man mag (though the second was in colour). They were not happy when Sol Brodsky left to form Skywald, and Savage Tales #1 may have been, at least in part, a reaction to that; a kind of, "Well, if he's doing it, we have to." Savage Tales's less than sterling peformance on the stands, and DC's failure with the Kirby books, combined with a reluctance on Martin Goodman's part, all contributed to the delay between issue 1 and 2.

[Lone Ranger]

Last night, I was reading Where Monsters Dwell #23, cover dated October 1973.

Inside there is a half page ad stating something along the lines of 'Back By Popular Demand' or 'Because You Demanded It' - whatever the Marvel hyperbole of the time was, Savage Tales #2.

I don't know whether or not there was actually a ton of reader demand (especially if no one saw #1), but they obviously were trying to push the 2nd issue.

It was also mentioned in that month's Bullpen Bulletin.

I'll try to remember to scan the ad.

[InfoBroker]

I've been racking my brain cells for several days trying to remember the exact month that I procured my copy of Savage Tales #1.

Yes it has a cover date of May 1971, but I can't recall if it was Feb or Mar of 1971 that I noticed it on the stands. Either way, it was a warm day for that time of year in the Quads, specifically Davenport. I remember the sun, the windows being down on my high school art teacher's station wagon as we travelled (mysteriously?) down Locust Street on an errand of some sort. It included stopping in Northwest Pharmacy, but again I don't remember why.

Keep in mind, I am not actively collecting comics in this time frame, I am on what I now deem a sabbatical, but at the time I thought that my detachment was something more. The important thing to note is that I am not actively seeking comics, even though I am still reading several fanzines mainly because their subscriptions were still active.

Also, in this timeframe, comic books were suffering a massive distribution reduction. Bob Cosgrove (editor of Champion fanzine) and Martin Greim (editor of Comic Crusader fanzine) described it best when they said somewhere in one of their issues "that comic book racks seemed liked they were gasping for breath"

I mention this because Northwest Pharmacy did not have comic books racks, but they did have a very extensive magazine display. They were a very well-sized store, sharing street space with a major bank building, and a handful of other stores on a very prominent, very business oriented corner, designed for car access more than pedestrian.

So while my art teacher did his errand, I hung near the front of the store and browsed the magazine rack. Lo and behold, I spotted three copies of Savage Tales #1 enjoying very nice eye level rack space right next to a couple of Warren titles. At the time I wasn't even aware of Marvel pushing for another black and white title, heck I didn't even know current issue numbers of their color line, or that Jack's Third World comics were already on the racks. But I did know Conan, and I did know the Marvel staff. So I grabbed one of the issues, mainly out of curiosity.

I was immediately intrigued by the "rated M for mature reader" label and said to myself, that it was good to see Stan (and Roy and the Bullpen) still striving to broaden the range of comics as a medium. It really was a big item in that timeframe.

I browsed the title, wasn't too thrilled that "M" merely meant nudity, but because of the Barry Smith artwork I purchased the comic and headed out to the car.

I took it home, read the Conan tale, "The Frost Giant's Daughter" and compared it to a fan's version that had been done in Star-Studded Comics a couple of years earlier. Barry's had more polish, the character's stayed on-page visually, but overall the fan version compared very nicely in terms of pacing, layout and other visual storytelling devices.

Except for the extra cleavage on display, the other tales (Kazar, Femizons, Man-Thing) seemed like typical Marvel color comic adventures. I enjoyed them for the most part, but I didn't feel that the stories broke the kind of ground that I thought a more adult comic should be striving to reach.

A few months later I would be back in the thick of monthly comic searching and purchasing, but for now, this magazine seemed a curiosity piece of sorts. Nice, but nothing earth shattering.

From a distribution standpoint, the availability of Savage Tales #1 seems to suggest (as always in that time frame) that sales depended on the particular distributor. In the Quads we had two major ones; Interstate Books on the Iowa side, and Readmore Bookworld on the Illinois side. My particular experience was an example of distribution that allowed for browser, casual reader access. That three copies were so "up-front" and prominently on display might have been driven by a fellow fan placing them there (I use to do this all the time), but however they got so lucky, the driving factor is that they were on the racks to jostle with other magazines for attention and potential purchase.

