Rack Toys From Space

I'm sure everyone has heard the story about the child who gets a big, fancy toy for Christmas and then spends the entire morning playing with the box it came in. Sometimes the simplest toys evoke the most excitement and playful activity. That's probably true because many simple toys are fairly generic, allowing the child to impose whatever storyline he or she wants and encouraging full use of the child's imagination. That's what I always loved about the much maligned rack toys. You know, the cheap items on metal hooks in that one row of the drug store or convenience store devoted to children. They're colorful enough to get a kid's attention and inexpensive enough that a parent will buy it if the kid whines enough. These are certainly not "wait until Christmas" items, but they can often be more loved and played with than any of the high ticket items at the Toys 'R Us.

While digging through a box of old stuff the other day, I came across three tiny spaceships. I didn't even realize I had saved them, but given how much fun I had with them, I'm not surprised. One was a stubby red ship with a clear plastic top, exposing its engine room. The other two were long, slender ships somewhat akin to jet aircraft. One was blue with silver wings along the back; the other was yellow with silver turbine engines mounted on the rear.

I first laid eyes on these little ships at my friend's house. He told me he got them as a "five-fingered discount" from the local department store. I think the fact that they were obtained through illicit means made them even more appealing to me. He had paint racing stripes on the ships with model paint and added the Roman numeral II to the red ship and the numeral III to the blue one. Although I never asked, my assumption was that he had been playing with the ships as if they were like the rescue ships from Thunderbirds, each bearing a number designation.

Every time I went over to my friend's house, I would dig out these little ships and fly them around the room. Finally, he told me I could have them. I guess he was bored with them and could see that I enjoyed them more than he did. There was no argument from me, and I quickly squirreled them away in my pocket.

Originally, each ship had landing gear, but I thought that detracted from their sleek looks, so I broke off the tiny wheels. The more I looked at them, the more they reminded me of the ships in the old Flash Gordon movie serials. In the old cliffhangers, Dr. Zarkov's ship was short and stubby while Ming the Merciless's ships were long and sleek. Soon, I found myself playing Flash Gordon with these ships.


Of course, in my imagination, it was never as simple as just playing. I had an imaginary television network, and the ships lead me to produce a Flash Gordon summer replacement series during the summer of 1977 (what it was replacing, I have no idea). Every weeknight at 7 p.m., I went into the basement to act out a new episode. Playing the role of Flash and reacting to imaginary characters around me, I made use of whatever was available to perform the story, so a car antenna became my sword, my brother's grease gun became my ray gun, and an old floor-model radio from the 1920s served as the controls of my space ship. When it came to the point in the show where special effects shots of the space ships were needed, I would pick up my tiny plastic craft and zip them around the basement in epic dog fights.

Influenced by the chapter structure of old serials, I planned for the series to end at a specific point, which I believe was around the end of July, if memory serves. I can still recall bouncing around on the day beds in our "club" basement area during the climatic sword fight between Flash and Ming. Just like in the serials, Ming met with some inconclusive fate (fell into a pit or something), thus leaving an opening for Ming to return for future battles with Flash. Unfortunately, the series was never renewed. I guess I lost interest in playing the blonde adventurer.

A few months later, I started a new series called Aurora, and used the blue spaceship as the eponymous interstellar craft. Since most of my TV show ideas were rip offs of other shows or movies that I liked, Aurora was a variation on Star Trek. More specifically, I was influenced by the early Star Trek comic books produced by Gold Key where the gadgets and interior design of The Enterprise were much cruder in appearance than the show itself. My idea for Aurora was to have a ship exploring the galaxy which was of an earlier era when the technology was less advanced and the characters more fallable. It actually bore a striking resemblance to the Enterprise TV show which aired a few years ago.

After acting out a full season of the series in that format, I decided it needed a radical change, so I brought on board an entirely new crew. At this time, I was really digging M*A*S*H, so I based the characters vaguely on the personnel at the 4077th. The captain was a Frank Burns-type and the helmsman was a Hawkeye-type, so they were constantly clashing on how to best resolve that week's crisis. The yeoman was like Radar, the first officer was sort of like B.J. Hunnicutt, and on and on. I enjoyed this mash up (pardon the pun) so much that I wrote a novel based on this idea when I was 14 years old. I still have the hand-written story in a composition book somewhere, but I don't have the nerve to read it.

Like most toys, the little spaceships eventually lost their appeal and they were shuffled from one storage box to another. I had lost track of them until the other day, when they brought back a flood of memories. Pretty amazing what a trio of shoplifted rack toys can do for a kid's imagination.

Wonder Woman

Since comic book readership has traditionally been predominantly male, female super heroes were often a tough sell. Not that there weren't several attempts made, but characters like Lady Luck are largely forgotten today. As the median age of comic book readers began to rise in the 1970s, it was easier for the comic book companies to cultivate popular female superheroes since adolescent boys were only too happy to see a curvy, buxom woman in spandex kicking butt. The one female who beat the odds and remained popular from the golden age to modern day was Wonder Woman.

As a kid, I was aware of her name, but I didn't really know anything about Wonder Woman until I read her origin story reprinted in Jules Feiffer's wonderful book on comic history, The Great Comic Book Heroes. In a sense, I was experiencing Wonder Woman for the first time the same way the rest of America experienced her for the first time in 1941. The origin takes place just before the beginning of World War II when Army Intelligence officer Steve Trevor uncovers the leaders of a spy ring and goes on a dangerous mission to capture them. Along the way, his plane runs out of fuel and crash lands on Paradise Island, home of the Amazons. While Trevor is nursed back to health, Princess Diana falls in love with the man and fights to win the honor of taking Trevor back to America so he can finish the job he started. Her mother, Queen Hippolyte, fashions a special costume for her that incorporates elements of the U.S. flag and the golden eagle. Thus, Princess Diana adopts the U.S. as her new home and fights to protect her.

Plenty has been written about what Wonder Woman represents to young girls and to American society in general. I think her biggest contribution was to bring a female perspective and influence to the male dominated machismo of the super hero world. Shortly after her introduction, she was given membership into the all-boys club Justice Society of America. By the time the Justice League of America was formed in the Silver Age, Wonder Woman was part of DC's top three heroes (Superman and Batman being the other two, of course) who had run uninterrupted in comics up to that time. She also established the precedent of there being at least one female in every comic hero team.

Other than that origin story, I have to say I never read a Wonder Woman comic. I only saw her as part of the Justice League, or in the Super Friends cartoon show. There was also this bizarre TV movie from the early 70s:



Gotta love the wakka-cha wakka-cha theme songs back then!

I also watched the Lynda Carter version, at least for a season or so. As much as I liked Wonder Woman, I couldn't bring myself to read a comic featuring a woman. My guess is that most boys had the same reaction, which is why action figures based on female heroes were not as popular in those days. Ideal put out a line of female hero dolls in the 60s to compliment their Captain Action line, but they sold poorly and are quite rare today. Called the Super Queens, the four dolls were Batgirl, Supergirl, Aquaman's wife Mera, and Wonder Woman. I never tried to collect them because, in addition to being expensive, I didn't think they looked all that good. While Captain Action was muscled and articulated to look and pose like a hero, the Super Queens were slight and had limited articulation. They also possessed extremely girly faces not befitting of a super hero.

Still, I wanted a Wonder Woman doll to put amongst my other DC figures. Several years back, Mattel put out a series of Barbie dolls dressed like DC's female heroes. The costumes were great, but I've never been a fan of the Barbie doll in general. Again, it's too slight, the articulation is wonky, and the faces are way too soft and pretty. They are dolls for girls, after all. I bought a Wonder Woman Barbie and slipped it in with my Superman and Batman and Aquaman, but I wasn't happy about it.

