Grandma & Grandpa's Comics

First of all, Happy First Day of Fall! Since there aren't alot of (okay, any) cover shots of superheroes performing the quintessential fall chore of raking leaves, I turned to the good old Walt Disney Comics of my early years for an image.

As you've probably figured out by now, it doesn't take much to trigger the Nostalgia Gland in my brain...so seeing that wonderful scene of Hewie, Dewie, Louie and their hapless "Unca' Donald" really conjured up some fond memories.

You see, every Sunday after church, it was a tradition for my family and I to stop by Grandma & Grandpa's house for milk and cookies (you can't get much more Norman Rockwell than that, can you?). Following the Cookie Feast, I would retire to their living room with a big stack of Disney and Looney Tunes comic books (and a disparate copy of Superman #187) they kept for just such a purpose. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed those comics, or how many times I read them. Obviously, interwoven with the memories of reading those comics were the warm memories of visiting grandma and grandpa all those years ago. Cookies and comics. How can you beat that?

Even now, whether it's the comics from Grandma and Grandpa's (yes, they're mine now), or comics from another point in my life, isn't it interesting how they can sometimes conjure up memories from specific "eras" of your life? Any special comics trigger those memories for you? Drop me a comment and let me know!

Tomorrow: My review of the Superman: Doomsday video that was released earlier this week. See you then!

Comments

[cinephile]

Wow-- lots of comics, actually. The Marvel adaptation of Star Wars, which I think was the first comic I ever read. John Byrne's run on the fantastic four. A late-70s Batman (no idea what issue number) that showed Two-Face hanging out a window, with (I think) Batman falling and trying to grapple-hook himself to safety-- I read that one when I was sick, in a stack of comics my dad brought home. But as much as the stories or art, it's the packaging and extra-textual elements that set off those memories: Jim Shooter's Bullpen Bulletins from the early 80s, the movie ads on the backs of the books, and memories of the "three-pak", and the anticipation of what might be inside the one you got (I remember standing with my brother at the rack in the drug store, and trying to bend the package so we could see what the second issue in the middle was, to make sure we got a "good" pack). I also remember, as I collected as a young teen in the mid-80s, that original marvel issues from the sixties, on display at the local shop, had a mystical, otherworldly quality, probably because they were too expensive to buy. (:

Great post!

[Mark Engblom]

Get out of my head, Cinephile!

Wow....sounds we have alot of the same comic book experiences. While I was curiously apathetic toward the Star Wars comic book series as a whole, the adaptations of the first and second movie were pretty exciting to me. Think about it...in the age before home video tapes, comic book adaptations were one of the few ways you could (in a way) re-experience the film. That could also be why my friends and I loved getting those record albums that had sound bites taken from the movie. Again, it was a pre-videotape way of reliving the movie. When videos just barely started making their way into the public realm, the public library was one of the first places with a VCR machine (which looked like a tank by today's standards), and my friends and I used to take a bus all the way in to downtown Duluth to watch movies on it.

Ah, and those 3-issue value packs! We did the same thing (peeking to see what the mysterious other comics were).

You're also dead right on seeing those mysterious Silver Age comics. I also remember seeing Golden Age comics for the first time at a small local convention back home. It was like seeing some kind of Ancient Egyptian scroll or something. In fact, I could have sworn I heard the faint strains of John Williams' "The Map Room: Dawn" from the Raiders soundtrack.;)

Thanks for stirring up some more great memories, Cinephile!