Mom was right in the sense that I didn’t seem to miss comics a whole lot and just kept voraciously reading, but I eventually rediscovered comics in the 6th grade. My first purchases were back issues from flea markets and street fairs. I was on a big Norse mythology kick, and I picked a few issues of Thor and some issues of The Defenders with Valkyrie featured on the cover. Thor at that time was in a rut and not focusing on Norse mythology much (that would change soon), but I stayed with Defenders until the bitter end (Issue #152 to be precise).
I had a paper route in 6th grade, so I had my own money to buy plenty of comics. I also had more freedom to roam further than my immediate neighborhood and I found corner store newsstand with two spinner racks of comics. As it was on a corner with bus stops for both east-west routes, north-south routes, and buses to NYC, Clifton News remained open long after other similar stores closed and carried comics long after after other places I bought comics from either closed or stopped carrying them.
The problem with buying your comics from a newsstand is that no matter the title, there were only 2 copies of each title on the spinner rack. Uncanny X-Men? 2 copies. U.S. 1 ?(a short-lived toy tie-in comic about a crime-fightin’ trucker who could receive CB transmissions through the metal plate in his skull. Two copies. A lot of times I’d schlep out there and find most of the best titles already gone, leaving only the second-tier (or worse) titles behind. This also led to missing issues in runs of my favorite titles
My friends and I eventually found out when the new comics came in and would rush there after school on the appointed day, getting there even before the newsstand owner would put the comics up on the racks. We would get first dibs, but that still led to problems as there were still only two copies of each issue and we often wanted the same titles. I ended up persuading my parents to get me a Marvel gift subscription package for X-mas. Marvel, unlike DC, had good holiday subscription deals with bigger savings for subscribing to multiple titles, so I was getting 5 or 6 titles through junior and senior high.
Anyone remember DC’s Enemy Ace, the titular character being Hauptman Hans von Hammer, the “Hammer from Hell,” in WWI? Like the Red Baron, he had a little trophy for every Allied aircraft he’d shot down.
Ignoring Dell’s Combat, which had a true story every issue, Enemy Ace was arguably the most realistic war comic ever. Sam Glanzman illustrated the former, while Joe Kubert did what I consider to be his best work in the latter. (Frankly, I preferred Russ Heath’s art in Our Army at War and G.I. Combat.)
There was a title (Men at War) in the mid-1970s that he appeared in regularly. The Unknown Soldier (“mummy guy”) was also a regular. I’m not sure if those were originals or reprints from the 1960s.
I missed that one, since I had essentially stopped buying comics by then. I did, however, shell out some cash for a collection of vintage Little Lulus around that time.
I also noticed a bit later that Jeb Stuart had switched to commanding an M4 Sherman instead of an M3 Stuart, and Sgt Rock’s stories were ending with a “Make War No More” message. I guess DC war comics were among the earliest to go PC.
Some of the best anti-war stories can be found in EC’s Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales way back in the early 1950s. I have reprints of their entire runs.
I read through that thing thinking‘doesn’t anybody on this ship know how to catch a scared cat? You don’t chase it around with nets, you sit still next to a dish of food pretending to look the other way!’
But apparently in that universe the trick is to be the right species.
You did not miss much by not picking up any Atlas/Seaboard comics - they were horrible. Notable artists like Neal Adams and Howard Chaykin would do some reasonable covers, but the story and story art was terrible. Atlas/Seaboard was an early learning experience about “speculative investing”. By the time these comics came out, I had gotten familiar with the local comicbook shops and had noticed how early issues of a series had appreciated in value. So my friends and I were all excited to “get in early” on this new publisher. The “Ironjaw” title was their attempt to cash in on the “Conan the Barbarian” craze that was going on at the time. So I remember buying like 10 copies of “Ironjaw” #1 (Neal Adams cover). And when I got home to read the book…utter disappointment (you’d think the mere concept would have been a dead give-away: a pre-historical barbarian with a fully functioning iron jaw ???).
I would have been happy to send you one of those copies, but during COVID we ran low on toilet paper…
Thinking about it last night, I remembered that Hans was a Rittmeister; in other words, a Master of Cavalry, a rank somewhat more prestigious than that of a run-of-the mill Captain.