Then, last Christmas, my wonder woman wife bought me some Cy Girl action figures for customizing purposes. These female figures are articulated like male action figures and are more curvacious than Barbies, looking very much like the way women are drawn in comic books. They are also provided with two different chest pieces, one featuring smallish breasts and one with larger breasts, depending on what type of effect you want to create. Although my brunette Cy Girl had bigger hips than the Barbie, I figured she could probably slip into the Wonder Woman costume with some encouragement. Happily, I was correct. Of course, I had to use the smaller chest piece since the big boobs simply would not fit in the costume, but I think a smaller chest is better suited to an athletic woman anyhow.



The finished product appears to me as a modern, realistic interpretation of Wonder Woman rather than her iconic image, but I like it. She's also much easier to pose.

Golden Age and Silver Age Green Lantern

Just like the Silver Age Flash, I first discovered Silver Age Green Lantern not in comic books but on the Aquaman cartoon show where he appeared in both his own solo back-up stories and as part of the Justice League of America. The thing that fascinated me about Green Lantern was that he belonged to a larger intergalactic organization designed to police all the planets in space. That imbued him with a greater calling than these other super heroes who simply got hit by radiation or fell into a pile of chemicals and gained super powers. Hal Jordan was blessed with his powers, or at least given a ring and lantern that contained powers, by a far superior group of aliens. If Superman was a veiled representation of Jesus Christ, the Green Lantern was something like a prophet.

I first learned Green Lantern's origin in one of the cartoon installments. Test pilot Hal Jordan is suddenly transported to a desert area where a UFO has crash landed. The alien belongs to the Guardians of the Universe and, now that the alien is dying, he has chosen Jordan to pass on his membership to because he is a good man without fear. The alien gives Jordan a green ring and a green device that looks like a lantern. The lantern charges the ring every 24 hours and, whitgh the ring, he can create just about anything he wishes. Its only weakness is that the ring is powerless against the color yellow. This was one of those bullshit twists that I always hated in comic books, like Superman's kryptonite. These guardians are so powerful, but all you have to do is paint your gun yellow and they're screwed. Oh well...

I discovered that there had been a Golden Age Green Lantern when DC Comics started publishing old reprints in the back pages of their comics in the early 70s. While Silver Age Green Lantern's origin was pure atomic age sci-fi, the Golden Age version had an origin borrowing more from magic, which was pretty common with those early super heroes. Alan Scott stumbles across a magic lantern made of green metal which has mysterious powers. Scott creates a ring that, when he touches it to the lantern every 24 hours, gives him great powers. While Hal Jordan's ring could not affect anything yellow, Scott's ring was defenseless against items made of wood. I think Hal Jordan had the better advantage here.

Like The Flash, Green Lantern was one of the top five super heroes of DC's powerful stable who had his own magazine in addition to appearing regularly in an anthology title (All-American) and as part of the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics. Also like The Flash, Green Lantern faded away in the early 50s as super hero comics fell out of favor. Once The Flash was successfully resurrected in a new form in 1956, Green Lantern got his aforementioned face lift in 1959 and the Silver Age was off and running.

I wasn't a regular reader of the Green Lantern comics, but he was always a big part of my childhood through his appearances on the Aquaman show and, of course, the Super Friends. When I renewed my interest in the old Captain Action toy during the late 90s, I found there was a lot of fans online who wished Ideal had made a Silver Age Green Lantern costume for Captain Action. Indeed, had the toy line been more successful, I have no doubt that The Flash and Green Lantern would've been turned into costume sets for the trans-super hero. Of course, I had to make a costume for my own Captain Action.

The elements for the costume came from the usual suspects. The gloves and boots were courtesy of Wes McCue at Classic Plastick. To simulate the green ring, I cut out a ring shape from green electrical tape and stuck it on the right glove hand. The costume was made by Rauty, which cleverly consists of a full black leotard over which you put on the green one-piece bathing suit type of garment. The chest emblem was made by finding a copy of the logo online, adjusting it to size in Photoshop, and then printing the logo on sitcker paper.

The mask went through two versions. First, I used the mask that came with Playing Mantis's second generation Green Hornet costume over which I placed a green mask cut out of electrical tape. I had cut out the eye holes because Green Lantern was sometimes drawn with his eyes exposed. However, the Green Hornet face mask had bug eyes similar in look to Eagle Eye G.I Joe, and the hair style was all wrong. The finished mask didn't look anything like Hal Jordan.

After awhile, it occurred to me that Hal Jordan had a pile of curly hair similar to Aquaman. Since Ideal had made an Aquaman costume set for Captain Action, maybe I could repaint an Aquaman mask. One finally came on eBay for a price I was willing to pay, and I repainted Aquaman's golden locks brown. I used the same electrical tape technique for the green mask, but decided to paint the eye holes plain white. With this new face mask, I was reasonably pleased with my Silver Age Green Lantern.


A few years later, when I was making custom figures of all the Justice Society of America characters, I took on the daunting task of recreating Golden Age Green Lantern. His was one of the more audacious costumes from the era, featuring a red shirt, green pants, red boots with yellow criss-cross striping, a purple mask, and a high-collared cape with purple on the outside and chartreuse on the inner lining. In today's vernacular, he was a hot tranny mess!

Although I was no longer making costumes specifically for Captain Action figures, I decided to repaint a spare Lone Ranger face mask to use for Alan Scott's head because of the similarity. His hair went from black to yellow and his mask went from black to purple. To mitigate the extreme color pallate, I dyed a white shirt in a soft red tone and I used some olive drab pants instead of bright green tights. The chest emblem was created in the same process mentioned above. On the red boots, courtesy of Wes McCue, I created the striping pattern with yellow electrical tape. I wanted to make the cape, but I could never find the material in the right colors. For the sake of this post, I mocked up a cape with a little photoshoppery. This is a reasonable representation of what I want my finished Green Lantern to look like when I get the right cape material.


The Flash and Green Lantern survived through the 20th century by going through radical makeovers, but DC's other three big stars, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, remained relatively unchanged throughout their careers. I'll talk about my Wonder Woman action figure next time.

Saturday Afternoon Matinee

If my calculations are correct, it was on this day 31 years ago when the summer vacation between my 8th and 9th grade school years began. The summer of 1978 was an especially wondrous time for me when my imagination came into full blossom, and I cherished every mundane aspect of life as if it were priceless. I remember that first day especially well because my friend Vince and I went to a matinee double feature at the Northpoint Plaza Theatre (now a dreary Wall-Mart).

In the time before home video, double features were a great way of coaxing people to see a not-so-great new release by pairing it with a slightly better film that had been released a couple years earlier. Movie-goers who liked the older film and wanted to see it again, or those who hadn't had a chance to see it when it was originally released, might be lured in to see the new film. In this case, the double bill was Warlords of Atlantis and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.

It was a Saturday and, as with every Saturday from May to October, I had to mow my neighbor's lawn. The woman I knew as Miss Peggy was a widow with a house on the corner, so her lawn was much larger than the rest of the houses on the block, encompassing not only the front and back of her house, but also a large section on the side by the intersection and the long strips of grass between the sidewalk and the street. For the handsome sum of $7 per week, I would mow and trim that huge lawn with her Toro gas-powered mower and my father's cheesy Black & Decker weed whacker. To make matters worse, Miss Peggy had her lawn chemically treated, so it grew just as fast as I could cut it and those chemicals wreaked havoc with my sinuses. Still, in a day when comic books cost 30 cents and a matinee was only $2, making $7 a week in addition to my newspaper delivery boy salary was good money.

