Redartz: Good day, all! Today we find ourselves in the heady mellow days of June (Northern Hemisphere, anyway). However, for our topic, we will think back to our school days and remember when we had to 'beat the bell', get to our seat, and (hopefully) have our homework ready.
More specifically, do we have any memories of comics at school? Perhaps you sneaked a few comics in between the pages of a textbook. Maybe you had a few friends with whom you would trade at lunch. Could be you have experiences I'd never think of! So while we wait to hear about yours, here's a couple of mine.
One of my early school tales concerned a friend who learned I'd just started collecting comics. It was middle school, 1974, and I had very few comics at that point (and even fewer back issues, like maybe one or two). This friend brought to school a couple of old comics he had around, and just gave them to me. They were pretty worn, but incredibly cool: Fantastic Four #63, and Spider-Man Annual #2. I instantly fell in love with that FF cover, and of course Spidey was my favorite anyway. Needless to say, the remainder of that schoolday was spent sneaking peeks at those books between lessons and amidst bookreading.
Within a year, comics had grown to an obsession with me (yes, "My name is redartz, and I'm a comic book addict"). Conveniently for school, that fall Mead came out with a series of Marvel Comics folders and notebooks. Well, you just know what happened. Every class had to have a different hero folder, and the big notebook featured the Fabulous FF from issue 159. This notebook replaced a comic notebook I created myself:
I took the opportunity to buy an extra copy of a few comics at that time, especially since I was cutting out the Value Stamps. I took an old, plain notebook, glued comic panels all over it, and covered the whole thing with clear contact paper. The result was a cool comic-themed notebook that held up to punishment (that contact paper was pretty thick). Among the comics cut up for that notebook were Marvel Two-in-One #2 and Amazing Spider-Man #130. Sadly, somewhere over the years, that notebook disappeared. But I'd still take an FF Mead notebook off ebay, any day.
Finally, a geek admission. My comics friend and I would frequently be found discussing anything comics oriented, during breaks, before and after school. We found the old monster reprints in the back of some of the Giant-Size books particularly amusing. So our fellow students would witness us walking down the hallway, advising them to "Beware the Terror of Tim Boo Ba", or to Look Out for "Goom, the Thing from Planet X". Yes, we got looks. In retrospect, deservedly so. But we were having a blast...
Okay, now's your chance to 'tell tales out of school'. Fire away...
17 comments:
First of all, I had ALL the Meade stuff. Carried it all proudly through 8th grade and most of high school.
As for comics at school...In first through third grades, the school I went to had no problems with 'em. A bunch of us would spend our recesses trading comics, we could read 'em when we got our work done (my third grade teacher even had a stack of coverless ones we could read during free time), and I even got to decorate a bulletin board with comicbook pages and my own drawings once.
Then came fourth grade. Mrs. Kleinschmidt (can you hear a horse neighing?). Maybe it was the comics I brought that particular day (Hero for Hire #3 and Marvel Spotlight (Ghost Rider) #6. She saw those comics, took 'em and showed 'em to another teacher, gave 'em back, said, "Put those away and don't get them out again." Then she told the whole class: "No More Comic Books!" I was heartbroken.
We moved to KY when I was in sixth grade. No more problems with comic books. In fact, when I was a senior in high school a buddy and me were working on creating our own comic. I was the artist (!) and when the art teacher found out what we were doing, she let me work on my pages during class while everyone else had to do paper Mache, collages, etc. Not that those things weren't cool--but drawing comics--and getting "A's"--was even cooler!
There were several kids in my school who were Marvel fans (DC comics weren't available) and we constantly swapped comics.
I had an associate called Lee who was a year younger than me (I can't call him a friend because the only thing we had in common was Marvel) and in 1981 (when I was 15 and he was 14) Lee decided to get rid of all his comics !! He came to school one morning with about ten plastic bags full of comics which he expected me to take off his hands. I said "Are you crazy, I'm not carrying all those around with me all day" (or some such words). So Lee started handing out his comics to everybody in the school (OK, not everybody but it seemed like everybody - my school had about 500 students). All day long those Marvel comics were everywhere in the school - everybody seemed to be reading them. It was infuriating to see "my" comics being handed out to all and sundry but there was nothing I could do about it. Of course, I got some too - such as Red Sonja #15 (the final issue) and the first Avengers Treasury Edition.
