As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, I’m a serious comic book collector. Proper, ‘grown-up’ people might say that this was a contradiction in terms – but hey, what would they know?
Like any serious collector, I spend much of my free time scouring all sorts of places for that interesting or elusive item to add to my collection.
It was during one of these hunter-gatherer expeditions that I came across an old comic book that, in an instant, took me back to my childhood – and to the beginnings of my lifelong interest in comic books.
The comic in question was a dog-eared copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #12 – no, not the original 1960s Marvel Comics edition, but rather the black & white reprint edition, published in November 1975 by the Melbourne publisher, Newton Comics. It featured one of those great early stories illustrated by Steve Ditko, with everybody’s favourite Web-slinger locked in mortal combat with Doctor Octopus!
(Vigilant readers will note that the accompanying illustration is of issue #3, but as I don't have a cover scan of issue #12 to hand, this will have to suffice. Anyway, it's a Newton Comics edition of Spider-Man featuring Doctor Octopus, so you'll get the general idea!)
This particular comic book holds special significance for me is that it was the first one I ever owned. It came as part of Spider-Man showbag that my dad bought for me at the Royal Melbourne Show, way back in 1976.
I don’t know what it was about this comic that grabbed my interest – perhaps it was the dramatic story, the compelling artwork, or the fact that it also came with a free colour poster!
Whatever the reason, I was hooked. Just as Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him super-powers, it was this copy of Spider-Man that got me bitten by the comic book collecting bug.
Thankfully, the suburb I grew up in held rich comic book pickings. Our local milkbar, at the end of our street, always had a selection of comic books for sale, including full-colour Marvel Comic titles, the old K.G. Murray/Planet Comic reprint titles and, of course, The Phantom. The milkbar owner, a jolly Irish bloke (who was always giving my dad the wrong change for his Craven A cigarettes), used to rag me about buying these “violent comics”, but I reckon he welcomed the repeat business.
Another great source of comic books was a secondhand bookstore called Jolee’s, tucked away in a forgotten corner of our main street shops. Every second week or so, my mum would take me there and let me rummage through the baskets stuffed full of old comics near the front door, while she scoured the shelves for her favourite crime novelists, such as Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers.
The owner of Jolee’s was a middle-aged man who smoked a pungent brand of cigars in the shops (This was decades before stores imposed bans on smoking!) To this day, I can still pluck an old paperback off my mum’s bookshelf, sniff the inside pages, and tell you if it came from Jolee’s, all those years ago. That cigar smoke was strong stuff!
While my comic book collection, carefully stored in cardboard box under my bed, grew at an alarming rate, I began taking my comic book obsession to the next level by trying to make my own.
My dad was an advertising copywriter who worked in a string of ad agencies during the 1970s. He used to take me along to his office when he was working on weekends to meet a deadline – or to listen to the horse races on the radio in peace! – and plop me down in front of a desk. I would grab a ream of these great TV commercial layout pads, which had two blank boxes (one for the layout artist’s image, the other for the dialogue and camera directions), which were tailor-made for my handmade comic books.
My first creation was Planet Scout, an intergalactic superhero whose name I took from one of my favourite Matchbox toy cars. Planet Scout was quickly followed by other DIY superheroes, including Matt Falcon (my answer to Dan Dare) and Supreme Squadron (my version of The Avengers).
The year 1979 saw a small-scale comic book convention being held in Melbourne – the first comic convention to be held in Australia.
I must have successfully pestered my dad into taking me, because I went there on the final day. Leaving dad outside – he was either too embarrassed to come in, or perhaps he preferred to stay outside and smoke – I went around the crowded display room, gazing in jaw-dropping astonishment at all these fantastic comic books on display.
It was here that I saw my fist comic fanzine, The Australian Comic Collector (better known as TACC), which also doubled as the convention’s programme, and featured artwork by, and profiles of, Australian comic book artists.
Australian comic books? I used to think that comics only came from America or Britain – at least, I used to think that, until Christmas 1979, when my thoughtful and indulgent parents put a copy of John Ryan’s book, Panel by Panel: An Illustrated History of Australian Comics, under the Christmas tree for me.
My mum and dad couldn’t have realised that this gift would take my comic book mania to strange new heights – but that it did! I didn’t read Panel By Panel – I inhaled it. These old Aussie comics looked so magical and fascinating – and, of course, I thought they would be forever unobtainable to a kid like me. (It didn’t help me to hear my dad say: “Captain Atom? Oh yeah, I had all those old comics when I was a kid.” Aaargh!)
By the early 1980s, I threw myself headlong into the local comic fandom community that was just emerging through the pages of fanzines and newsletters. I wrote comic book reviews for such fanzines as The Fox Comic Collector and The Australian Comic Reader – I even scored my own column, ‘Comics Corner’, in a Western Australian sci-fi/gaming ‘zine called Apocrypha, edited by Larry Dunning.
When I wasn’t buying and reading comic books, I was banging out pompous, pseudo-intellectual comic book reviews on a heavy old manual typewriter that my dad salvaged from a previous advertising agency job.
The 1980s were an exciting time for fans of Australian comics, with dozens of titles appearing throughout the decade, with titles like Phantastique, Cyclone Comics, Fox Comics, Pounding Tales and Inkspots showcasing innovative work by a new generation of Australian artists and writers.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s, ‘real life’ pursuits were overtaking my passion for comic books. Leaving high school, starting my first job, going to university – and becoming an equally passionate ‘bookworm’ (specialising in modern first editions), as well as starting my career as a freelance journalist. All these things saw me put aside my interest in comic books for good. Or so I thought.
I don’t recall how or why it happened, but some time in the late 1990s, I started looking at comic books again. I discovered that I’d missed some amazing Australian comics during the last 10 years, so I set about tracking them down and adding them to my collection. It was also during this time that I managed to acquire dozens of old Aussie comics from the 1940s-1960s – in some cases, the exact same ones I first saw in Panel by Panel twenty years ago!
I was also fortunate enough to get to know some of the great Aussie comic artists of the postwar years, such as John Dixon, Paul Wheelahan and Arthur Mather, as well as a host of modern day cartoonists, such as Gary Chaloner, Gerald Carr and Dillon Naylor, to name a few.
All this, I thought, can be attributed to this slightly dog-eared copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #12, which my dad bought for me all those years ago.
I guess that’s why I’m so passionate about collecting comic books. They’re more than just scarce or valuable ‘collectables’ – for me, they’re little time capsules of memory and emotion, capable of summoning up people and places I haven’t thought of in years, just by turning the page.
That, and the fact that they occasionally come complete with a free, full-colour poster!
This article originally appeared in the February 2004 edition of Collectormania magazine. Text copyright 2007 Kevin Patrick. Image courtesy of Daniel Best's blog, 20th Century Danny Boy.
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