I finished mowing the lawn around noon, took a quick shower, and then called Vince to make sure he was ready to go. My dad drove us to the theatre as he so often did. Looking back, I would've thought it a pain in the ass to drive us all over town, but he liked to drive. My mom said he should've been a bus driver.

Anyway, the first film to be shown was Warlords of Atlantis, the new release. This was the fourth Amicus release to feature Doug McClure as a turn-of-the-century explorer who stumbles into some forgotten world of monsters and lost tribes. The first three films were based on Edgar Rice Burroughs books, but this one was original. I guess the film-makers thought they could save some money by writing their own story but swiping the formula. In this movie, McClure takes a bathysphere down to the ocean's depths and is swept into a strange underwater world. I had never seen a bathysphere before, so I was completely captivated by the concept. Here's the segment of the film that fascinated me the most:



Aw, up your bathysphere with an ancient golden statue!

Did you catch Cliffie as one of the crew members? Someone has uploaded the entire film on YouTube if you care to watch it. Once they reach the underwater world, I think the story kinda bogs down. To a 13 year old, though, it was pretty exciting.

Next up was the much better Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, featuring the incredible special effects of Ray Harryhausen. It star's John's son Patrick Wayne as Sinbad and Tyrone Power's daughter Taryn. A very young Jane Seymour and Doctor Who #2 Patrick Troughton are also in the movie. There was only one scene that stayed with me all these decades, and someone just so happened to put it on YouTube. You'll discover fairly quickly why it burned itself so vividly into my adolescent brain:



More than the stories themselves, I became completely lost in these depictions of fantasy worlds from a bygone era. Having already had my fill of space opera like Star Trek, Space:1999, and Star Wars, I was ready for some new fantasy legends. In between the countless comic books I read that summer, I poured over books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the stories of Sinbad, and even tales from The Arabian Nights. All that lawn and newspaper money went straight to the comic book/used book store in my neighborhood. So lost was I in these fantasy tales that I doubt my parents were even aware of my existence until I showed up for dinner.

To this day, I remember that summer as a dream-like blend of fantasy and reality. While mowing the lawn, I was a giant slaughtering hordes of soldiers with my swirling blades of death. Wandering the sun-baked sidewalks of my neighborhood delivering newspapers, my mind was underground in the hidden world of Pellucidar helping David Innes defeat the evil Mahars. It was the last summer when I had no worries and could afford to completely block out the harsh realities that were looming on the horizon. During those sultry, hot days in 1978, I was purely a kid for the last time.

Baltimore Christmas Memory: Sing It Outdoors!

It never ceases to amaze me how much can be found on "teh internets" these days! The flotsam and jetsam of a misspent youth in front of the TV or hiding in a movie theater can be easily retrieved with only a Google search. One day, the ipod in my brain shuffled up a song that I heard every holiday season when I was a kid. The song was called "Sing It Outdoors!" and it was played during the commercials for John Donnelly & Sons Advertising. It went like this.

I believe they were mainly into billboard advertising, so the title of the song had a duel meaning. It seems like they are singing about carolers, but the implication is that you can sing the praises of your company or product outdoors through billboard advertising. Get it? I was rather proud of myself that I figured that out when I was six or so.

I don't recall Donnelly & Sons running TV ads any other time of the year but Christmas, and for an advertising firm, the ads were surprisingly chintzy. The Christmas ad consisted of the aforementioned song while we were treated to abstract representational drawings of choirs, bells, and other Christmasy images. Just before the final line was sung, a syrupy announcer voice came on and would tell us how Donnelly Advertising wanted to wish us a Merry Christmas. No Happy Holidays back then. They were putting the Christ in Christmas, baby! It was fun not to be PC.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, Donnelly & Sons ran a slightly different TV ad. As I recall, it would start off with a similar song and some more poorly rendered images of streamers and champagne bottles popping, and then the announcer would jump in with, "Rrrring out the old, rrring in the new, with all our best wishes! We at Donnelly Advertising wish you..." When he would say, "rrrring out the old," a graphic with the current year would appear, and when the announcer said, "rrrring in the new," a graphic with the next year would appear. For example, it might show "1972," and then jump to "1973." I remember one year - I think it was 1973 or 1974 - and they mistakenly put up one of the old commercials because it showed "1965" and "1966." I got a chill because I suddenly thought I had been transported back in time.

Those commercials disappeared around the mid-70s and became yet more fond holiday memories to put on the brain pile. God knows why the song popped back into my head on a warm spring day more than 30 years after I had last heard it, but my mind tends to work like that. Just for fun, I did a Google search using the song title and found this blog site. Apparently, the song on the commercial was part of a complimentary record album that Donnelly & Sons gave away to clients at Christmas time. One side had music for Christmas, the other side featured dance tunes for your New Year's Eve party. The blog author, Ernie, provides a link where you can download the Christmas songs along with some photos of the album, which I've used here, with his kind permission.


One of the coolest aspects of this album is the fact that the record itself was made out of green vinyl. Take a look:


Be sure to check out www.ernienotbert.blogspot.com for more great, obscure Christmas music. He's currently running a 27 Days of Christmas series with a new Christmas album featured each day.

The Bell Telephone Company Presents: The Spirit of Christmas

In A Child's Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas wrote, "One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six"

As I get older, I'm beginning to have the same feelings about my own Christmas memories. Twenty years ago, I would amaze family and friends with my blow-by-blow accounts of everything that happened on this Christmas or that Christmas. My mom would sarcastically ask, "What was the weather like that year?" and I could tell her. Now, however, there have been too many holidays and the traditions are so faithfully followed each year that they start to blur together. One such tradition I could always look forward to (at least in elementary school) was the annual showing of the old 1950s television special The Spirit of Christmas.

This holiday special, first aired in 1953 and sponsored by Ma Bell, was produced by puppeteer Mabel Beaton. Ms. Beaton started out performing marionette shows for her community in a make-shift theater during the 1930s and 40s. By the late 40s, her small group of fellow puppeteers, mostly neighborhood friends, dwindled away and she decided to elevate her puppeteering career by creating filmed marionette programs. She got lucky with her first try out of the gate when she presented her half-hour Christmas special, The Spirit of Christmas, to The Bell Telephone Company. The president enthusiastically green-lit the show as their 1953 Christmas special, and it became their holiday show for the next several years during the 50s.

The special is split into two segments, the first being a presentation of Clement C. Moore's poem, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. The second segment portrays the story of the birth of Christ. Ms. Beaton maintained that her forte was with serious material, but the Santa Claus story at the beginning of the show was her concession to the commercial appeal of secular Christmas stories. Watching the special recently with an adult set of eyes, I can understand her point. The marionettes used in the Santa Claus segment appear more crudely designed and, in the case of the children puppets, downright creepy looking as compared to the marionettes in the nativity story. Also, there seems to be more loving care put into the staging of the biblical scenes. 'Twas the Night Before Christmas relies on some physical schtick that feels clumsy and forced by comparison, but I know I enjoyed it as a child.

Before you get the wrong idea about my true age, I never saw the show when it originally aired on television. My first exposure to it was in elementary school in the late 60s/early 70s. Every year, on the last day before Christmas vacation, the teacher would drag out that clunky 16 mm projector and put on the threadbare film print of The Spirit of Christmas. Usually, the teacher would show it just before the end of the day. I would always get a little flutter of excitement in my stomach when that happened because I knew we would have no more school work until the beginning of next year!

