Hi again, y’all. Yeah, it’s been quite some time since we last crossed paths; almost a year since my last post here. But upon dire threats from my dear wifey of firing me as her co-blogger – does that mean divorce? – I figured I best get busy and dip my toes into the waters of the blogosphere once again. So…here goes nothing!I’ve always fancied myself as a man of words, a wannabe writer, if you will, which can be evidenced by my stacks of index pads full of the beginnings of short stories and great-American novels, all cast aside and long neglected over the years, most likely never to be finished. Still, it’s the words that I’ve always loved, and the books that introduced me to them. And it was my mother who gave me the gift of the love of books which I shared with you here in a long-ago post, telling the story of her getting me a library card when I was only six years old which you can read HERE.
As a lover of words, I do have my favorites. Of all words, one of my most favorite is serendipity. There’s just something about the way it flows off the tongue while leaving behind a delectable taste of wonder. Plus, the definition gives me a sense of the what ifs in life, what luck might lie ahead. Serendipity: The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident. And it was just such a discovery that prompted me to refresh my word processing skills…well, that plus my beautiful Anghel wifey putting her boot up my kazoo telling me to get busy. The irony there is that I bought her those long-wanted boots for Christmas!
Said discovery was of all things, a book; not a book book though, but a comic book. It was in 1963 that I was introduced to the wonderful world of Marvel Comics Group. Those are the guys who over the years brought you The Amazing Spiderman; Fantastic Four; Hulk; Iron Man; X-Men; and oh so many more marvelous creations. But it was none of the latter that initially got me hooked. In ’63 my uncle gave me the first two issues of a new Marvel line, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. As a kid who was so enthralled with military history, I was a goner from the get-go. And it was from that point I was introduced to the other Marvel characters. But what I was searching for when I had my serendipitous moment had to do with Sgt. Nick Fury.
A couple of years after the first Sgt. Fury comic, Marvel branched off and introduced Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Fantastic Four#21 as a CIA agent, and later on he appeared in Strange Tales#135 morphing into a James Bond like super spy. When I pulled my old comics out, I was looking for any comic I had with any mention of the S.H.I.E.L.D. acronym because I wanted to know what it stood for. The reason for that is because S.H.I.E.L.D. has reappeared several times recently in many of the Marvel movies I’ve seen, as well as becoming a television series. But, man-o’-man, what I would have given back in my little boy days to have seem my hero characters on the big screen though, obviously, with today’s special effects and computer animated technology, today’s movies are more spectacular.
But my search for S.H.I.E.L.D. went by the wayside when I unexpectedly found a treasure I’d totally forgotten about for I thought it was long gone, lost or traded away. I found my copy of Tales of Suspense#39, published in March of 1963, a couple of months before the first issue of Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. In that issue was the origin and first appearance of Iron Man. I’d got it from an elementary school classmate, trading him something for it, not knowing at the time that it would eventually become a collectors’ item.
And what a collectors’ item it is. A mint copy will go for $45,000.00! I’ve even seen copies on sale at Amazon going for from $850.00 to $1,500.00. Unfortunately, mine is in far from pristine shape, ragged and without a cover. Still, to me, it’s priceless. I was amazed upon reading it again how close the movie followed the original script. Instead of the Mideast, the origin occurred in the early advisor days of the Vietnam War where Tony Stark the military arms industrialist was taken prisoner and then aided by a local in the development of his new persona. His original iron suit was strictly a bland gray, later to be replaced by the more colorful Iron man we now know.
I found even more long-forgotten Marvel Comics Group treasure in my pile of comic books; copies #1 & #2 of Marvel Fantasty Masterpieces; Marvel Collectors’ Item Classics; and Marvel Tales, which included reprints of X-Men#1, Strange Tales#15, the origin of Dr. Strange and Avengers#1. Plus, I have several The Amazing Spiderman King Size Annuals, a Fantastic Four annual, four Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos King Size Annuals along with the first fourteen issues of Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders. I also have the short 8-issue run of Semper Fi, where Marvel followed an American family’s history of serving in the Marine Corps from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam. And, finally, Marvel didn’t have a problem of not taking themselves too seriously by publishing a satirical series called Not Brand Echh, poking fun at themselves publishing stories about The Incredible Bulk, Knock Furious, Agent of S.H.E.E.S.H., Charlie America, The Mighty Sore, The Human Scorch, The Fantastical Four, The Simple Surfer and of course, Spidey Man. They even trashed their main rival and competitor DC Comics by featuring spoofs of Gnat Man and Rotten and Stuporman. Any comic book fan will recognize the real names of those characters.
Still, there’s one more piece of history to complete this saga. I spoke of the luck I had in acquiring the collectors’ edition of Iron Man’s origin. From the same friend I also traded with and got Amazing Fantasy#15, published in August, 1962, in which the origin of The Amazing Spiderman was presented. And I, in my youthful ignorance, later on traded that issue to another friend, for some treasue long forgotten, making the same mistake my other friend had made by giving me the Iron Man issue. Over the years, I’ve lost touch with him, but I’d sure love to talk with him and find out what happened to that comic. It was in good shape and in doing my research, I found that the last highest price of the sale of that issue was $65,000.00! Oh well, ya snooze, ya lose, and was I ever asleep at the wheel when I let that one get away.
Wow! This isn’t the usual blog post. This is almost a novella. Hmm, maybe I will become that novelist I’ve long dreamed of. Well, at least this should make my wifey happy, returning to our blog with over a thousand words. And maybe she’ll even give me a raise! I can only hope. But ’nuff said. See y’all next time around, and maybe this time it won’t take me a year to touch base with you again.
