Did this comic book cost me my soul?
Well, that certainly is an ominous title for such a fun loving blog. Believe me, it’s not all that dire. When I was in third grade I attended a very small Catholic School which was predominantly taught by nuns, though there were also some laypeople teachers.
During lunch break we were allowed a free reading period. One day I decided to bring in a few comics, one of which was Hulk 110 pictured at the left. Believe me, I could not have imagined there was anything remotely wrong with reading comic books back then. This was 1968 and the comics code was in full force and Fredric Wertham was but a distant memory (Wertham wrote a book in the 1950’s entitled “Seduction of The Innocent”, which described the evils of comic books and their contribution to juvenile deliquency which contributed to the industries self censorship via the comics code authority).
My teacher, Sister(I forget her name) picked up my Hulk comic and started to peruse the issue. My first thought was, “neat, the nuns like comic books too”. All us hip kids used to say things like “neat” and “wicked” when something pleased us. Boy, was I wrong! She proceeded to tell me that they were the devils work and the corner store sold a lot of bad things. I was to take these books home and throw them away. My memory is a little vague, but I often remember her as telling me to burn them, but that seems way to melodramatic to have actually happened.
Oddly enough, she didn’t take them from me right then and there which was the typical modus operandi when such contraband made its way into the school. Even more odd was despite my natural born fear of nuns and priests and my tendency to be very obedient towards any authority figure, I did not follow her orders. To make matters worse, I even lied to her. I won the class spelling bee that day and the winner always received a small prize. The condition for my getting the award was to promise to destroy the comics.
I wonder if my superior spelling ability was due in part to reading comic books?
Not only did I not get rid of these comics, but I went on to amass a huge collection and eventually became a comic book retailer and briefly wrote comics. To this day, I do not know why I did not follow her directive. If you knew me back then, you probably would have been nauseated at how much of a “goody two shoes” and “teacher’s pet” I was. Perhaps I possessed some innate belief in my own value system which transcended that of even the all powerful church. Pretty heady stuff for a third grader.
Of course, in hindsight, you would have to concede that from her perspective, it was a fairly offensive comic book. Look at the cover. That’s practically the devil attacking two half naked men. And that was after comic books were sanitized. Maybe I am going to hell, after all.