It should be noted that the decision to cancel Savage Tales #1 would have had little if anything to do with actual sales. The cancel call came long before they had time to see full sales figures. I'm pretty sure other factors had heavier influence, the biggest being that Marvel was playing games with the size and price of their color comics line, and juggling schedules to meet those changes. Most (if not all of the finished pages anyway) of what had originally intended to be the contents of Savage Tales #2 were repackaged into the color comics titles, in particular Conan #12, Astonishing Tales #9 for the Kazar tale (which since it was already finished, in retrospect, there is no particular surprise this was the first Marvel Comic on the racks after Marvel dropped the price to twenty cent and shrunk the page count back to 36. Ironically there was no mention as to why the editorial changes took effect until the next month's bulletin's page, and those weren't exactly informative), and Astonishing Tales #12 for the Man-Thing story. All three comics did some hasty pen and brushwork to adjust the cleavage for comics code approval.

The decision to publish Savage Tales #1 in the first place is interesting to me. I think lots of factors came into play. Back in 1968, having just been sold to Cadence, Marvel hade a solid magazine distribution system that was a factor in them pursuing Spectacular Spider-man (the Magazine) in 1968. Overall declining sales tabled that option. In 1969, the sales figures for the early Conan color comics (high), the desire and need to tell certain Conan tales unhindered by the comics code, Roy and several other creators hopes to tell tales with more pages, a higher price point for a comic allowing for a higher per unit return to the distributor, are some of the many reasons that come to my mind.

Items mentioned by others about it being a solo magazine probably table ideas of revitalizing anytime soon, even after seeing whatever the sales figures indicated. But I think both Roy and Stan wanted to try again, once they had staff and sales that would allow for the launch of an entire line.

The early to mid 70s was an interesting growth period for magazine-sized comic books. Warren shifted out of their total reprint period, starting with the première of Vampirilla. In 1971 Skywald had their three books and in the news racks, all these B&W comics formatted magazines tended to be easy to find and in consistent places, usually grouped together, sometimes near the Mad/Cracked/Sick titles. Except for whatever reason, Jack Kirby's two magazines. I visited a lot of racks in the summer of 1971, and these two were scarce, either not on display, or in display in the strangest part of the newsrack (yes I moved them). Only at Readmore Bookworld did I find them in a logical and very visible space. About two dozen of them in fact, on the eye-level shelf, right about the big pile of Mad Magazines, which alway had 75-100 copies in one big pile right on the lower extended self at the bottom.

In 1973 when Marvel launched their B&W line, they included Savage Tales featuring Conan, along with their intial 3 horror books. There was concern about the S&S book, and as Scott! alluded to, due to the art design of the second incarnation of Savage Tales #2, Marvel noticed that it was indeed being displayed in the “Men’s” magazine section on several racks in the New York (and I presume other) areas. They mentioned this in the letter’s pages of issue #3 when they announced that Savage Tales was once again going on hiatus while Marvel waited for sales figures to come in.

Over all this time period, the popularity of Conan was growing. Even though there was a slight dip after the initial issues that put Conan back on bi-monthly status for a handful of issues, by the time Savage Tales #2 and 3 were distributed, the comic and its creative staff were the recipients of several Shazam awards, and sales were pushing the Conan title into the upper echelons of Marvel’s titles. I have memory of reading somewhere that at one point, only Amazing Spider-man, Fantastic Four and Avengers were outselling it.

Irony of irony, once the sales figures for Savage Tales #2 and 3 were tallied, not only had they done well, they actually outsold any of the three horror B&Ws. By the spring of 1974, when Marvel was once again experimenting with comic book sizes and page counts, they launched not only the re-return of Savage Tales, they also put Savage Sword on the schedule, a included Giant-Size Conan comic to appear quarterly with the regular 36 page monthly Conan comic.

So while it wasn’t an impossible comic to find, compared to the timing and demand of the later issues, Savage Tales #1 just didn’t have the distribution penetration (which includes collectors buying doubles). In many ways, not unlike comparing Marvel’s 1965-68 sales figures to their 1961-63 ones.


Not a bad time to be a fan of the Hyborian Age at all.

