Back Talk

Green Lantern #60

I just bought the comic book you see to the left on ebay the other day. Green Lantern #60 by all accounts is a rather innocuous issue in the total run of that series. But for me it is a rather historic comic. It was the first comic book that I ever purchased. The first comic that I ever owned was a Disney comic book featuring Donald Duck that my grandmother had bought for me at the corner store when I was four years old.

Prior to this purchase, all of my comic book reading was done at the barber shop while waiting to get my buzz cut. This purchase was significant in that it represented the first of what would become the buying of thousands of comic books over the years. Oddly enough this particular comic and a few of the other earlier purchases were no longer in my possession when I started to seriously accumulate massive amounts of books. Even when I was running my comic book store and I had acquired hundreds of key back issues ranging from Amazing Fantasy #15 to the first issue of Mad, I had never come across this particular back issue. In fact, I never really knew the exact issue, but could remember that it featured the Lamplighter and was numbered in the 60’s.

Had it been a priority, I’m sure I could have tracked it down, but at the time it was just a comic that I strongly remembered the details of reading and buying for many years after. It is strange how we remember some things so vividly. I had always attributed the strength of this memory to my intense love of comic books and super heroes, that is, until the other day. This is the part where the blog title gets its true meaning.

When Green Lantern #60 hit the stands, I was 7 and in the second grade. My older brother and I were only 15 months apart in age , but because of the school calendar we were separated by two grades, thus he was a much more worldly wise and sophisticated fourth grader. From the time I started grade school, I followed my big brother around everywhere and tried to do everything that he did. Because of our closeness in age and the fact that my mom tended to dress us in, if not identical, but very similar clothes, people often thought we were twins. So, one day when he decided to go to the corner store on the way home from school, I naturally followed him inside.

We must have spent what seemed like hours to the store proprietor looking over the dozens of brightly colored comic book covers and perusing the insides for just the right one. Well, at least my brother must have been logically making his choice. I had a much simpler method in making my selection. I simply bought the exact same comic that he did…Green Lantern #60.

Wait, you shout, that makes no sense! You should have bought a different comic, then you would each have been able to read two different ones. Think man, you shared a bedroom, toys, clothes(only briefly. as we got older my brother was slender and I was “husky”), surely you could have traded comic books. That would be a valid point unless you were a seven year old who idolized his big brother and wanted to do be just like him.

It’s funny, after all these years when I thought the memory of that first comic book was burned into my brain because of how much I loved comics, it turns out the memory was so vivid because of how much I loved my brother.  Now, that’s hero worship. Let’s just keep this between us, okay. This ain’t the kind of stuff you ever want to admit to your siblings.

Well, at least it seemed to me like the earth stood still, or rather two earths stood still when Superman and Spider-Man appeared in the same comic together. It was 1976 and I was 15 and though I had been reading comics for years, I now had enough money from working to buy nearly every comic book published by Marvel and DC.

During this time the companies were very competitive, though Marvel clearly dominated in sales. When I was younger I was totally a DC fan due in large part to the fact that most of their comics were self contained stories while the Marvels tended to have very dramatic soap opera style endings. With my limited budget, I never knew if I would be able to purchase the next issue and see how the story resolved. So, I opted for Superman, Batman and the Flash for the most part.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, when I was 15 I had an actual income and could afford to buy comics on a regular basis and really embraced the Marvel Universe whose comics I definitely preferred, though I still had quite a soft spot for my old favorites from DC.

I don’t know if I could make someone who was never a fan of comics back then truly understand the magnitude of Superman and Spider-Man actually meeting in the same publication. To put it into perspective with other significant world events and using a ranking system from 1-3 it would look like this. 1) Man lands on the Moon 2) Berlin wall is torn down  3) Superman vs Spider-Man. Okay, maybe not quite that big of a deal, but I really really liked comic books once upon a time!

Though I was pretty flush with cash, the $2.00 price tag was still somewhat daunting. The going rate for a comic book was 25 cents making this volume worth eight comics(thank you 3rd grade math) and quite a financial sacrifice. Fortunately, I was spared having to foot the bill when my younger brother purchased it as my birthday present that year. I’m pretty sure I did not so much ask for the comic as I more or less told him that would be his gift to me that year. Either way, it was greatly appreciated. Thanks, Gary!

The two comics publishing giants did several other crossovers in subsequent years, but none were as exciting to me as that first colossal event.