There was something magical about watching this marionette show. I had the same feeling when I watched those old Gerry Anderson shows like Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet. Most of the drawn animation available to kids in those days was of the Saturday morning variety and consistently pretty bad. Seeing three dimensional puppets manipulated in properly scaled dioramas was a real treat because you could sense the level of artistry involved. The Rankin-Bass stop-motion films had a similar quality and, like The Spirit of Christmas, I only got to see them once a year. This was way before the home video/on-demand world of today. You got one shot at all the Christmas shows and if you missed any one of them for some reason, you had to wait for next year. And one year to a kid may as well be a decade. That's why an impromptu shopping trip with your mom on the night The Year Without a Santa Claus aired was cause for true childhood trauma.

I can't remember exactly when they stopped showing The Spirit of Christmas at school. Maybe around the time I was 9 or 10. As I said, it's a blur. But I never forgot that program, and I thought for sure I'd never see it again. Just some vague, foggy memory shelved in the attic of my mind. Of course, with the magic of DVDs and the Internet, few things from the past are lost anymore. Last year, I discovered that The Spirit of Christmas was on DVD, complete with another Mabel Beaton film, Santa's Space Ship, and a one hour interview with Ms. Beaton videotaped in 1984. It's a wonderful package, even though the print of the film used on the DVD doesn't look much better than the print we had at Bear Creek Elementary. At least a DVD player doesn't skip and make that weird audio sound like someone wiggling his forefinger between his lips (anyone under 25 probably won't get that reference).

I'm so thrilled to have this Christmas memory back. When I watched the DVD recently, I could feel that little tingle in my tummy I used to have knowing that soon I would be out of school for 10 whole days and Santa was coming with lots of plastic goodies and my grandmother would be serving her delicious stuffing and noodle casserole and my Aunt Mildred would have that cool Chex Mix stuff and my Uncle Henry would mistakenly call Santa Claus "Kiss Kingle" and the world would be lit with multi-colored lights and glowing Santas and reindeer and all would be warmth and happiness and fun....until January 2nd.

CLAPTON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

This entry is way off the mark for this blog, but it is my blog after all, so what the hell. I just finished reading Eric Clapton’s autobiography and I feel like a raw nerve. It’s not because of his dissertations on the purity of blues or the numerous guitars he’s owned or all the famous people he’s known, it’s because of his journey through serious drug and alcohol addiction and his emergence on the other side.

I don’t know exactly why I picked up the book. It was my wife’s book. Unlike me, she has a love for blues and blues-infused rock. I’m more of a pop or folk-oriented rock fan. To put it simply, I’m a Beatles fan rather than a Rolling Stones fan. I always found Clapton grating in interviews with the way he babbles on about the blues. I thought Cream was ridiculous. Just to have the audacity to call the band Cream (as in “cream of the crop”) was annoying enough. Then seeing the concert footage of those rambling guitar solos, which always sounded like musical masturbation to me, just sent me over the edge. Only stoners can get into music like that where the pointless runs up and down the fret board are only background noise for their altered states of being.

The gossip of Clapton's own substance abuse problems also were a negative tic in my book. I’m still wrestling with issues I have over my late father, an alcoholic who never fully broke his bond with the bottle. While I understand the disease from years of dealing with my dad and his numerous trips to rehab, I have little patience for addicts. The fact that Clapton got clean later in life was a point in his favor, but I still wasn’t sold.

I did enjoy the original Layla by Derek and the Dominos, but then Clapton had to ruin the memory by putting out that awful acoustic version which was mercilessly repeated on rock radio stations. I felt sorry for him when his son Conor met such a tragic end, but was put off by his capitalization of the event when he released Tears in Heaven. Just didn’t care for the guy very much.

Anyway, I was looking for something to read and I usually like biographies, especially about people who lived through interesting eras in pop culture, so I thought I give it a try. I almost took the attitude, “Let’s see what the man has to say for himself.” Well, he had a lot to say, and I was impressed with the way he said it.

Written in an honest, straightforward manner, Clapton takes you through his humble beginnings, his love of the blues and his pursuit of a career in music making. He also recounts the public life and musical accomplishments of which we are all aware. I completely disagree with his perspective on music, but since I’m only an avid listener and not a musicologist, I have no quibble one way or the other about such things. The part that drew me in was when he discussed his descent into heroin addiction, his recovery, and his descent into his new addiction to alcohol.

What strikes me most when I observe addicts or hear them recount their experiences is that they all exhibit the same personality traits. Their backgrounds and experiences are different, but the behavior patterns are always the same. The maddening part for me is that they are so much in denial about it. Protecting their addiction becomes more important than saving their relationships or their lives. It’s a clear path the hell and they are looking the other way.

That tendency to dismiss or marginalize the reality of it is what I find most off-putting when I hear or read testimonies from addicts. Even those who are clean may still dilute the truth as a way to protect their own self-image. Clapton takes no such easy road, and I found his honesty so refreshing. One line that walloped me like a ton of bricks was when he talked about his first wife Pattie, “However much I might have thought I loved Pattie at the time, the truth is that the only thing that I couldn’t live without was alcohol.”

After going through various rehab adventures with my dad, he managed to stay sober for 23 months when I was 12 to 14 years old. Then, during the Christmas holidays in 1978, he fell back into drinking. I had gone through his on-again-off-again drinking bouts countless times, but this time was particularly devastating, and for years I could not quite figure out why. It wasn’t until a few years ago, long after my dad’s death, that I realized what it was. On some subconscious level, I realized that my father’s need for alcohol outweighed his love for his wife and children. Pretty hard notion to swallow at age 14, so I never allowed myself to articulate it until I was an adult. However, from that Christmas onward, I treated my father as an obligation. Someone I had to love and care for because he was family. He was no longer the dad I looked up to and admired. Because his love was conditional, mine had to be as well.

The inspiring thing about Eric Clapton was that he finally got it. He’s been sober 20 years and continues to work the 12-step program that is so essential to remaining clean. This was something my father could never bring himself to do. He knew all the right things to say and how to pretend that he was okay, but he never could truly do the hard work it took to stay sober. In the epilogue, Clapton writes, “My family continues to bring me joy and happiness on a daily basis, and if I were anything but an alcoholic, I would gladly say that they are the number one priority in my life. But this cannot be, because I know I would lose it all if I did not put my sobriety at the top of that list.” If only my father could have learned that lesson, maybe it would’ve all been different.

Seeing the travails of addiction through the eyes of the addict, depicted in such an honest and forthright way, was a harrowing and ultimately cathartic experience. I even came to realize that Tears in Heaven may have been helpful to others rather than a crass way to cash in on tragedy. This is so much more than just another pop star tell-all. I would recommend it to anyone who is wrestling with addiction or who is struggling with a loved one who is addicted.

THE TALE OF TWO WHITMANS

If you were a kid in the 70s, Whitman Publishing Company was probably your publisher of choice whether you knew it or not. Whitman produced the Big Little Books, along with various hard and soft cover books aimed at a pre-teen audience. Most of the books were based on movies, TV shows, and comic book titles which were sure-fire favorites with kids. They even repackaged unsold comics into economical three-packs, sealed in flimsy plastic bags that hung from spinner racks in discount stores and book stores. Chances are, if you did any reading as a kid back then, you read Whitman books.

