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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 10, 2016 7:31:13 GMT -5
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, both my parents read comic books as kids and teens. Even as adults, they regularly bought the paperback collections of Pogo, Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, BC and Andy Capp. They were not only okay with my interest in comics (my mother taught me to read at age three using a Dell Rocky & Bullwinkle comic), they actively encouraged me in my desire to one day write/draw them. Many years later, I learned that my mother had saved the comics of her youth--including such gems as Captain America #1, Wonder Woman #1 and Four Color #9 (Carl Barks' first work on Donald Duck)--but that she'd intended to give them to me as a graduation present, only to learn that her mother had given them to the Goodwill just two months before my mom went to Wisconsin to retrieve them. Cei-U! Not sure who was more heartbroken, me or Mom! I can't tell you how many thousands of dollars of baseball cards my Grandmother tossed on my dad when I was born.. He had most of the sets from 1957-1964. Ouch. I didn't have that many cards, but I feel your dad's pain... I had a complete set of 1974 or 1975 NHL hockey cards when under parental quasi-duress I stopped collecting and surrendered the deck. It was subsequently lost forever. (A bit early for the first Wayne Gretzky card, but still).
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on May 10, 2016 8:02:26 GMT -5
Although she never showed much interest, my mom always said yes to "Can I get a comic book?", which I greatly appreciated. The one time she was interested in comics was in 1983 after watching "Breathless" with Richard Gere. She was telling me that this movie had involved a Silver Surfer comic and wanted to know if I had the comic. I didn't have it, but my mom definitely piqued my interest in the Silver Surfer the way she was describing how the comic had an emotional impact on the actors in the movie. I've since become a big fan of the Surfer and own the full run of the 1st series thanks to her. I became a fan of the Silver Surfer because of that movie as well, and got all his old comics consecutivly. They were alight, but nothing as romantic as the movie made me hope they would.
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Post by dbutler69 on May 10, 2016 8:54:00 GMT -5
I'm a bit late, but my mom used to drive me to the comic shop on Sundays, then we'd go to the diner next door for lunch. Thanks, mom.
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Post by String on May 10, 2016 10:01:40 GMT -5
I can't recall if my mom was the one who got me interested in comics or not. She loved to read though and always encouraged my own efforts in that regard. She had no qualms about my reading them nor taking me to the local store(s) to peruse them (or even when I asked to subscribe to a few titles through the mail).
The singular memory that stands out to me is, for Christmas one year, I'd asked for Uncanny X-Men #137 for I'd wanted to read of Jean Grey's death. Bless her, while I knew later that she had no idea what I was talking about, I did receive that Christmas morning a longbox of various bagged comics from different publishers, an obvious sales gimmick to garner interest in the medium.
And it did include a copy of Uncanny X-Men #150 so in a way I got my wish. I still have those books and that box.
My mom has been gone for 9 years now and I miss her every day.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2016 14:46:42 GMT -5
My Dad got me into comics. To my Mom's credit she never asked me why I kept reading when all my friends had stopped in their mid teens. To this day my parents get me a gift certificate to my LCS every Christmas.
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Post by Phil Maurice on May 10, 2016 16:33:30 GMT -5
Many years later, I learned that my mother had saved the comics of her youth--including such gems as Captain America #1, Wonder Woman #1 and Four Color #9 (Carl Barks' first work on Donald Duck)--but that she'd intended to give them to me as a graduation present, only to learn that her mother had given them to the Goodwill just two months before my mom went to Wisconsin to retrieve them. My grandmother on my mother's side, whom I considered the kindest, gentlest soul I ever encountered, I learned later was a real piece of work when it came to her own kids. According to my mother and her siblings, she took great satisfaction in discarding your most valuable possessions the instant your back was turned. This included my mother's considerable store of Elvis Presley memorabilia, my aunt's Beatles ephemera, and my uncle's Gold and Silver-age comics. Harlan Ellison once said that mothers serve two purposes: to remind you to wash behind your ears, and to throw away your comics. Okay, but this woman wasn't just keeping a tidy house, she was deriving enjoyment from the crushing of dreams. Why granna?
