I Gotta Have It! But, How'd You Get It?

Doug: Last weekend we had several long-timers as well as a nice representation of new/recent commenters join the fray in discussing their peak buying years. The conversation veered to when and why that first wave waned, books that got us back into collecting, etc. Toward the end of that weekend, one of our Twitter followers (@conrad_eric) asked us if we'd ever run a post where we asked our readers just how they got their comics. To the best of my recollection those sorts of stories have been told through the years, but I don't believe ever in one place. Well... that's today, and the rest of the weekend.

We'd love it if you'd get specific with certain vendors' spinner racks and magazine shelves, locations of drug stores or groceries, mail order companies, and maybe even trading partners. I know I'd love to hear memories of how our readers acquired certain books, what age they were then, and if they still have the book or not. Talk about our community finding some common ground for nostalgia!

I can start this off today, and will most likely chime in again with a comment at some point: As a child, I can recall magazine racks at a drug store at the corner of S. 76th St. and Howard Ave. in Milwaukee. I can see Fantastic Four #161 in front of my hands in May, 1975. I later bought FF #163 at the same store. Those might be the earliest memories I have of buying my own comics, which is puzzling since I'd have been 9 years old. I know I had several comics by that time. Anyway, other regular venues through the years included Osco Drugs in Kankakee, IL, where I purchased Peter Parker #1, Belscot in Kankakee (a poor man's Wal-Mart), where Marvel Treasury Edition #s 19 (Conan the Barbarian) and 21 (Fantastic Four) left in my possession, the Weiner's mini-market on River Street in Kankakee, IL where I purchased an issue of Super-Team Family, the Convenient Food Mart in Bourbonnais, IL where I bought many an issue of Secret Society of Super-Villains, and of course my most famous one-time purchase of Avengers #161 at Mickey's Books and Novelties (you know...). In college, the Rexall Drugs in Eureka, IL got me my fix of Crisis On Infinite Earths and volume two of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Shortly thereafter, I started buying comics from mail order businesses such as Westfield Comics, Mile High Comics, and M&M Comic Service. All are still in business.

So thank you to Eric for the suggestion/request. I hope our conversation this weekend is as rich as last weekend's was.

Suggestion Unboxed -- DC's Black-n-White Magazines

Doug: Welcome to the fruits of your labor, readers. Today we start a week's worth of discussion topics suggested by you during our request for topics, posted last Wednesday. We really appreciate everyone's contributions.

Dougie: If DC had published a line of b/w magazines like Marvel's Dracula Lives, Savage Sword of Conan, Planet of the Apes, etc. which features would you have liked to see? And by what creative teams?

Buried Treasures: Star Wars Screen Superstars 1977

Star Wars Screen Superstars (1977)

Karen: I was sorting through some boxes in our garage recently and came across some old magazines I've been carting around with me for decades now. I thought it might be fun to take some of them out and give them a look, and share them with you. Back in the days before we learned everything the moment it happened, before Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, news traveled so much more slowly. As fans of what was then a minor and much maligned genre -science fiction - we jumped upon any morsel we could find. Those typically came from magazines. So I'm inaugurating a new feature, Buried Treasures, which will look at some of those goodies from the past. We won't be limited to just magazines, but they'll certainly have the lion's share of the spotlight.

Karen: There was a wonderful period of time in the mid to late 70s when there were just tons of science fiction film magazines on the stands. Starlog was probably the most prominent. The Star Trek Giant Poster Book magazine was another one I always picked up when I saw it. There was also Cinefantastique, which always seemed so serious.  But there were a lot of one-shot sort of magazines that would spring up for different films -and Star Wars probably bred more of these periodicals than any other. 

Karen: Today I'm going to look at one of these one-shots. It's called (I think) Star Wars Screen Superstar, and it was published in 1977 by Paradise Press. The writers include Jonathon Green, Doug Murray, and Allan Asherman, who has written books and articles on Star Trek. I suppose he was checking the new kid on the block out. Artists for this magazine include Dave Gibbons -I assume it's THAT Dave Gibbons - and Geoffrey Mandel, who is known for many contributions to Star Trek, from his fan days and the Enterprise Manual, up to becoming a production designer for the shows. The magazine is 62 pages long and is filled throughout with color photos, and many double-page spreads, some of which I will try to reproduce here, although my scanner bed can't quite fit the entire picture. I really read the heck out of this magazine when I first got it. I was hungry for anything on Star Wars back then (our little town didn't actually get the film for almost two months after it came out!) and I would read and re-read everything I had on Luke, the droids, and Vader.

Karen: I suspect that Mandel is responsible for the "Technical Readout" on the inside of the cover, which shows C-3PO and R2-D2 with detailed descriptions of all their mechanisms. I've printed it here for you to pore over. These are the kinds of things I would stare at as a kid and the information would be burned into my brain cells far more intently than anything I was looking at in my text books!

Karen: The magazine itself is broken down into four parts: a section on the making of the movie, another on the worlds of Star Wars, the third on the special effects, and the last on the cast and crew. The 'making of' part covers the difficulties George Lucas and crew faced in getting Star Wars off the ground. Although it seems like Star Wars fans have heard every story there is to hear a million times already, there were a few tidbits here and there that caught my attention. The article says that only one full scale x-wing and y-wing fighter were built -all the rest seen in the hangar shots are cardboard cut-outs. Could this be right? I suppose with it impossible to see the original Star Wars any more (Disney may change this soon, thankfully) it's hard to know if this is accurate. Another paragraph mentions Lucas' annoyance with the work habits of the British crew, which meant always ending the work day at 5:30 - of course, Lucas was under the gun and desperate to get the film completed. At the end of the article, when it recounts the films success, it claims that Lucas took his earnings and bought a $500,000 Lear jet, and had the interior redecorated to look like the Millenium Falcon. Could this be true? I never heard that before.