During the summer of ’72 when I crossed the threshold into age eight, I was becoming an avid reader. I was at that awkward reading stage, however, where basic books like “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Cat in the Hat” didn’t really cut it anymore, but I wasn’t quite ready for the Hardy Boys. This is where Whitman bridged the gap. I was already hooked on comic strips and I particularly loved Dick Tracy. During one of my numerous trips with Dad to the Read’s Drug Store (now known as Rite Aid), I found a Big Little Book on the magazine rack titled, Dick Tracy Encounters Facey. This was the first Big Little Book I had ever seen, and I was curious about it. Not only was it quite small (perfect for my pudgy little hands), it had an illustration on each right-hand page and text on each left-hand page. It reminded me of the picture heavy children’s books I was familiar with, but it also had a grown-up feel with its blocks of text and chapter breaks. Just flipping through the book, I saw enough pictures of interesting action and familiar faces like Dick Tracy and Sam Catchem that I had to have it. Another round of begging with my dad, which wasn’t so bad since he was usually pretty amenable to buying me reading material.

My dad had to stop off at a couple more places before we went home, so I stayed in the car and read my curious little book while he did whatever. Funny how you could leave an eight-year-old alone in a car back then and not fear any trouble. Different world.

Anyway, I finished reading the book in a few days (always was a slow reader even then). The story involved a criminal known as Facey who was a master of disguise. He started out doing petty crimes for larger criminal gangs, then decided to go solo as his confidence grew. Meanwhile, Dick Tracy and his partner Sam Catchem worked the case, did the forensics and so forth, but couldn’t catch a break. Facey became so self-assured that he even had the guts to masquerade as Tracy himself, walk into the police station, and take away evidence that might lead to his capture. Of course, like all criminals, he pushed his luck too far when he kidnapped the daughter of a world leader. Tracy and Catchem finally tracked him down to his lair and busted him. Facey disguised himself to beat the rap, but Tracy blew his cover by putting him in a shower and washing off his make-up. Pretty entertaining stuff.

I was so taken with the book that I had to tell my best friend Nick about it. When I ran into him, he was carrying a book himself and this one had Superman plastered on the cover. Titled Superman Smashes the Secret of the Mad Director, this book was the size of a regular, mass-market paperback, but it used a similar format as my Big Little Book. That is, lots of pictures and large print, but here the text was on the bottom half of the page and the illustrations were on the top of the page. Only difference was this book had black-and-white drawings rather than the full color pictures my Tracy book had. As I told Nick about my book, he told me how cool his book was as well.

“When you’re done with it, maybe we can swap books?” I suggested.

He agreed. I felt so mature. We would exchange books and each get to read two books rather than only one. How civilized. I was growing up. A few days later, on a Friday afternoon, Nick handed me his Superman book and I quickly dashed into the house to retrieve my Dick Tracy book. I was so thrilled. I had never read a Superman story before, not even in comic book form. I made a point of reading the book as fast as I could so that I wouldn’t hang onto the book for too long. That would be rude after all, and we were acting all mature and stuff. The entire weekend, I carried the book around with me and read through a few pages every chance I got. Even while I was playing with my friend Johnny, I would pull the book out of my back pocket and read while he went to the bathroom or ran an errand for his mom. Sunday night, I barreled through the rest of the book and felt quite pleased with myself for finishing a 166-page book so quickly (never mind that half the book was pictures and the print was extra-large).

Looking back, the story was one of the oddest things I’ve ever read. A famous movie director in the Otto Preminger/Eric Von Stroheim mold comes to Metropolis to film a Medieval epic. The tyrannical director, subtly named Max Malice, has a reputation for creating period films of tremendous accuracy, so Clark Kent and Lois Lane are assigned to cover the filming of the movie. They finagle bit parts on the film, Lois as a handmaiden and Clark as a serf, and report for costume and make-up. They are surprised to find out that all actors must wear contact lenses. Clark notices that Malice is putting special lenses on the cameras as well. Somehow these special lenses cause all the reality elements (e.g., city skyline, crew, light stands, etc.) to disappear and the flimsy sets suddenly appear solid and totally real. Also, all the actors lose their memories and actually believe they are in the Middle Ages, except Clark of course, whose Kryptonian physiology must be resistant to the magical contact lenses. Malice dresses as a court jester and encourages the actors to act out the scenes he wants. He talks a couple of thuggish types into fighting Clark and later, the brutes kidnap Lois. Incensed by this attack on his woman, Clark can no longer stay in character, so he transforms into Superman to stop the thugs from running off with Lois. Meanwhile, Max Malice decides that capturing Superman’s escapades on film are more interesting than his original script, so he races madly all over the set in a motorcycle, filming the action from the sidecar while a helicopter captures the action from the air.

As Superman fights with the thugs and generally destroys the set, Malice screams that he is capturing the best footage of his career. What kind of film he could cobble together from these random shots of destruction, I have no idea. Anyway, Superman finally puts an end to the whole mess by burning the film with his heat vision. The rest of the story deals with Clark trying to convince Lois that he’s not Superman even though he disappeared during the whole time that Superman was around. Stupid woman falls for it again.

Although my eight-year-old brain accepted the story at face value, my 43-year-old brain gets a headache from it. How these lenses could make plywood sets look like solid rock and make people believe they were in the Middle Ages is thoroughly mindboggling. Also, Max Malice’s playful ruse to get some good action for his movie seems slim justification for Superman to trash the set and burn Malice’s film stock. Malice slinks away like a chastened criminal without questioning the fact that Superman has cost the studio millions of dollars in damages and lost time. As usual, Superman uses excessive force under the slightest provocation and gets away with it. Little wonder I was Batman fan.

Okay... so I finished the book and excitedly went to Nick after school that Monday to tell him so, hoping that he had also finished my book and we could swap back. Nope, Nick hadn’t had a chance to read it yet. I feigned understanding; we were being civilized after all. I told him he could hang onto it as long as he needed, but I was clever enough to keep his book hostage in the meantime. Days turned into weeks. Nick kept making excuses. After awhile, I gave up asking. I still had his book and sooner or later, he would want it back. I just had to be patient.

Flash forward 35 years: I still had that Superman book collecting dust on the book shelf. I didn’t like it and didn’t particularly want it, but I wanted my Dick Tracy book back, so in some insane twist of logic, I held onto it. That book sat on four different book shelves in four different houses. I haven’t seen Nick in at least 25 years, but I kept hoping my Dick Tracy book would show up. He would finally cave into the guilt and send it to me in an unmarked, plain brown wrapper. I, in turn, would track him down and rightfully return his Superman book. It would be the mature thing to do.

Christmas 2007: Among the gifts that my lovely wife had given me, there was a small, hard package. I curiously peeled away the wrapping. It was a slightly worn copy of Dick Tracy Encounters Facey. I gingerly, but joyously, flipped through the pages, instantly recognizing the illustrations and the story. There’s Facey getting his makeup washed off in the shower! Tears brimmed around my eyelids. I was reunited with a long lost friend. My thoughtful wife had brought my torment to an end.

Nick, you still aren’t getting your book back.

THE EXCITING WORLD OF FILMATION

Any child who was glued to the TV in the 60s and 70s the way I was became intimately familiar with the handful of cartoon producers who dominated the TV animation market. And just as people develop brand loyalty with everything from cars to toothpaste, I was a devoted Filmation man. I admit I watched everything, and I did have a few favorites produced by those other guys, but Filmation consistently put out material that was right up my alley. Now that many of these shows are being put out on DVD, complete with audio commentary by producer Lou Scheimer and others from the Filmation family, I’ve been reliving some of these wonderful childhood memories.

