No one ever said I was particularly bright but I was definitely like a dog on a bone when I was a kid and it came to racing, rock and comic books. By the time I quit collecting comic books somewhere around 1974 (I still got fanzines and some undergrounds after that) I had about 5,000 of them, primarily super-hero comics, and they were as old as 1947 and as current as 1974.
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Yeah, I had near complete runs of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, X-Men and a whole mess of DC’s (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest), Charlton’s (Capt. Atom, Blue Beetle & others), Tower (Thunderbolt, Dynamo, Nomad) and others.
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(When I started buying comic books they were a thin dime, when I quit buying them they doubled to twenty cents. I bought one a month or two back for a grandson and it was three smackers.)
But a few years prior I had the collecting bug and fandom thing bad as did a close buddy of mine, Buck. Problem was, we lived in Apple Creek at the time and no place sold them. We had to be lucky enough to get a ride to Wooster or Orrville to buy them.
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One day in the winter of 1971 I got a post card in the mail from….Stan Lee! Marvel Comics would send out a decorative Marvel postcard with a note from Stan letting one know a letter to the editor they sent had been selected and it listed the title, issue number and release date.
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Man, was I shocked! I rarely wrote letters to the editors but for some reason I sent a letter talking about the history of the Sub-Mariner and artist/creator Bill Everett and I cited some specific ‘golden age’ issues of the character from the 1940’s. Stan decided to run it!
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The letter was to appear in Sub-Mariner 48 cover dated April 1972. It probably hit the newsstands in early February (I can’t remember the specific date or month) because the day it was to arrive in Wooster was on a Thursday and I couldn’t get a way to Wooster or Orrville until Saturday, if I was lucky.
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I immediately told Buck my good news and he was about as excited about it as I was (didn’t take much to thrill a 14 year old back then) and dammit we would get somewhere to get some copies of Sub-Mariner 48 come hell or high water.
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Saturday morning, two days after the issue hit the stands and I’m a nervous wreck fearing every place in town will be sold out of that issue and no way, no how am I getting a ride from anyone for a silly funny book. Mainly because that morning it was 4 degrees below zero!
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Then Buck showed up.
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Well? Let’s go get some comic books, he says.
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How?
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Let’s hitchhike, says Buck.
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So we grab our coats, gloves and a hat and down West Main Street we walk headed for the edge of town and Route 250 that will take us to Wooster. We figured Wooster, like Orrville, about 6 or 7 miles away probably, was the best chance of a ride due to the highway going directly to Wooster. So here walk two dumb ass 14 year olds strolling out of town on a highway with our thumbs out. Not much traffic if I recall, and no early offers of a ride either!
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We were about a mile and a half out of town and had just started to talk about maybe we made a mistake here (man, was it cold!) when a car drives by and pulls off to the side of the road. Hot damn! A ride! We run up to the side of the car, Buck jumps in back and I jump in front and when we glance over to thank our generous benefactor who does it turn out to be? Our junior high school principal Mr. (Richard) Smith, who probably had given us hell the day before (Buck and I were both on Student Council but believe me, we were ‘outlaws’) at John R. Lea Intermediate School.
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Of course our first reaction is, “Oh, crap! Busted!” (Back in those days you either respected, or feared your school principals and teachers.) But he just said “How are you boys this morning? Little cold to be out here isn’t it?” So we told him we HAD to get to Wooster to buy some copies of Sub-Mariner 48, and any other comics we could afford, no matter what!
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Lord only knows what he was thinking but he didn’t lecture us, didn’t give us hell and didn’t threaten to call our parents. He didn’t do everything we thought he would! Unbelievable! Maybe this guy isn’t so bad after all. Maybe he isn’t so much… “the man”.
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So he passes the road he lives on and continues down Route 250 and drops us off downtown Wooster in front of City News, a cigar and newsstand that has the largest selection of magazines and comics in Wayne County. After stocking up there we had some money left so we went to the Lawsons and the convenience store (forgot the name) across the street. We stopped back at City News to get warm and then headed down Market Street for Route 250 and a way back home.
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We were f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g…. I mean freezing after walking out of town, up Madison Hill and just past the Farmer’s Market, we were hurtin’! All of a sudden we hear a car, instinctively turn around and stick our thumbs out, and damned if it isn’t a Ohio State Highway patrolman. Of course we jerked our thumbs down and turned around like nothing happened.
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The Trooper passes us and pulls over.
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Damn. Now we’re really busted!
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Cripes, here comes the Children’s Home, the old man will kick my ass from here to Kingdom Come, its all over but picking out the flowers and putting on the suit. One of us suggested we run, but we quickly dropped any notion of that when the Trooper got out of the car and walked towards us directing us to the car. He opened back door and we slid in.
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Man, was it warm!
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He started heading east and asked us what the hell we were doing out there in sub-zero weather. So we told him our story. We also told him about Mr. Smith picking us up and taking us to Wooster and that he seemed OK with it. The Trooper gave us hell, half-heartedly at best, about being out on a highway hitchhiking, being out in that weather, yadda-yadda-yadda!
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And then he drove right past the Highway Patrol barracks/station and kept going east. He asked us our names then ask us our parents names! Oh hell! This is gonna hurt!
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We drove into Apple Creek and he pulled into the parking lot of the Apple Creek Elementary School and let us out, of course telling us if he caught us out on the highway in weather like this he would kick our butts before calling our parents to come get us. We thanked him…profusely….and headed across the street to where I lived and headed up the steps to my bedroom to check out our haul.
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I probably read that letter a thousand times that weekend.
I started selling off my comics collection by the mid-70’s (sold three comic books in 1973 and bought my first car!) and eventually gave about 60 percent of them to a friend’s son who was then about 11 or 12 and hooked on collecting comics. I have him boxes and boxes and boxes of them.
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But through all these years since, for some reason, I have been able to retain one copy of Sub-Mariner 48, the only comic book I now own. It’s cool (no pun intended) to have for the letter, but it’s just as cool (no pun intended) to owning it knowing how (stupid) I got it!
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I remembered this experience, and other goofy moments, when my wife and I raised our three (now former) teenagers. Some people call the junior high years the ‘wonder years’, but in reality, it’s the ‘dumb ass years’. I know. Been there, done that.
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About Sub-Mariner 48:
Cover (Sub-Mariner & Dr. Doom) by Gil Kane (Pencils) Bill Everett (Inks)
Story: Gerry Conway; Pencils: Gene Colan; Inks: Mike Esposito
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About Richard Smith:
Not too long prior to this experience Mr. Smith allowed Buck and I full access (for free!) to the junior high’s school ‘duplicator’ machine to print two issues of a comics fanzine we produced called ‘Informative/On/Comics’. We advertised it in an early issue of The Buyers’ Guide To Comic Fandom (TBG) and sold a few.
Tags: Apple Creek, Bill Everett, City News, Dr. Doom, Gene Colon, Gerry Conway, Gil Kane, John R. Lea Intermediate School, Marvel Comics, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Sub-Mariner, Wooster
