So last summer I sold my comic book collection. I guess I was finally ready to do it. Except that the morning before they were due to be shipped, my wife found me going through the twenty plus long boxes pulling out certain issues. “This is very difficult for you, isn’t it?” she said. An understatement for the ages.
The books I was saving were key issues. Not first issues or important issues… but first issues and important ones to me. Books that carried for me something far and above the stories contained within. The first issue of Mystery in Space that I ever bought. The comic I bought as a freshman at college, and which had beckoned to me from the newsstand like an old friend. All were issues to which I had some kind of key emotional attachment. I was saving them (note the terminology) because I wanted to use them in Funky as an homage to the writers and artists who made my world spin around as a kid, and as a look at the books that helped to shape my thinking about comics.
Issue 115 if The Flash was the first one I ever purchased and it introduced me to the thoughtful editing of Julie Schwartz, the character driven writing of John Broom, and the extraordinarily beautiful artwork of Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson. This coming Sunday, October 26th, I pay my tribute and debt to the cover of that particular book as Funky “pre-pears” for his class reunion. I did a similar Sunday earlier this year as a tribute to the Tales of Suspense book that had befriended me while at college. I hope to do others from time to time, because every time I do, it makes the twelve-year-old in me extremely happy.