After I discovered comic book shops and then comic shows a few years later, I used to guilt-trip Mom when I needed rides to those and she wasn’t inclined to take me. I used to whip out my Overstreet Guide and show her how much those early issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four that Uncle Marc had given me and she had thrown away were worth now. Granted, the hand-me-down issues were pretty torn and beat up and I was pointing out near-mint values…
After I got back into buying comics off the newsstand, what was I buying? The start of the 80s was not a good time for mainstream comics publishers. The late 70s saw DC and Marvel cancel dozens of titles and other publishers were either on their way out or had given up the ghost. In 1980, there were less than 100 monthly titles total available on newsstands. Archie had about a dozen. Harvey and Charlton were still hanging in there (Charlton was all reprints by then).
However, I was only reading Marvel and DC. I wasn’t into war comics at all, so I wasn’t reading Sgt Rock or Blackhawk. I wasn’t into horror comics, so I wasn’t reading House of Mystery or Night Force. It was a steady diet of superheroes, with sides of fantasy and science-fiction. I was probably reading more Marvel than DC by a narrow margin, but that was because I was getting 5-6 Marvels in the mail every month
I remember a lot of the not-C-or-Marvel characters, but nobody has mentioned one of my faves. Herbie (AKA the Fat Fury). The publisher also had a couple of occutish super-heroes whose names escape me at the moment.
Marvel in the early 80s was built on top talents having seminal runs on its top titles. Walt Simonson on Thor. John Byrne on Fantastic Four. Frank Miller on Daredevil. Chris Claremont on Uncanny X-Men (with Byrne/Cockrum/Smith). X-Men had become such a sensation that Marvel started launching spinoffs (New Mutants, Alpha Flight, Dazzler) Spider-Man and Avengers were always dependable reads.
Outside of those A-list titles, though, I don’t remember Marvel having a lot going on. Marvel’s sole fantasy titles were Conan titles (Conan, King Conan, Red Sonja) Marvel had the Stars Wars license, but was flying blind I the years between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. Then Marvel starting canceling an all its B-list titles (Power Man & Iron Fist, Master of Kung-Fu, Ka-Zar, the Defenders) and replacing them with comics based on toys, which didn’t do much for me A lot of people remember GI Joe and Transformers comics. There were also The Micronauts and ROM, Spaceknight, comics that outlasted their toy lines. However, Marvel had a mania for picking up seemingly every two-bit toy line out there. Team America! M.A.S.K.! Sectaurs! Chuck Norris & His Karate Kommandos! Crystal: Crystal Warrior! In contrast DC, only had Masters of the Universe and that was a mini-series.
1980 saw the debut of (the savage) She-Hulk, I think. Am I remembering correctly that Marvel’s Micronauts was actually a pretty decent comic book that required no awareness of the toys to enjoy?
Savage She-Hulk was launched in '79. It was the last of Marvel’s three woman-hero spinoff titles of the late 70s along with Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman, so I thought of it as more of a 70s title and it was gone by the time I started buying newsstand comics in '82.
I actually had some of the toys, but I didn’t know there was a comic until later. It had very little to do with the toy line and added mostly new characters. IIRC the story riffed pretty heavily on Star Wars. Rag-tag rebel alliance versus empire run by black-armor-clad villain Baron Karza.
My first comics were old Harvey and Disney comics bought in stacks at yard sales in the late 70s-early 80s. Next I started buying Transformers and GI Joe and Rom. Then I for some reason started X-Men at some point in the window after Secret Wars I and Secret Wars II, bought the SWII related books, got into the X-Men-adjacent titles. Got into Groo the Wanderer from the first Marvel issue after the cover my attention for some reason. I think I tried all of the New Universe titles when they first came out but the only one I stuck with after the first few episodes was Star Brand. I read basically nothing outside of Marvel.
After just a few years of collecting I quit in the mid-late 80s not so much because I lost interest but because by that point prices had gone up to 75 cents an issue and it was getting too expensive to buy them all.
bmoak1 mentioned Crystar (not “Crystal”). I read that one, too (and had all the toys) and it is interesting that it is no longer a buried, forgotten series. Crystar himself featured in a recent team-up including Deadpool and the sorcerer from the original comics is a in Strange Academy after having been transformed into a flying cat. (Plus one of the students in the academy is a new crystal character).