My earliest memories of Filmation go back to their first Saturday morning cartoon show, The New Adventures of Superman. I was too young to remember when they first aired, but I saw episodes aired as repeats on Sunday afternoons. I do recall, however, the premiere of The Adventures of Batman and Robin which came along a couple years later (the animated show couldn’t air until after the live-action show was canceled). I was a huge Batman fan and was thrilled to death that an animated version was coming to Saturday morning. The frenetic opening credit sequence, with its quick cuts and flashing primary colors, really got me jazzed right off the bat (pardon the pun). I also loved their new Batmobile design. Far more sleek and serious looking that the George Barris creation, it looked like the muscle cars I saw zipping up and down my front street at the time.

Despite the initial excitement over the opening credits, I remember feeling a bit let down by the stories. The format was essentially the same as the Superman show (seven minute adventures with fairly simplistic storylines), but the animation seemed even more limited. Also, I don’t recall the first episode featuring any of the major villains like The Joker or The Penguin. I could be wrong about that, but that was my memory. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something not quite right about the show. Having seen some of those cartoons on YouTube recently, I think I was probably disappointed with the slow pacing. Even with limited animation, Superman could still generate excitement because he was saving jet planes from fiery crashes and shifting the Earth’s orbit. Batman was simply gathering clues and catching crooks. That was great in the live-action show when you had Adam West and Burt Ward chewing up the scenery, but those strangely immobile close-up shots that Filmation was so famous for just didn’t inspire much excitement. Nevertheless, it was Batman, so I stayed loyal.

Around the same time, I remember seeing their movie tie-in shows, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Fantastic Voyage. I was especially fascinated with Fantastic Voyage, just as I had been with the movie. What I liked about the animated series was that they had a flying ship called the Voyager rather than a submarine like in the movie. With Voyager, they could travel anywhere in their miniaturized state. And the hero had an eyepatch! That was really startling to me (I hadn't yet seen Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.). The closing credit sequence (yes kids, they used to have those once upon a time) was especially atmospheric, showing clips of the empty, darkly lit miniaturization lab while moody music played; probably the gloomiest credit sequence of any Saturday morning show in history.

I didn’t discover the Aquaman TV show until the early 70s when it was in syndication. One of the local independent stations ran the show early on Saturday mornings before the network shows started. This was really my first exposure to Aquaman since I never read his comic books. Although I was only lukewarm about Aquaman, I loved the back-up stories featuring other heroes of DC’s line-up like the Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Teen Titans, and the Justice League of America. The miniaturization thing must’ve really captivated me back then because I was especially fond of the Atom, and I got a real kick out of seeing the whole gang in the Justice League of America sequences. Again, legal issues prevented Batman from being in this animated JLA, but he never had much to do in JLA anyway.

All these action/adventure shows really made Filmation stand out in my mind. I was never a fan of the anthropomorphic funny critters that Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera cranked out. I liked science fiction and comic books, and that was Filmation’s source material, at least in the early days. By the early 70s, they started branching out. More on that later…

SECRET ORIGINS OF A COMIC FAN

When last I blogged, I was talking about the moment I became a serious comic fan. It was the spring of 1972 and I had just gotten three comics while shopping with my dad and brother: Batman #242, Justice League of America #99, and The Brave and the Bold #102 featuring the Teen Titans. Something in the spring air made me absolutely ecstatic about these comics, and I wanted to read more.

When I went back to school after the weekend, my second grade teacher, Ms. Morningstar, announced that we could bring comic books in to class to share with our classmates during our recess periods. I couldn’t believe it! I would get to read more comics without having to get my parents to buy them. I also wanted to share my excitement for the comics I had read, but I didn’t wanted to bring in those three comics I had just gotten. I was young but no fool; those classmates of mine would destroy my new comics in no time.

I decided to dig out my old Batman #220 and #227 as soon as I got home from school. When I finally found them, they were even more worse for wear than I remembered. Batman #220 had a huge tear across the cover, which I clumsily repaired with Scotch tape. Since I thought this might be the last time I would see the comic, I read through #220 one last time. It was exciting to discover how much my reading skills had improved and that I could follow the story much better than I could a year earlier. I noticed that one character in the story was named “Sloan,” which sounded to me like a person in a TV crime show or on one of my mother’s soap operas. Suddenly, comics seemed like real adult entertainment and not silly kid stuff like the Saturday morning cartoons. You have to realize, I had a much older brother, so I was in a real hurry to grow up, at least intellectually.

I took my battered Batman comics into class, which I felt gave me the legitimate right to paw over the comics that the other kids brought in. I was immediately drawn to a copy of The Brave and the Bold #60 featuring my new favorites, the Teen Titans. Unbeknownst to me, this was only the second appearance of the Teen Titans and the first time Wonder Girl joined the group. Wonder Girl was a bit of a fudge on DC’s part anyway, since the original Wonder Girl stories were of Wonder Woman as a girl, like Superboy was Superman as a boy. For Teen Titans, however, she miraculously became the daughter of Wonder Woman, putting her in the same time frame. Of course, I learned all this later. At that moment, I was just blown away at how different these Teen Titans seemed from the ones I saw in my B&B #102.

While the Teen Titans, as they existed in 1972, were older, more independent adolescents like The Mod Squad, the early Teen Titans reflected their younger, more subservient roles as pint-sized sidekicks to their big league partners. There was one page in B&B #60 were each Titan bids farewell to their older partners before they go off on their mission. I was particularly struck by the brief conversation that occurred between Batman and Robin:

Although it was just a couple of panels, I was thrilled to see Batman and Robin looking and interacting just like they did on the TV show. I quickly realized that this book was from the mid-60s, obviously a hand-me-down from an older sibling to one of my classmates. It was so fun to see Batman and Robin like this, rather than the separate crime fighters they had become in the early 70s. This comic made me yearn to see more older comics so I could piece together the entire history of my heroes. The comic bug had settled in my heart for the long haul.

During the summer of ’72, I asked for a comic book every time my dad and I stopped by a drug store or convenience store, which was frequently since he was a heavy smoker and always needed cigarettes. I often wonder how much my dad’s nicotine addiction contributed to my comic book addiction. At any rate, I read all kinds of comics that summer, including some Marvel titles like Spiderman, Captain America, and Daredevil. But it was another Teen Titans issue that really touched me.

Teen Titans #40, “Spawn of the Sinister Sea,” had Aqualad betray his fellow Teen Titans because the daughter of this bad guy had seduced him. To keep Aqualad from causing any more trouble, the other Teen Titans chain him up. There’s one panel where the chained Aqualad is crying out his anguish, so strong is the power of the girl over him. To my seven-year-old brain, this was serious drama. I was enthralled with comics. I kept reading comics. I didn’t realize that I had become a comic fan, or that such a thing even existed, but I certainly was one. It took a few years before I fully embraced my passion.

THE DAY I BECAME A COMIC FAN

I mentioned in my previous post about my first encounters with comic books as a child. My big influence was the Batman TV show, which led me to ask for Batman comics even though I couldn’t read them. As I learned to read, I was better able to appreciate them and, by the spring of 1972, I was turning into a serious reader. So on a warm spring evening while I was out shopping with my father and older brother, I came across a comic spinner rack that changed my whole life.

