Well, of course I had read them earlier. We'll be looking at those comics before we begin the journey proper, but why wasn't I already reading them? Why start when I did?
I was surely a child receptive to the medium. Like most kids my age back then, I was hooked on TV cartoons, a close relative to comic books. But I remember that I avoided many of the adventure cartoons that were most akin to the comics I would come to love. I couldn't sit through Jonny Quest, or the Lone Ranger. But I did like Superman, both the George Reeves reruns and the late 60's cartoon, and I remember getting a big kick out of the Aquaman cartoons. I was angry that my school hours prevented me from more than an occasional viewing of the short Marvel cartoons--I was interested in Captain America because of the shield-slinging, Thor because of the hammer-striking, and Hulk because of the transformations, but I was turned off by Iron Man's mustache, and Sub-Mariner just looked awful to me. I had loved Adam West's Batman, and fought for tv rights against my brother Frank so that I could catch Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice. Frank liked Green Hornet, but that was too conventional for me to appreciate.
Comic books weren't common in my neighborhood, despite the many kids. I remember glancing through a neighbor's issue of The Three Mouseketeers, and a boy I played with in my grandparents' neighborhood had a hefty collection of Sgt. Rock comics, which didn't interest me at all. I remember one Halloween being enthralled by the image of DC's The Spectre on the packaging of a Ben Cooper Halloween costume, and I surely would have begged for the mask and outfit if it had actually been available, but it was apparently never actually made. And there was one summer night at a block party where I got a too-short look at an issue of Teen Titans; I wanted to read that whole thing, but I had the opportunity only to look at the first page. Another neighbor girl had a DC comic with an ad for an issue of The Atom--I would much later learn that that was issue 32--and it fascinated me with the promise of The Atom grown from his usual tiny size (I must have been aware of the character's usual schtick via catching his appearance in a solo cartoon during the Superman show) to colossal size! Neat! I had coloring books with comic art in the "non-cartoony" style: My Favorite Martian and Valley of the Gwangi. I read the newspaper comics page, so I had a handle on the conventions of the art form: caption boxes, thought balloons, speech balloons, panel-to-panel continuity, continuing stories. My brother had several Tom Swift Jr. books around the house, with their intriguing science fiction inventions dramatically depicted on the covers. And I had graduated from G.I. Joe to Captain Action, with his many superheroic identities--even knowing nothing about The Phantom, I wanted that outfit for my action figure (I never got it).
And there were a few more vital ingredients. I was really into continuing characters. If possible, my choices at the library were always series: Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins books, Thornton Burgess's anthropomorphic animals series, Eleanor Cameron's (very) juvenile Mushroom Planet science fiction. I was a good reader, and, contrary to common wisdom, you needed to be a good reader to fully appreciate a comic book. And I loved art! I was drawing constantly; one of my parents' routine and highly-anticipated Christmas gifts to me was always a roll of butcher paper that I could draw on for months. And while I didn't have a regular allowance, my parents could usually spare a little money for me to pick out something--candy, or a small toy--on our trips to the grocery, where comics were usually available, even if I didn't pay much attention to them (although a few did manage to draw my eye; Superman #204 in 1967 had me wondering about the giant burning letters "LL" on the cover, for example).
All those pieces were there, swirling about my young life in short bursts and more extensive exposures, priming me for the good stuff.
But there was that one time in 1968, waiting for someone to arrive or depart at Memphis International Airport, when I begged for a comic book. When I really, really wanted one. It was Aquaman #42, on sale at a magazine kiosk, and it had one little feature that I remember blew my logotype-ignorant little mind: up in the left corner, it had the word "Aquaman" twice, horizontal and vertical, with the initial "A" shared between them:
Little did I realize that the artist who drew the interior, Jim Aparo, would one day be my favorite comic book artist. Alas, my parents didn't see fit to shell out the 12 cents for this diversion, and I went home from the airport disappointed. I put the notion of obtaining comics out of my mind for a few years. But I was fertilized, much more so than I realized.
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