-jb the "boy do my two sons wish I had grabbed the other two copies" ib-

[Kirk G]

Ironically, I am reminded of my quest for Avengers #88, volume 1.

The book never arrived in the mid-west state of Michigan when it was published. Also, I have recently learned that some dealers/collectors had attempted to corner the market on copies of the Kree-Skrull War (as it came out initially, before it had a name) and on the first appearances of Orion in New Gods #1.

It wasn't until years later that I put these to factoids together and realized what had happened. Someone who had heard that Roy Thomas was starting a major arc in Avengers attempted to invest by "buying up a shipment" destined for the mid-west.

Actually, I think the issue that he SHOULD have been looking for was the arrivial of Neal Adams on the title... approximately #93, wasn't it? Certainly #93 with the "Journey into Center of the Android" was one of the more important aspects of this run.

Do you agree?

[Sir Tim Drake]

Unfortunately, I think the issue that he SHOULD have been looking for was the arrivial of Neal Adams on the title... approximately #92, wasn't it? Certainly #93 with the journey into the Android was the more important of this run.

I think #93 was the first Neal Adams issue, although #92 had a cover by Adams.

[InfoBroker]

Avengers #93 was a somewhat difficult comic to find on the newsracks of Davenport, Iowa in the hot summer month of August 1971 when it first came out.

Not because of some maniacal plot, but because I had just converted about a dozen of my high school art friends onto comics, and they gravitated immediately to Neal Adams. (It took another month or so to get them to read News Gods and Kirby, but once they did they were hooked). A couple of us had our nice shiny new driver's licenses, and we hit several "racks" until we all had copies of this Avengers, Conan #11, New Gods #5 amidst all the other 52 big page comical wonders that we grabbed that month.

I was still on my comic book sabbatical when Avengers #88 came out, but several of us found copies of it in second hand bookstores (thanks again to our new mobility with driving). I was hunting this one down specifically because I had learned that Harlan Ellison had worked with Roy on the story.

In my early months of first collecting (summer 1966), I learned very quickly that if you weren't at the newsrack on the Tuesday when the comics were distributed to the various grocery stores, bookstores and drug stores, the chances of finding Marvel comics were next to null and not at all.

Later I discovered that the best place for me to go on those Tuesdays was the local distributor's own store, in this case Interstates Books which was about 8 blocks from my junior high school, and over two miles from home. Once I knew the monthly release pattern for Marvel's 9 super-hero titles (Thor the first or second Tuesday of the month, along with war, western and Millie/Patsy comics that I wasn't collecting, and the other 8 the following week), I could even pester a clerk if a title was missing and they would head into the back room and pull another handful to put on the rack. At least when they could find them and it wasn't too busy.

This pattern held until Marvel broke their distribution with DC and were handled by their new owners, Cadence. After that, every Tuesday had 4-6 new Marvel comics on the rack, and the rack time for a Marvel Comic (at least at the bigger racks) increased from a few days to a few weeks or more depending on the title.

But that didn't mean that some issues weren't harder to find than others, and during my pre-driving days. it meant lots of walking and searching. One of the hardest to find for me was Avengers #58 - Even an Android Can Cry. When 59 appeared on the racks I knew I was in trouble, and when I told my mom of my plight, she drove me across the river to downtown Rock Island and we parked in front of a store called Read More Book World. This, as it turned out, was the largest bookstore in the area, they had a solid wall of out of town newspapers, and six giant comic spinners loaded with comics at the the back of the store. They also had a giant-sized poster of Spider-man behind their cash register area. It was the same Ditko Spidey pose on the poster that Marvel sold on their Bullpen Page, only this one was bigger (over 8 feet), and it said "To my friendly neighborhood Retailer, from the Amazing Spider-man" off to the right side of Spidey.

Two of the racks were loaded with current Marvel comics, and half of another rack had Marvel polybags, each with four Marvel comics for 47 cents (Saved a whole penny!). I discovered that these had slightly older comics of one or two months. I found the bagged set with my much desired Avengers #58 and grabbed three of them. I also grabbed all the new Marvels that hadn't yet been distributed on the Iowa side of the river. I later learned that Readmore, being the retailer, would rack their store on Saturday with the comics that would be distributing around the area the following Tuesday.