It’s funny the things your brain chooses to remember. This would have otherwise been a fairly ordinary moment hardly worth registering, but I remember it as clearly as any wedding or funeral or holiday. It was a Friday evening, but still light out due to the longer spring days. I tagged along with my dad and brother Craig on a trip to the Eastpoint Shopping Center (a few months later they put a roof over the whole complex and turned it into one of those newfangled malls). Dad and Craig did a lot of things together and I would feel left out, so every once in awhile I had to assert myself and insist on going with them. Then I would be disappointed because they would talk about stuff that I was too young to understand and I would still feel left out. By the time we stopped into a drug store, I wandered off to check out the toys and stumbled across their comic spinner rack. I was immediately struck by the cover of Batman #242. The caped crusader was looking grimmer than ever, looming over the grave of Bruce Wayne (?!!), the glow of the eternal flame by the gravestone lighting Batman’s countenance from below for dramatic effect. Bruce Wayne dead but Batman alive? How could this be? I had to get this comic.

No sooner did I grab the Batman than I also spotted Justice League of America #99. I had never seen a JLA comic before, but I was familiar with the super heroes from the Saturday morning cartoon shows. This book had all the heroes together in one comic, including my fave Batman. Flipping through the pages, I also saw that they had reprinted old stories of the Atom and some guy named Sandman. This Atom looked different from the one I knew, and this Sandman guy was completely strange. Also, the artwork had a certain crudeness to it that I found appealing. At this point, I was reading the daily comic strips and I fancied doing my own comic strip when I grew up. My own attempts at drawing a comic strip were nowhere near as accomplished as the artwork I saw in these new comics, but the rough simplicity of these Golden Age stories gave me hope. I wanted this book too.

I was about to track down my dad when I noticed a third comic that I couldn’t resist. The Brave and the Bold #102 featured good ol’ Batman again along with some group called the Teen Titans. All I knew was that Robin was part of the group. Robin and Batman in a comic story together! I hadn't seen that in my brief comic reading life, so I had to see what this was all about. But now I was holding three comic books in my hand. I had never asked for more than one comic book at a time in my life. Also, these comics were 25 cents each rather than 20 cents like some of the others. As I nervously worked out my sales pitch, Dad and Craig appeared.

“I can’t make up my mind between these three books,” I whined. “I know they’re 25 cents each, but they have extra pages in them. And they have some old stories like from when you were a kid.”

“Well, let’s get them all then,” Dad stated, as if this was a no-brainer.

Thus was the difference in perspective between an adult and a child. To me, spending 75 cents on comics was an extravagance. To my dad, 75 cents was two or three packs of cigarettes which he would burn through in a day. Looking back, my dad never denied me any reading material, even if it was a hardcover that might have cost four or five dollars back then. He wanted me to read, which was a noble and understandable motivation. I didn’t see reading as something that was helpful to my development at the time; I equated it with play, and I knew how hard it was to coax my parents into buying me certain toys. Toys and books were the same in my mind, requiring equal amounts of persuasion. If only I had understood the difference in our perspectives then, maybe I could’ve talked him into getting me more comics.

Anyway, he bought me the comics and I spent the whole weekend pouring over them. There’s something about spring that fills your spirit with renewed energy and joy, and somehow I associated that burst of euphoria with the reading of those comics. Batman #242 kicked off what would become the now famous multi-part story with Ras Al-Ghul and the League of Assassins, which was reprinted in its entirety as a giant-sized treasury book. I was completely hooked with this opening chapter. The JLA story was less memorable for me, but it still got me interested in reading JLA for a couple of years. But that The Brave and the Bold with the Teen Titans really got me excited.

The young sidekicks of DC’s heavy hitters (Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy, and Wonder Girl) worked together as a team like my TV favorites, The Mod Squad. This particular story had something to do with the Titans fighting Batman and his uptight, establishment grown-ups over some urban renewal project. Just like the kinds of hip, relevant stories they did on The Mod Squad. This was cool stuff to me. I was really digging comics.

I went back to school after that weekend filled with a new enthusiasm for reading. This is where the serendipity came in. Often as the school year would draw to a close and the weather would get warmer, teachers would start to get a little more permissive. In this case, my second grade teacher Ms. Morningstar told us that we could bring in comic books to class that we could share with our fellow classmates during recess periods. Hot dog! We would be allowed to read comics in class! Still more tomorrow….

THE MAKING OF A COMIC FAN

I can narrow down the time I became a comic fan to one specific moment when I was seven years old. It was in the spring of 1972 and I found myself captivated by a comic spinner rack in a drug store. From that point, my future geekdom was assured. But before I get to that, I should step back a couple years.

I owned my first comic books before I could read. Having been weaned on the Batman TV show, I always had a love for the caped crusader and, if I saw a Batman comic on the shelves in a drug store or convenience store, I would instinctively point to it and whine my desire for it simply because it had Batman’s face on it. The first Batman comic I remember owning was Batman #220, This Murder Has Been Pre-recorded! This was the winter of 1970 and I hadn’t learned to read yet, but I liked looking at the pictures. And boy, those were some pictures! This was a radically different Batman from the one I saw on my TV screen. He had taller ears on his cowl and his lean, sinewy body made him appear more menacing and stern. Robin was nowhere to be found, so forget about any friendly, “ol’ chum” banter. And while I couldn’t read, I could tell that this story was more like a crime thriller a la Mannix or one of those Quinn Martin crime shows. It was different, a little scary, but way cooler.

Several months later, I talked my dad into buying me Batman #227, The Demon of Gothos Mansion! I was just beginning to read at this point and I wanted desperately to comprehend what was going on in this book, but since none of the dialog said “See Spot run” or “Dick has a red ball,” I was hopelessly lost. But I loved those pictures! This issue was along the lines of a gothic horror story, and for the first time I understood how Batman’s persona was supposed to be utilized. He was the personification of a bat, a symbol of the supernatural and feverish nightmares. (I believe the cover was inspired by the cover of Detective Comics #31, channeling those earlier roots.) Batman was meant to be dark, brooding, grim, and mysterious. I was catching on. Suddenly, Adam West was looking pretty lame.

The back-up story featured Robin, now a college student living on campus and, in his spare time, patrolling the college town of Carthage as Robin, the Teen Wonder. This new environment put Dick Grayson/Robin right in the thick of hippies, drug pushers, and war protesters. Quite a long way from “Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods!” but I liked it.

My six-year-old brain was piecing together the evolution from the TV show to the then-current comic. Years later I discovered that, had I bought a Batman comic even one year earlier, it would’ve looked pretty similar to what I had seen (and was still seeing thanks to syndication) on TV. However, with the rapid changes taking place in American society in the late 60s, Batman’s campy television image had become an embarrassingly passé fad, plummeting in popularity just as quickly as it had risen two years before. No one was interested in that old Batman, least of all the baby boomer writers who were taking over the direction of DC characters in the late 60s and early 70s. The metamorphosis of Batman from 1969 to 1970 was beyond dramatic, and I was jumping in right as the transformation had reached completion.

So while I liked these Batman comics, the fact that their reading level was slightly higher than my own prevented me from really enjoying them. By second grade, however, my reading ability accelerated rapidly. So much so that I was moved to the highest level reading class in my grade to encourage my growing interest in books. By the spring of 1972, I was reading whatever I could get my hands on. That’s why that drug store spinner rack fascinated me so much. I was ready to tackle those comics. More on that tomorrow…

ATTACK OF THE MECHANICAL TOYS!

As I've mentioned numerous times in this post, my brother is six and a half years older than I. That meant that his childhood toy references were very different from my own. His early Christmases were filled with the mechanical toys of the 60s, while my own were filled with the action figures of the late 60s and early 70s. He often talked about the guns and rifles and secret agent gadgets that he had, but as far back as I can remember, I don't recall seeing any of those toys in the house. It was as if my brother gave up on toys at an early age.

