Childhood Comics

As far as I know, I started buying comic books in 1975. The 70s were a weird time for the comic book industry: In the 1950s the industry (such as it was) had a fair bit of genre diversity, with superhero, western, horror, and humor books all being published. The 60s saw superhero books move towards ascendency, and by the mid-1970s superhero books were clearly the dominant genre, with the other genres in decline. Other than Jonah Hex I’m not sure I saw another western title outside of a comic book store in the 70s. (In my lifetime, the arrival of a well-made western film seems to underscore just how dead the genre is.) There were a few horror books, and a smattering of other titles.

Uncle Scrooge #114 (1974)

We’ve been watching the new DuckTales cartoon (recommended!), and it reminded me of one of the few non-superhero books of that era that’s stuck in my memory. I’ve never been a big fan of the Disney characters, but I picked up a few of their comics when I was a kid, and the one I remember is “The Phantom of Notre Duck”, which I probably read when it was reprinted in Uncle Scrooge #114 (Sept 1974), and which I likely picked up as part of some supermarket bundle of books rather than through a newsstand or comics shop. These bundles were often 3-5 comics packaged together in a sealed plastic bag, usually with no connection to each other, and you usually couldn’t see what was inside other than the front and back issues. If this is how I acquired it, I probably bought it because it was in a bundle with some superhero book on the outside that I wanted.

I really have no insight into how these bundles were created, whether they were national or local, or what. I just bought ’em (or, well, my parents did). It looks like this issue was published by Gold Key and also printed with the “Whitman” logo: Whitman says the two were the same publisher, and that the Whitman logo was used for bagged comics, so maybe that was it. I have no memory of which version I owned.

The story (written & illustrated by Carl Barks) I mainly remember involved Scrooge and his nephews pursuing the Phantom throughout the Cathedral, with hidden doors & passageways, old rooms and ornaments, and the heroes eventually managing to corner the Phantom and figure out what it’s up to, and that it wasn’t all that sinister after all. But I haven’t actually read it in probably 40 years, as I likely purged it – perhaps long missing its cover – at some point in the 80s or 90s. But I recall it fondly as a spooky story, which I might want to track down and read again – it seems it’s been reprinted at least twice more since then, so it ought to be possible.

The Addams Family #1 (1974)

Recalling that book reminded me of another non-superhero book I read as a kid, coincidentally (maybe?) also from 1974, The Addams Family #1. Maybe this date is a sign that I actually read a few comics before the earliest ones I remember from 1975, I don’t know. I’ve long thought the first comic I read was Wonder Woman #220 (Nov 1975 – which means it was probably on the newsstands over the summer).

In any event, I am a huge fan of Charles Addams‘ cartoons, and I own a copy of almost every collection of his cartoons that have been published. But I didn’t become a fan until my dad bought me a copy of his last original collection, Creature Comforts (1981), so I had no attachment to this comic when I read it. It was just weird. It seems it was probably spun out of a 1973 cartoon series, which frankly I’d never even heard of until now. (I mean, maybe I watched it when I was a kid, but I have no memory of it!) I also didn’t watch the famous 1960s TV series, so I have no attachment to it, either. I do kinda dimly remember them showing up in Scooby-Doo.

I have almost very little memory of the comic itself. As you can see, the cover was sparsely drawn with no background, which stuck out to me at the time. My recollection is that it involved the family going on vacation in the spooky camper seen on the cover, and elevating the chassis on stilts several dozen feet in the air in order to drive over a traffic jam, but that’s about it. It seems it was a little different from that, and was directly adapted from one of the animated episodes. It appears to have been written and illustrated by Bill Ziegler, about whom I know nothing except for what’s written at that link. I bet it was pretty weak, though I also bet if I’d been a few years older I would have enjoyed the animated show.

Interpretations of the Addams Family are interesting to track, as a long-time fan. The ones I’ve seen do reflect Addams’ originals in general, especially their sense of family and mutual support in this group of oddball characters living in their own space within larger, “normal” society. But the details are often curious, especially the reversal of Pugsley and Wednesday’s characters in the 1990s films (although one can hardly object to them spotlighting Christina Ricci in her breakout role by giving Wednesday a more vivid and active characterization). I don’t know what this year’s film is like, although I’m not a fan of the character designs.

I’m not going anywhere with all this, except that we all have vague memories of our childhoods, some of them stick persistently in our minds for a long time, to the point that we no longer recall why they made us remember them at all. But at least with these I can go out and find copies of these two books and read them again and see if they stir anything up in me.

One thought on “Childhood Comics”

  1. I started buying and collecting comics around the same time you did, but I didn’t live in a big city. I lived in a small town. There were no comic shops. Only grocery stores (for new comics) and used book stores (for used ones).

    That said, there were plenty of western comics in 1975. They were all reprints, but they existed. But 1975 was the beginning of the end. By the summer, western comics began to fold. There were still some around until…1979 maybe? But from 1975 until 1979ish, they dried up. My nerdy friends and I loved them, though.

    The bundled comics we had here in Oregon were universally three comics to a bag. Never “3-5” comics. Always three. It was easy enough to spot the middle comic because the plastic was soft and flexible and you could pull the outer comics away from the middle comic. You’re right that there was generally no connection between the three comics inside except (a) all three were from the same publisher and (b) bags were standardized. (In other words, if Fantastic Four #186 was in a bag with a specific issue of Cap and a specific issue of Thor, then those three were always bagged together for that month.)

    Anyhow, I love these old comics and thinking about my childhood buying them at the local department store. Good times. Also buying Star Wars cards and baseball cards and Planet of the Apes cards.

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