The two issues that started my collection
Happy Friday! For this installment of “From the Collection of…” I thought I would share the two issues that started my Fantastic Four collection, numbers 161 and 177. Number 161 was a birthday present for my 8th birthday, and I’m sure the only reason my mother bought it for me is that it had a dinosaur on the cover (like most kids that age, I LOVED dinosaurs). I had never heard of the Fantastic Four, so it certainly wasn’t that. The story itself was not a good jumping on point for a new and inexperienced reader, with a complicated storyline involving multiple dimensions, but I was fascinated by the characters and the dynamic art. I had read comics before, mostly Casper and Spooky from Harvey Comics and Archie and Jughead et al; this was the first exposure I can remember to superhero comics.
The collecting bug didn’t hit me immediately, but a little over a year later I became friends with someone in my 4th grade class who was an actual collector of comic books, and I was hooked the minute I went to his house and he showed me his collection. The year was 1976, and the next day he took me to a local supermarket where he bought his new comics. It was there that I bought the latest issue of the Fantastic Four, wanting to read more about the characters I had discovered on that birthday. That issue had a Jack Kirby cover and interior art by George Perez and Joe Sinnott, and that was all it took. I’ve been buying Fantastic Four every month ever since (not counting the 2015-2018 hiatus, of course).
As you can probably see, both issues are a bit rough. A lot of the wear and tear can be attributed to the fact that I re-read them countless times, copied many panels with Silly Putty, and that at that time bags and boards were not readily available. However, that’s not the whole story. In 1977 my family went to Florida for spring break, and in fact we came to Sarasota, where I would eventually move in 2015 and where I currently live. In those days, we had a pop-up trailer, so my family piled into our station wagon, pulling the trailer behind, and we stayed for the vacation in the Sarasota KOA Kampground. At that time I couldn’t bear to be without my comics, so I packed my very small collection into the car with me. They stayed in the car during the two weeks we were there, which was unfortunate, since our car CAUGHT ON FIRE. We never did find out why it happened, some problem with the electrical system of the car was the fire department’s best guess. All I know is I was walking back to our campsite from the pool one afternoon when we heard fire trucks, and when I got there I found firefighters dousing our car with firehoses. Needless to say, my parents were rather annoyed that my only concern was whether or not my comics could be saved (answer: they could, although not without some water damage). In the years since, I have replaced them with upgraded copies, but thankfully I never got rid of the originals, beat up though they are. In fact, I decided that these issues would be the first two comics I would slab with our new company. Sentimentality is the only reason to do so, because they certainly are not valuable, but isn’t that what collecting is all about? Collect what you love.
Jeff Mara