His friends, on the other hand, still had old toys hanging around their basements and attics, and I loved to sneak a peek at these artifacts of toy past. There were three brothers who lived in a large house behind our own smaller house, and my brother hung out with all three of them since they were pretty close in age (one a little older than Craig, one the same age, and the third a little younger). The youngest brother, Barry, was the most mild mannered and was the only one who actually treated me like a friend rather than a pesky younger brother. Every so often, he'd give me one of the old toys that was lying neglected around their house. This was such a thrill for me because these were not toys I could buy in the store and none of my friends would have anything like them.

One day, I was playing in the alley that divided our house from Barry's house. I saw Craig and Barry walking down the alley toward me, carrying this green thing between them. When they got nearer, I could see that it was a plastic dragon or monster of some kind, like Godzilla.

"Here Neal," Barry said, "this is for you."

My eyes grew big and I stammered and stuttered the usual things like, "Are you kidding me?" and "Is this a joke?" They kept reassuring me that Barry was actually giving it to me to the point where I think Barry was becoming annoyed and was tempted to take it back. Before that could happen, however, I grabbed it and helped them drag it back to my house. It was green with chartreuse legs and a long, pointy tail that wiggled a bit. It clearly was battery powered, but I don't recall ever putting batteries in it. I would just drag it around and growl like I was attacking Tokyo.

Only recently did I discover that this creature was called King Zor, made by Ideal in the early 60s. From what I can gather, it also came with a dart gun that I never had. The idea was that King Zor would shoot marbles out of its back at you while you tried to stop it by hitting the end of its tail with a dart. Toys with flying projectiles didn't seem to bother parents back then. I didn't experience any of this excitement with my King Zor anyway; I just loved lugging this heavy chunk of plastic around and pretending to menace the world.

I discovered this commercial for King Zor on YouTube. This should provide a good glimpse at how the toy worked:



This was one of the few mechanical toys I ever owned. By the late 60s, the scene had shifted to action figures and items that didn't require so many batteries. I do recall, however, having a couple of those Japanese robots. These clunky metal monstrosities lumbered along while flashing lights and making irritating grinding noises. I believe it was Christmas 1969 when my aunt and uncle gave me a robot known as Super Astronaut. He was a variation on another robot known as Attacking Martian Robot, the gimmick being that after taking a few steps, the robot would stop, open the doors on his chest, project twin machine gun barrels, then fire these machine guns as its torso spun around 360 degrees. Here's a video to show you the robot in action:



At the time, I found the whole display rather horrifying. I had seen enough war movies to know the destructive power of machine guns, and this robot not only had two, he could spray the entire room with bullets without even taking a step. As I played with the robot in my aunt and uncle's living room on that cheery Christmas evening, I could just picture my entire family being mowed down in a blood bath of human carnage. The part that I found especially creepy was that the robot had a human face. This impassive male countenance peered through the glass shield of the robot's head. My five-year-old mind imagined that a person had been imprisoned in this robot body, thus losing all his human compassion, and was coerced by some alien force to annihilate humans indiscriminately.

Needless to say, I didn't play with this toy very much. And I've always been a little curious as to how the grown-ups felt about such toys. I suspect they didn't give it much thought. To them, it was probably just a mechanical toy that moved and lit up and made noise. Nothing too terrifying in that, is there?

HI-TECH - 70s STYLE

Having a brother half a dozen years older than I created a bit of anxiety in the growing up department. From my earliest memories around age four up to age 13, I was always envious of what Craig could do or what he had that I didn’t. Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time as an adult reminiscing about my childhood; I didn’t really appreciate it when I was experiencing it. Instead, I kept yearning for that time when I would be Craig’s age and could do what Craig did or have what Craig had. I was forever projecting six years into the future. A perfect example of this age envy is in the area of electronics.

My brother was always a bit of a tinkerer (and still is, but the equipment has changed from transistors to microchips). So while I was asking for G.I. Joes and Big Wheels, he was asking for stereos and recording equipment. I remember his massive chrome and black reel-to-reel tape recorder, about half as tall as I was at the time. Something so huge that did so little would seem absurd today, but in the early 70s, this was what every swinging bachelor on TV had on his book shelves. It looked cool, but was really intimidating for a small kid.

That’s why Panasonic was the cool electronics company for anyone under the age of 12. During the early 70s, Panasonic (or National Panasonic) put out devices that were completely in line with the “mod” aesthetic. Instead of boxes made of chrome and black plastic and faux-wood, their products were molded out of brightly colored plastic in smooth, curvy shapes. They looked like toys, but still played music or recorded sounds like the more sophisticated devices did.

The first Panasonic product I remember coveting was those spherical transistor radios. They looked like one of those laser-spouting balls that Luke Skywalker trained with, but re-imagined by Walt Disney. My friend Linda had one, and we would loll away many a summer’s afternoon listening to the crackly AM signals floating out of the ball’s tiny mono speaker. The cool bonus to this radio was that it had a chain attached to it for easy portability. We didn’t use the chain to carry it around, though. We held the radio up by the chain and spun the little sphere around while songs were playing. The repetitive Doppler effect made every song sound like Tommy Roe singing “Crimson and Clover.”

A few years later, Panasonic came out with portable cassette recorders that were shaped like small boxes with rounded corners. The day-glo colored plastic made the thing virtually indestructible, and the retractable handle and light-weight design was perfect for a kid to tote around. Best of all, it had a built-in microphone so you could record your friends and family without them knowing. As soon as I got my little recorder for my tenth birthday (which was bright red, not blue like the one pictured), I set about recording my friend’s candid conversations. This was shortly after Watergate, after all, and there was a certain air of espionage about the whole thing. I remember capturing one gem from my friend Kevin while we listened to my other friend Nick speak to his Greek family a few yards away.

“Ya’ know what?” Kevin declared. “I can’t understand one word of that Greek stuff. NOT ONE WORD!”

Really, Kevin? It’s like they have a different word for everything, huh?!!

Later on, I struck up a friendship with a school mate, Johnny, and we would hang out at his house after school. With my trusty recorder on hand, we would make up the audio equivalent of Mad Magazine movie and TV parodies. And as hard as it might be to imagine, we were actually less funny than Mad Magazine, although we thought we were hilarious.

The process went as follows: we would pick a movie or TV show to satirize, think of an opening gag, turn on the recorder, state the gag, turn off the recorder, think of the next gag, turn on the recorder, say the gag, turn off the recorder, and so on until we had the whole show. When it was played back, it sounded something like this:

(Click, scrape, crackle)

Johnny: "Hey Inspector Krojak, did you take a bath this morning?"

Me: Why? (snicker) Is there one missing? (chuckle)

(Crackle, scrape, click, pause, click, scrape, crackle)

Johnny: That killer was a dead shot. How did he miss you? (giggle)

Me: I looked down to pick up a penny (chortle) and the glare from my head blinded him. (snort)

(Crackle, scratch, clunk, click)

This went on for about 10 minutes when we finally ran out of hilarious quips. We thought we were so funny, we boldly played some of our sketches to our fifth grade teachers. Looking at their slack-jawed expressions, I soon understood the saying, “I guess you had to be there.”

Electronics continued to grow smaller and more sophisticated, but the concept of whimsical, fun design went out the window. Granted, a lot of what passed for cool in the 70s was pretty tacky, but we quickly shifted to the other side of the spectrum where only black or white boxes with lots of buttons could be seen as serious electronics. It wasn't until the late 90s and the introduction of the iMac that we would see the fun brought back to home gadgetry.