Guess where I use to hang out a few years later when I could do my own driving.

Circa the summer of 1973, right there in the aisles of Readmore, I finally got to meet Alan Light, publisher of Comics Buyer Guide. We had exchanged a lot of mail in the 1969-70 timeframe when he was publishing All Dynamic. It was nice to finally chat with him face to face. He was there to pick up the Neal Adam's Batman comic, and I was their grabbing that and tons of other comics. I learned that Alan was very selective about his comic purchases, and by comparison had a very lean collection.

Me, I needed lots of reading material to keep me going, and in this timeframe I was buying a couple dozen comics every week. I was also trying to do my bit to keep comics that I liked on the newsrack. This meant that with certain titles, I was buying LOTS of doubles. When OMAC #1 was disributed, I grabbed every single copy that was racked at Interstate. This was about ten, maybe fifteen copies. As I took them to the register, I spotted someone in line behind me, also holding a stack of comics. When I spotted him looking in grief at all my copies of OMAC, I asked him if he needed one (or more) and gave him two of mine when he said he did. I told him what I mentioned above, "it wasn't a plot to corner a market or anything, I just wanted comics that I like to sell well so they would still be around."

One of the other things I learned while hanging around Readmore was that a LOT of paper material that was dropped at their store (which was also their warehouse), never made it onto their trucks. The boxes would be opened, a portion that they felt they could handle (and hopefully would sell) would be seperated for delivery. The rest would sit in the back rooms, perhaps to be used with a later shipment (if there was room or to round out a light week), and maybe sometimes if there was increased demand. But as much as a third, and perhaps with some publishers even more, would sit in that backroom waiting until it came time to rip the title section from the cover to send back to the publisher for credit, and shred the rest of the comic, or paperback book, or magazine or newspaper.

Such was the days of comic book distribution before the direct market and comic book stores took hold.

- jb the "shudders to think that hundreds of thousands of 1960s Marvel Age Masterpieces never saw the light of day" ib -

[MichikoS]

IB's comprehensive analysis of Marvel's foray into the b&w magazine market really hits the mark, in my opinion.

For what it's worth, as someone who bought a copy of ST #1 off the newsstands in March of 1971, I can tell you that my local Rexall Drug in St. Louis, Missouri had it on sale with their "men's sweat" mags, not with their comics, as Scott Shaw! also recalls. It was racked separately from the comics.

I used to frequent this Rexall because they carried a good selection of Marvel comics, and I was a big Conan fan at the time, having purchased all the Lancer paperbacks with the Frazetta painted covers. I only spotted ST because the big "M" for Mature caught my eye. The murky painted cover didn't exactly pop. The bright yellow logo was eye-catching, but unfortunately it drowned out the smaller headline, "Conan the Barbarian Starring in..." I did spot it, and after leafing through it, bought it, but I was dubious. I remember thinking, as did IB, that "M" just meant a few bare titties. I don't know what I was expecting, but it did seem a bit of a letdown.

Being a Conan completist at the time, I did look for more Savage Tales issues, but had to wait more than two years to see the second issue hit the newsstands--which, interestingly enough, was now racked with the comic books. Go figure.

I have one more very clear, if fleeting, memory of ST#1--watching an employee tear off the masthead on a stack of 5 or 6 unsold copies a month or two later when I was back buying comics. This used to be the way magazine returns were done--tear off the masthead, return them for credit, and pitch the rest of the mag or book. At the time, it meant nothing to me, but I get a twinge in my Collector's Nerve when I recall this now.

One more observation. In 1973, I took a job working in a big magazine distributor's warehouse in suburban St. Louis county. It was scut work, working in a freezing warehouse on the conveyor belt line, counting out the various magazines (including comic books) that would ship each week to the many, many outlets that carried them--grocery stores, drugstores, corner markets, convenience stores, snack bars, barber shops, etc. etc. There were SOOOO many places comics used to be sold...

Anyway, the thing I remember about that job was how many b&w comic magazines were flooding the market. We had skids and skids of these magazines and sent them out to all kinds of retail outlets.

We also took back lots and lots of strips, so I don't necessarily think they were selling very well. The appalingly cheesy goremags WITCHES' TALES and TALES OF VOODOO were much, much more popular than anything Marvel had out there, that I do know.