The next article, "The World of Star Wars," recounts much of the film, informed by interviews with Lucas and others, and perhaps, the novelization? It's fun to read some of this now, with a far different perspective -what was true then has become changed after so many years and those unnecessary prequels. We are told that the Republic has been taken over by Senator Palpatine, who has installed the Sith Lords and their high priest, Darth Vader, in the place of the Jedi. Unfortunately we never get any real sense of the Sith Lords in the original films, or the idea that Vader is a "High Priest" -the closest we get is the throwaway line from the unfortunate naval officer about his "Sorcerer's ways."   The author goes on to describe how the Star Wars ships "Looked right, in terms of say 'Star Trek' space technology" (what else did he have to compare it to?), and describes R2-D2 as "a technological wonder that is as common and everyday in the world of Star Wars as a pocket calculator is today." Does that take you back friends? But archaic tech aside, the author does well by discussing how very different the Star Wars robots, or droids, are compared to their cinema predecessors. There's no evidence of any of Asimov's Laws of Robotics at play here, and indeed, these droids are at least (if not more so) emotive as their human counterparts. The writer does a fine job throughout the article relating the movie back to its film and literary roots, without belittling it, which has become more common as time has passed. The article captures the feeling of elation and anticipation that Star Wars created when it first appeared, with the audiences hungry for more. It ushered in an era of sci fi films, many of which were crap, but there were also a lot of gems. After years of starving for science fiction and fantasy on the big screen, we would finally get our fill.

The third article is all about the special effects, and I hate to say it, but I skimmed over it. I just didn't need to know all the details, and I've seen a number of specials over the years that have shown the SFX wizardry on the films. Familiar names like John Dykstra, Dennis Muren, Richard Edlund, Stuart Freeborn, Rick Baker, and so on, all get their due here. 

The final section, "Who's Who in Star Wars," goes over the cast and some of the production crew. Each major actor is given a bio. It's amusing to read Harrison Ford's. Remember, this is 1977: "Of all his roles, there is no doubt that the one more remembered so far is his portrayal of Bob Faya -the tough-guy street racer in that smash-hit evocation of high-school fun and games: 'American Grafitti.'" After 37 years, does anyone even think of that role when they think of Ford? It's probably either Han Solo or Indiana Jones, then Blade Runner, then maybe the Fugitive, Witness, etc...There's a quote from George Lucas that I found very interesting, because I wonder if he would say it today: "I wasted four years of my life cruising like the kids in 'American Grafitti' and now I'm on an intergalactic dream of heroism. In 'Star Wars' I'm telling the story of me. It's my fantasy."

Marvelous House Ads, part 2: Marvel Magazines

Karen: Howdy folks, we 're spending some more time taking at trip through the past via those fun Marvel house ads from the 70s. Our first time around, we did showed a variety of ads from 1970 to 1973. This time, we're going to focus on Marvel's ads for their magazine line, from about 1973 to 1975.

Karen: When most of us think of Marvel magazines, we probably think of the biggies, like Savage Sword of Conan or Hulk. But Marvel actually turned out a variety of magazines, from sword and sorcery to horror, science fiction, super-heroes, and even humor. Here's one of the goofier books, Monster Madness, which put humorous captions with old Universal monster and other movie stills. This kind of fumetti seemed to appeal to Stan Lee, who I believe had done some similar books. I'm pretty sure I had this magazine as a kid -one of the few Marvel mags I actually owned.

Doug: I always looked at these in the grocery store, in addition to Mad and Car-toons, but must confess that back in the day I never owned any. I was pretty much a four-color zombie and was generally put-off by the B&W art. In retrospect, what a dope I was! Today I really love to see that lush art in Savage Sword, and I enjoy the mythos that was being created in Planet of the Apes. I did have a few issues of the Hulk, but even those were after the magazine went to color.


Karen: Of course, Savage Tales was one of the most popular titles. Because there was no comics code on the magazines, Marvel could get away with more violence and nudity, although it was still pretty tame comparatively speaking. And this is the part that kills me: 76 pages for 75 cents! The ad here is a pretty nice one, with that awesome Barry Smith Conan art. I love John Buscema's work, but I have to say, I really enjoy Smith's interpretation of Conan.


Karen: From roughly the same time, we have these text-laden ads for Monsters Unleashed and Dracula Lives, two of several monster mags that Marvel was putting out. It's interesting to note that for most of the mags produced in this time period -1973 - the ads don't actually show the covers! I can only imagine that this was because they hadn't decided on a cover design yet? In any case, it strikes me as very peculiar.
















Karen: Here's an ad for Planet of the Apes. Doug has reviewed at least one issue of this magazine here. I recall owning several copies at one time but not any more. This mag combined adaptations of the movies with new, original stories, and also articles about the films and photos from the films. I'm not sure if this or Doc Savage was Marvel's first movie tie-in.


Karen: And who could forget Crazy? Well, I could actually -I was a Mad magazine fan. But I think Crazy was relatively successful for a number of years. In this ad we actually get a depiction of the cover.