October 1971: Avengers #95

Courtesy of The Warrior's Comic Book Den, where the entire issue was recently reposted, I'll take the opportunity to actually re-read this one for this look back.

But before I do, let me try to remember what attracted me to this, my first sampling of Marvel Comics.
Actually, it's pretty easy to remember: I opened it up and took a look inside, and there, on the splash page, was a gorgeous rendition of a superhero that looked like the freaking Creature from the Black Lagoon! I'd eventually learn that this was Triton, one of the Inhumans, a secluded tribe of superpowered beings created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee years earlier in Fantastic Four. I didn't need to know that, now, though, all I needed was artist Neal Adams' irresistible rendition of the character to make the sale.
Despite the overload of colorful characters, which I surely appreciated, I remember being disappointed to read it and find that this was not only a middle chapter of a continued saga, with no satisfying resolution, but that it also continued from a different comic book that I'd never heard of or seen before (that is, the Inhumans series that had recently been dropped from the Amazing Adventures comic book series). From what I could piece together, I wanted to read this Inhumans lead-in, but I knew that there was no way for me to get it now.
Despite the disappointment, I must observe that I had been pretty lucky so far in my selections of first comics, sampling some of the best artists--Kirby, Adams, Anderson--ever to work in the business. And art would always be a primary point of interest, although I certainly would pull lots of third-rate examples off the spinner rack in years to come.
And now, off to actually read the comic again...!

September, 1971: Justice League of America #94

JLA #94 must have arrived in early September, because I remember reading it on a very sunny summer day. I read it out loud to my friend Kevin Quinn who lived down the street, while we played in a large cardboard box in his back yard. I remember being a bit scared and a bit emboldened to have the excuse to read the word "hell" out loud, because it was in the script to this issue.
This comic book confused the heck out of me. It was my first DC comic that wasn't self-contained, as this issue, as I was later to learn, was wrapping up loose ends from the Deadman backup in the cancelled Aquaman comic. This "Deadman" character impressed me a lot, probably in part because all of his appearances in this issue were drawn by Neal Adams, who was obviously a step above the less dazzling Dick Dillin, who drew all of the non-Deadman pages in the comic. But besides the art, the idea behind Deadman (a ghost who could possess living humans) and the audacity of his name (seriously, "Deadman"?! That's a real superhero?!) struck my fancy.
I was less impressed with Merlyn, an archer villain who debuted in this issue (although I remember assuming he had been around already; I wasn't accustomed to the idea that actual new characters could even be introduced to the comic books!).
In the back of this 48-pager were reprints of the first appearances of Starman and the Sandman, both from the 1940's. I know that I wasn't the only young reader who absolutely loved the Sandman's unconventional "costume", which consisted of a mismatched double-breasted business suit and hat with a gas mask. Later, I could never figure out why they would have ever put him in a boring yellow and purple union suit. While I loved the Sandman's look and gimmick (he put his enemies to sleep with a gas gun), the story wasn't impressive enough to stick with me, and this first appearance, contrary to the cover, wasn't really an "origin" story. The Starman story, though, was a geniune origin, the first one I got to read! "Origin" stories, which tell who the hero is and how he came to be, have always been important ones to comic book fans, maybe the most important, when routine adventures fail to live up to the initial promise of an exciting concept. Anyway, the Starman tale told me how Ted Knight invented his incredible "gravity rod".  Well, I guess the tale just told me that he invented the gravity rod, but that was good enough for me, that and seeing a hero debut in a newly-designed costume (although the maskless red-and-green outfit with the boring star as a chest emblem didn't exactly thrill me).

September, 1971: Action Comics #406

As the summer vacation came closer to its end, and I prepared to enter 6th grade at Whitney Elementary School in Memphis, Tennessee, it was becoming apparent that more and more of the spare change I could get my hands on would be going toward comic books. With this purchase, I was staying in familiar territory: good ol' Superman, but with my favored monster-leaning touches, in this case, the headless ghost of the Man of Steel, and, once again, I took advantage of the more generous DC 48 page package to insure that I got plenty of reading material. I plucked this one off the spinner rack of the Big Star supermarket on the corner of James Road and Overton Crossing, while my mother did some quick shopping. I remember that place fondly; in the 60's and early 70's, there was not only the comic book rack to tempt a restless child, but at the checkout, there were displays of lots of goodies: Bubblegum cards featuring Wacky Packages, Batman, and sports stars, paddle balls, monster finger puppets, plenty of Wham-O products like the Wheel-O and Monster Magnet, Superballs, Clackers, yo-yos, and candy. And of course if you couldn't afford any of those, or talk mom into buying them, there were machines ready to accept any pennies you might have saved up for jawbreakers and gumballs.
I don't remember much about the lead story here, "The Ghost that Haunted Clark Kent," but I do vaguely recall the effective atmosphere generated by artists Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson. I flipped for the backup reprint, featuring a team-up of Flash and the Atom, from an old issue of The Brave and the Bold. I really liked the Atom a lot; his unique power of shrinking fascinated me, and between him and the Flash, we had two of my favorite costume designs of the Silver Age. There was also something that always intrigued me about one of the visual effects that was prominent this story, when the Flash was being absorbed into an "expanding planet", that is, as drawn by artist Alex Toth, the Flash being sucked bodily into a large sphere, sinking beneath its surface, like Patrick McGhoohan's The Prisoner being overtaken by the sinister "Rover". Those kinds of images would often prove an irresistable and haunting draw to my young eyes, and would crop up in more than a few comic books. In fact, a similar image had already been burned into my mind, in a comic book I had glanced at years earlier: Strange Tales #157 was a comic that I flipped through back in 1967, while waiting on my mother to pick up a prescription at the Rexall drug store (Stage Road & Whitney: you can see this drug store in the movie The Firm!). I didn't know any of the characters then, but in a Dr. Strange story, his mentor The Ancient One was absorbed into one of the stones of Stonehenge, leaving his disciple with the advice to "Remember the forelock!" That image gave me the heebee jeebies, and I remember the episode not only for that imagery, but because, upon returning to the car, I remember asking my mother the meaning of the word "forelock".