comicbooks

My passions for reading and drawing began with my older brother’s comic books. Those colorful magazines obsessed me as a child and, eager to keep abreast of my heroes’ exploits, I struggled to increase my vocabulary with each issue. My brother also loved to draw and plan things on paper and, using the comics as references, I mimicked him as soon as I could make marks. My Mighty Mouses and Plutos were, for a 4 yr old, impeccable. Later on I drew Superman and Alfred E. Newman, eventually turning to study Degas and Michelangelo - but that was all ahead of me in some distant hazy future place. During naptime, my caped teddy bear (a hand towel safety-pinned around his neck) flew above my bed swooping down to rescue Raggedy Ann or some other hapless victim. During the long days while my brother was at school, I often went down the street to a friend of my mother’s house (probably so she could watch me while my Mom was busy with babies and whatever Moms did). There I followed Mary Jane around, watching her garden, do laundry, can peaches, and magically paint and fire pottery in her basement studio. I still have a plate that I painted there when I was 5 – (Mary Jane helped me out with my signature.) When we had finished in the basement, I’d go upstairs and sit with her elderly mother while Mary Jane was busy out in the yard. Her mother was confined to her bed upstairs - at least I never remembered seeing her anywhere but there in the bed. In the bathroom across the hall was the great repository of comics. The drawers in there were stuffed to the point where they could barely close without crinkling up the covers - it was the mother lode! Now Mary Jane’s daughters were older than me and had different tastes in comics, so there was very little overlapping in selections. They had Betty and Veronica, Sluggo and Nancy and Little Lulu and several of those crime and gore types with plots too dark and complex for my young mind. I studied them all – the sacred texts of my youth - ravenously thumbing through little Lulus, staving off my hunger for the next issue of Mighty Mouse or Uncle Scrooge to come out. I was a child of the Disney era. I knew the Mickey Mouse Club song by heart and sang along everyday - especially liking Wednesday (‘anything can happen’ day) and Round-up Fridays, where they danced around wearing those horse costumes with little fake legs (I so wanted one of those horsy outfits.) My attention was riveted to those TV shows while they were on the air– but when they were off, those colorful comics reigned supreme. They were ours to keep, to carry around, and to page through again and again. For the following few years, my fifteen cent weekly allowance went to comic books and bubblegum - for me the perfect combination for a joyful afternoon in some quiet corner. Nowadays, as I thumb through an art book, I may see the images with older more educated eyes, but my childlike intensity endures.