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Post by dupersuper on May 10, 2016 22:50:37 GMT -5
My mother paid for my comics at the grocery store (when I was a kid, that was still possible with comics other than Archie Digests). She also read me comics for bedtime stories when I was a kid (despite me being able to read). I think the last 1 was Thomas' Last Days of the Justice Society when I was 7. The time travel, history and Norse mythology was probably headier than she was expecting from a comic with Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Mostly she just indulged/tolerated growing piles of comics in her house.
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Post by shishard on Jul 12, 2016 16:32:23 GMT -5
My Mom supported anything to do with reading. She actually started me on collecting in preteens and would take me to our local Walden's book store when the grocery stores stopped carrying spinner racks. I remember finding about a comic shop across town and one day she took me in 87. I still have the Joker watch I bought that day.
I used her example and buy my son what he "wants " to read. Mainly game magazines and a few comics and it has led to him enjoying a good read as opposed to suffering through summer reading.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 21, 2020 15:10:51 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure I have my mother to thank for introducing me to comic-books. Oh, sure, we got newspaper comics every day-- but they came with the paper, so, to my Dad's thinking, they were "free". Comic-books... that was a rare "luxury" item. On a trip to Virginia, riding the Chesapeake Bay ferry boat (1963) my brother & I got our first-ever comic-books. Both Charltons. Fitting for our personalities, he got BATTLEFIELD ACTION, I got BLACK FURY (the horse!). One day, while at the Philadelphia Airport, I got my 1st DC-- an issue of ACTION COMICS with both Luthor & Brainiac. And HALF of a Supergirl story in the back. (To this day, I've never been able to read the 2nd half of that story... heh.) We used to get occasional comics from the barber. That's where I got my 1st Marvel-- FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3. What a place to come in. In the back was my intro to Sub-Mariner-- a reprint of FF #6, where Namor was written FAR better than in nearly every other story he was in the early 60s. Decades later I found out why. Then there was my Mom's optometrist in Philadelphia. Aside from regular comics, he also had... MAD magazine. Wow! And then there was time she picked up an issue of FOR MONSTERS ONLY, which it turned out was published by the people who did CRACKED. Inside was my intro to Jerry Grandenetti-- " Vampire Hunt '68", which someone decades later said may well have inspired the " Count Yorga" films a few years later. Mom was a lifelong fan of horror movies. I can see her influence in some of the random comics I somehow got ahold of in the late 60s... SILVER SURFER #7 -- "The Heir Of Frankenstein" AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #102 -- "Vampire At Large" NOT BRAND ECCH #11 -- "King Konk '68"And I can never forget that when she returned from a trip to Houston in the mid-70s, she brought back some Mexican editions. Among them.. my very 1st VAMPIRELLA, which had Archie Goodwin & Tom Sutton's " Who Serves The Cause Of Chaos?" I couldn't read Spanish. but Sutton's visual storytelling was so clear, I had no trouble understanding what was going on. It always amuses me to think MY MOM got me started on that series.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 21, 2020 17:09:56 GMT -5
I pretty much bought all of my comics, apart from a select few Gold Keys, that I got as gifts (in bagged sets); but, I was suffering from bronchitis, and was home from school, as my mom took me to the doctor, then the drug store, where she allowed me to get Shazam #10, the first comic I ever got to pick out.
Money was tight in our family, at various times, as my father was a teacher in a rural district, and mom had left teaching to earn money in business; first cosmetic sales (Koskot) and then real estate. I got toys and things on birthdays and Christmas, but knew better than to whine for such things at other times. We didn't get a consistent allowance; when sales were good, for a bit; but, not later. So, I earned money through other means, which is why I mostly borrowed friends' comics, for reading, and had a precious few of my own, until the later 70s, when I had a more consistent income (during the summer, at least). Mom had no opinion on comics, but didn't encourage me along these lines. Dad enjoyed the newspaper strips, but had mostly grown up without comic books (he had a couple of Big Little Books, though), living on a farm in southern Illinois, during the depression. He would look through a comic book, now and then, if he was curious, and appreciated the artwork.