I had those Mead items as well ... and might have a notebook or folder kicking around here somewhere even now
Comic books tended to be frowned upon in my educational "experiences" as I was growing up ... I can remember as far back as kindergarten, when the teacher asked students for books she could read aloud, I ran to my "cubby hole" and grabbed an issue of Gold Key/Disney's Super Goof, to which the teacher proclaimed "I'm not reading comic books"
I remember an incident in a junior high school math class, where I was drawn my own "Spidey" story and the teacher stopped the class, walked over to my desk, grabbed the artwork and read the whole story to the class, then remarked "this Spider Lady is going to cause some trouble if you don't put the stuff away and pay attention !"
Ah, good times, great memories ....🙄
I've probably mentioned this before--- 1975/76 was my freshman year of high school. I would have been 14-then-15 (December birthday). It was also the only year I spent at our "old" high school, which was in the middle of our little southwest Michigan town, because the next year we all moved to the brand-spankin' new, "state-of-the-art" building a couple of miles farther out-- nestled in between a couple of cornfields.
But that one year in town afforded the opportunity to make a lunch-hour dash through a couple of short alleys to the back entrance of Gohn's Pharmacy two blocks away (probably less than 100 yards, really), and scour the magazine rack display for any desired new offerings-- esp on Thursdays, as I believe that was when the periodical shipments arrived. This was during the major upswell of my comic-buying life-graph, and I bought many-an-issue on those lunchbreaks-- cash-flow willing. I particularly remember a couple of heavy snowfalls that winter that left the back alley trek a perilous excursion over plowed snow-pack mounds and icy driveways. And this was a solitary quest for me. The couple of comic-reading buddies I had at the time didn't share my lunch-hour, so I was on my own. And, to be honest, as young teen-hood commenced this wasn't seen as a hobby or diversion that one broadcast to the wider community if one wanted to maintain any illusion of cool-ness or other-sex-attractitude. . .
HB
I was **sort-of** out of comic collecting by then, instead focusing on watching Space:1999 and other sci-fi. I did grab the Cap Mead folder back in the day, along with the iron-on image.
Since then (ie, in the last decade) I've purchased all the Mead folders, in great condition with the bold colors they're SUPER for matting/framing. I'd invest in the vinyl document 'capture' notebooks, but I don't trust they've held up over the last 40yrs. I'm fine with the paper notebooks with the huge comic covers.
Other than that, I never wanted to take comics to school ~ I treated mine like fragile glass, since Day 1, so I kept 'em safe at home.
My earliest school/comics memory was playing "Fantastic Four" in the playground during 1st grade recess, since the H-B FF cartoon was on Saturday mornings in 1967.
I don't really remember swapping comics at school, 'cause like david_b, I kept my comics in as excellent condition as possible. I had a friend who would make fun of me and imitate me holding a comic in his hands as if it were the most valuable piece of art imaginable.
In Jr High, I would have discussions with a buddy about all the Marvel books. He was more into Sgt Fury, but also loved Spidey.
In 9th grade, I was allowed to write a term paper on the use of science in Marvel Comics and got an A. My teacher was pretty impressed at my examples of Lee-Kirby's pseudo-science creations of many superheroes.
I definitely had all the Meade folders and notebooks and proudly carried them throughout high school. Still have them. I also wore my Fantastic Four t-shirt my senior year - the one with the cover of Marvel Treasury #2. Still love that cover and got a replacement shirt of it a few years ago.
Thanks for the great comments and memories eveyone!