Michi

[Red Oak Kid]

But that didn't mean that some issues weren't harder to find than others, and during my pre-driving days. it meant lots of walking and searching.

- jb the "shudders to think that hundreds of thousands of 1960s Marvel Age Masterpieces never saw the light of day" ib -

Whatsamatta, no bicycle?

I bought a lot of comics at the local 7-11 and rode home on my bicycle with the comics very carefully rolled in my hand, trying not to bend them or get them sweaty.

I remember reading, in either Alan Light's Buyer's Guide or Comic Reader, that an entire railroad boxcar full of Howard the Duck #2 had been hijacked by some big time comic book dealers so they could sell them at cons for big bucks.

I found these stories hard to believe.

Anyone else remember these type stories?

[Mike Kuypers]

By contrast I bought my comics almost exclusively at Wyon Drugs and seldom missed an issue of any Marvel or DC title I was collecting, including those elusive Avengers issues. Of course I had to be there on Tuesdays when the new comics were put out, but still...

[Kirk G]

These memories of hunting down new comics are GREAT!

In my case, I was in a small Michigan town in the shadow of the auto producting city of Flint. After I started buying comics, I tumbled to the fact that Readmore news delivered new comics each Tuesday and Thursday in a stackable cardboard carrying case. I found that if I rode my bike downtown after school, I could get to these stores (drug stores mainly) before the clerks counted in the magazines and comics, and so, pull a mint copy of each of my favorites before they were folded or creased in the spinner rack.

To my delight, I found all the Marvel books, but never tumbled to which arrived which week of the month. However, I did see the Fantastic Four annual #4 arrive on some racks, but not others (too thick!) and was puzzled how there could be TWO human torches! I also found Avengers Annual #2 in the rack (just as thick, but somehow OK) and later, the HUGE Spectacular Spider-man #1 and #2 that didn't fit in the racks at all, laying along side the "mens magazines" like Hunting, Fishing, Intimate Detective, Personal Confidential and Castle of Frankenstein, Mad, and Cracked.

WHY OH WHY didn't I buy ALL the MARVEL titles at the time? I had no paper route, no chance to get one...they were all tied up by the Lund family of Five boys down the street... and my allowance of a dime a week only allowed for an occassional expansion beyond my beloved Fantastic Four, Avengers and related guestars.

We used to collect pop bottles from the trash, off lawns and return them to grocery stores for a nickle or a dime and horde that money to buy candy or comics. Trading a comic was unheard of in my circle. You could go over to a friends house to read his comics, but he'd never let them out of his room. I was no different.

To find a back issue, you had to be creative. Either you waited until a family with an older boy was having a yard sale, and then get there early to see IF his mom had convinced him to but comics out on the sale.... or, you went to the small italian grocerer on the south side of town, where he was known to buy used comic books and paperback books and put them out in a cardboard box atop a potatoe chip rack for a dime a piece. That's where I scored early Strange Tales with Nice Fury and Sheild.... and where I got my precious copy of Marvel Collector Item Classics #2...still with a white cover... for a dime!

[dan bailey]

Whatsamatta, no bicycle?




OK, smart guy, evoke my own particular childhood trauma, why don't you? I, for one, never learned how to ride a bike. (I blame it on the psychological repercussions of being given one for my 8th birthday, courtesy of my father ... who had died 11 days earlier.)

Luckily, by the time I started really getting into comics, we lived only 4 blocks from "downtown." (I'm not sure that noun can actually be applied when talking about a place that still doesn't have a single traffic light & for that matter doesn't have a town square ... it's a triangle. Honest.) Which means that of the 4 places in town that carried comics, 3 were less than a 10-minute walk away.

[dan bailey]

the "mens magazines" like Hunting, Fishing, Intimate Detective, Personal Confidential and Castle of Frankenstein, Mad, and Cracked.


Man, I was thinking of that excellent mag just a couple of days ago, & the anxiety I used to experience wondering just when the next (very sporadically produced) issue might show up. (My first was #19, featuring a wraparound cover depicting all sorts of Ray Harryhausen creations.) Via eBay, I've now got 'em all, except for (I think) #2