My mom surprised me, one Christmas, as an adult. One of the gifts got was a 3x5 index card, which was written out as a "gift certificate," to my local comic shop. She had gone down there and asked the owner if he had such things, which he didn't; but, my mom paid for $60 in credit at the store for me and he hand wrote the gift certificate on the index card. Given the shop wasn't easy to locate, nor was it in the greatest neighborhood, I greatly appreciated the effort that thought took.
Mom died a year ago, but I think she appreciated the morals and principles I developed from reading comic books, even if she preferred to think they came from Sunday School. Well, maybe some, as I used to read the Pix bulletins, which we received each week, which included biblical comic stories, as well as adventure stories, like Tullus, about a Roman Christian.
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Post by beccabear67 on Oct 21, 2020 23:08:32 GMT -5
My mother and her older brother had comics around as kids (late '40s into the '50s. She remembers specific stories like Uncle Scrooge and The Lemming With the Locket, and that my uncle liked Blackhawk and Bobby Benson's B-Bar-B Riders. A friend of hers sent in fashions to Millie, Patsy or Katy, one of those types, and saw her name in print. She swears she remembers 5 cent comic books though, and that they weren't missing part of the front covers. I can only think that perhaps there was some place that resold second-hand ones for that amount. Later I did get her to read the first Elfquest story, but other than that she only likes newspaper type comic strips/panels. My grandmother referred to all comic books as funnies. She wasn't prejudiced against them, and she had a couple collections in book form of political cartoons. My grandfather, her husband, loved Dennis the Menace (U.S.) and Family Circus though and would quote from them, also like those men's risque type cartoons.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 21, 2020 23:17:55 GMT -5
My mother and her older brother had comics around as kids (late '40s into the '50s. She remembers specific stories like Uncle Scrooge and The Lemming With the Locket, and that my uncle liked Blackhawk and Bobby Benson's B-Bar-B Riders. A friend of hers sent in fashions to Millie, Patsy or Katy, one of those types, and saw her name in print. She swears she remembers 5 cent comic books though, and that they weren't missing part of the front covers. I can only think that perhaps there was some place that resold second-hand ones for that amount. Later I did get her to read the first Elfquest story, but other than that she only likes newspaper type comic strips/panels. My grandmother referred to all comic books as funnies. She wasn't prejudiced against them, and she had a couple collections in book form of political cartoons. My grandfather, her husband, loved Dennis the Menace (U.S.) and Family Circus though and would quote from them, also like those men's risque type cartoons. Fawcett did have Nickel Comics...
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 21, 2020 23:57:31 GMT -5
Both parents read comics during the 40s, then like most kids, stopped as they entered the teenage years in the 50s. Although my brothers always collected comics and comic magazines (EC and Warren), my mom did buy comics for me, and she would usually buy the books from a number of publishers, so I was exposed to things I--or my brothers--would not necessarily buy at all. During childhood/adolescence, I used to walk or ride buses to whichever town or city had the comic shops (...or 7-Eleven or liquor store) that sold my titles, but it was not uncommon for my mom to drive me to the stores. On occasion, she would go in and browse the shelves, mainly remembering if any of the characters my brothers once followed still had titles. Endless, fun memories.
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Post by Duragizer on Oct 22, 2020 0:01:51 GMT -5
My mom's pretty indifferent to comics, and never actively encouraged/discouraged my collecting habits. Though if it hadn't been for her watchful eye and guidance, this would've been my first comic. She suggested this one instead:
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Post by beccabear67 on Oct 22, 2020 13:13:24 GMT -5
Fawcett did have Nickel Comics... My Mom hadn't been born yet when those had come and gone, same for my Dad too. She didn't even recognize Mary Marvel when I first had some to show her, other than Superman or Blackhawk she might never have seen any costumed hero comics, although she did have a Superman novelty ring that launched tiny airplanes (Kellogg's cereal/Superman radio show circa 1948)!
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