ORIGINS OF A COMIC BOOK JUNKIE PART ONE
BY JENNIFER M. CONTINOThis past week was the third anniversary of my grandmother, Dolly Gasper's, death. She was a great force in my life and, as I always do, her anniversary made me think about my earliest days as a comic book junkie. I'm sure my story is like a lot of yours, but thought I'd share some of it anyway. In the first installment, I'm going to tell you how a little girl became a major superhero fan.
As I've said before, I can't remember a time when superheroes weren't in my life. As this picture proves, I was playing with Mego superhero dolls as a toddler. The beautiful woman there is my grandmother. While a lot of my aunts were trying to get me to play with Barbies or some other "girl-friendly" toy, grandma bought me superheroes for Christmas and my birthdays. She never tried to force the blonde bimbo brigade upon me and encouraged anything and everything I enjoyed. In fact, she played superheroes with me, watched Wonder Woman and Bionic Woman with me, and listened to me ramble on and on about my favorite characters and what I loved about each of them.
And this was before I ever learned to read.
I didn't know such a thing as comic books existed until I was in grade school. It was either kindergarten or first grade, when I'd read all the books in the "smallest" section of the library and was allowed to venture out to where the big kids got books. I loved reading, so I was like a kid in a candy shop. I carefully scanned all the shelves and looked around for a long time, before I noticed
it: the
Bat-Signal. It was on the side of a purple book on the top shelf. I had to know what that book was. I got a big kid to pull down the thick book for me and discovered it was
Batman: From the '30s to the '70s; more importantly, I'd discovered superhero
comic books.
I don't know what it was like for the rest of you, but it was magic for me. I checked that book out a million times, well I rotated it with
Superman: From the '30s to the '70s, a
Wonder Woman collection, and a
Captain America hardcover that reprinted a few key issues, the bulk of the superhero books that my school library had. But, the
Batman book was my favorite. I would spend entire weekends reading and rereading the stories. Batman, Robin, Bat-Girl, Batwoman and the Batgirl I knew from television and cartoons, Barbara Gordon.
Anyway, getting back to the comic books, my dad saw me sadly looking at the section of the
Batman book that reprinted covers from each decade. He wondered why I was so sad and I told him, "I wish they made comic books like this now." Because, you see, I'd never seen any comic books in the grocery stores or other places. My dad smiled and took me to a newsstand. Again, it was one of those magic moments. Underneath the magazines on a bottom set of shelves were three rows of comic books. Things I'd never heard of, characters I thought I knew so well -- it was amazing. He bought me a handful of comics and took me there each week. So, I owe a lot to my dad as well, but this story is about my grandmother, so I'll get to that point.
Once my grandmother found out about comic books, or, rather, that I was reading them voraciously, she took an interest. Her interest equaled comic book gold for me. My grandmother was one to frequent yard sales and junk sales and flea markets. She and my aunt would go to places like that on an almost daily basis in the summer. She lived about five blocks from me when I was very young. So, when she'd return from her treasure hunting, she'd call me and tell me if she found something that I would like. (Heck, if it was a comic book, she'd buy it even if I might not
like it!) On her back porch she had this old piece of furniture with drawers and cupboards. If she found something, sometimes she'd leave it in there for me to find -- kind of like I got to do my own treasure hunting.
Now, I wasn't with her a lot of the times when she would go our bargain shopping, but I've been told that she didn't just look at what was visible to find things for me. If it was a stack of magazines, she looked through them all to make sure a comic book wasn't in between a few magazines or at the bottom. If there were boxes of things, she would carefully go through them looking for comic books. She would ask the people selling things if they had any comic books. She'd leave no stone unturned. If there was a comic book available, my grandmother would find it and have it in her possession by the time her trip was done. Through her, I got a sea of Silver Age comic books like
World's Finest, Action Comics, Superboy and lots more. Bags of comic books would become mine.
Thankfully for me she never leafed through the comic books, otherwise she never would have given me
Les Daniels' Comix: A History of Comic Books In America when I was just nine years old. One look at Mr. Natural saying "F-you" and that would have been it for my having that hardcover, which I think she got for less than a dollar at a yard sale.
I was with grandma one time at a large flea market when I was in fifth grade. I found one place in the sea of dealers that had a comic book, the
Special Edition X-Men # 1. I'd never seen this comic book before, but was already a rabid
Uncanny X-Men fan, so I had to have it. I reached in my purse to see if I had enough money, I think it cost $1.50 and that was almost the price of three regular comic books; so a dear sum to me. However, just as I was about to pay for it, my grandmother took the comic from me and bought it for me. I was thrilled, but she just smiled at me and was glad to make me happy.
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She bought me a lot of comics since then. When I was younger, she'd go to the newsstand and get me a few new comic books to go with whatever birthday present she bought. When New Dimension Comics opened, she'd go in there and talk with the owner and surprise me with things. When she finally started collecting Social Security, she gave every grandchild five dollars a month from her SS check. That was part of my comic money for a long time. So she helped nurture my love of comics, by her acceptance of my reading comic books. She never once said, "Don't you think you're a little old for this?" When I used to draw pictures and make up comic books, she always read them and was so interested in everything I created.
While a lot of people in my family were looking at me with raised eyebrows for my love of superheroes and comic books, my grandmother was buying me new issues, getting me old comics, reading my original comics, and always willing to listen to me say why I thought Donna Troy was the greatest comic book character ever, pre-
Crisis -- even if she didn't know what the
Crisis was.
When I first started writing about comic books, my grandmother was a loyal reader. She read my stories on
Mania.com, my articles in the
Wizard family of magazines and just about everything I wrote at
Sequential Tart. When THE PULSE began, my grandmother was around 76 years old. She read the PULSE every day, and commented on many of the stories, even though she didn't know much at all about comic books. That's how supportive of my love of comic books she was. She just wanted me to know she was watching.
Dolly Gasper is one of the reasons I became such a huge comic book fan. She was one of the biggest influences in my life. I'll always miss her, but also always be grateful that she encouraged me so much in my life to be who I wanted to be, no matter what everyone else thought.
So that's the beginning of my story! How did the rest of your get hooked on comics? Who were the most influential people in your life in those early years of reading?
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