Groove- very cool that your 3rd.Grade teacher actually supplied some comics. Very open- minded and enlightened teaching, there! As for your 4th. Grade, perhaps it's fortunate that those comics weren't confiscated! They might have ended up in he Phantom Zone of some teacher's filing cabinet...
Colin J- your friend must have been the most popular kid in school, for that day anyway. At least you scored that Avengers Treasury, nice book!
HB- your lunchtime excursions sound very much like mine. We had open lunch hours in High School, and on Thursdays mine were spent,much like yours, racing down streets to the magazine stand for the latest. And then stashing them in my locker 'till later...
David_b- good idea about framing those Mead orders. Nice larger image size, and the comics don't get exposed to that damaging sunlight!
Disneymarvel- great stories. I'd very much have loved playing FF at recess; the other kids around me were otherwise occupied. And another good tale about your term paper. Great job, getting an 'A'! In college, I did a term paper on the Comics Code and it's effects. The professor found it interesting enough to grade it generously. Might have helped that I included slides of a bunch of comic images...
By the time I got into middle school I was a stone cold certified Marvel Zombie.
remember once when I was in 7th grade I brought my copies of Amazing Spider-Man #172 and 173 to school show to a friend of mine. I was carrying them in a folder when some kid bumped into me in the hall and all my stuff went flying. There were a lot of people milling around and when I finally got everything gathered up, my comics were gone. Yes, someone took advantage of my momentary misfortune to abscond with my beloved comics. I eventually bought new copies of those books (years later), but I still remember the sting of losing those first ones. I've always suspected the whole "accidental bump" was actually part of a carefully laid plan to grab my books. LOL
Hey Goove, your post reminded me of anther school days comic story of mine. Almost everyday after school I would race home and break out my drawing stuff and work on creating my own comics. I created all my own characters, and wrote and drew my own stories. It was by far my favorite leisure activity.
Later when I was in high school I was taking an English class called "Mass Media", and our major project for the semester was to create our own magazine, or movie, or comic book!! (You can guess what I chose to do). For the occasion, I came up with all new characters and an all new story. I created a a super team called "Omega Force". The team consisted of 4 members of the military chosen to wear special suits that gave them super powers. The heroes were called: The Taser, Mind Man, Hammer Fist, and Meganaut.
The team was formed to be Earth's last defense against an alien force that had attacked the planet. The aliens had wiped out most of the Earth's military and so Omega Force had to take up the fight. In the end the team manage to defeat the aliens, but they were all killed in the process. The last man standing was Meganaut, who sacrificed himself to destroy the alien's mother ship and save the world.
I wrote, pencilled, inked, and colored the entire comic myself (which was about 50 pages long). My teacher loved it and gave me a 100% on the project (which was awesome because it counted for half our grade for the whole semester). She also asked if she could keep my comic as an example to show to future classes. I let her of course.
That was my favorite assignment (by far) that I ever worked on in school. It was almost like getting paid to do something that I did for fun anyway.
I never took comics to school; my parents didn't let me. So the only school/comics crossovers for me were the rummage sales (or white elephant sales, or whatever you want to call them) that they had every year at school. I bought comics at those sales, usually fairly cheap. I don't remember too many of my acquisitions, except for Avengers #177 (coverless) and I think I may have bought MTIO #52 at a school sale as well. I'm sure there were plenty more, but those are the only ones I recall.
From about the first through third grades, I took comics to school, because a few of my buddies were also reading them at the time, and we'd show them to each other, and read each other's books during lunch hour. As the years went on, most of my school chums dropped comics reading, except for one who mainly read Conan and similar stuff (and had lots of the black and white magazines, including some Warrens - his (single) dad was pretty laid back pretty much let him read whatever he wanted; naturally, I envied him a bit on that mark...)
HB's story about making lunch-hour runs to a nearby store struck a chord, as I sometimes did so as well, although the nearest store (a little mom & pop corner shop) was a little farther from my high school. Still, I had enough time during lunch to get there and back. I recall once in particular during my freshman year, I snagged a copy of X-men #165 (the first one with art by Paul Smith) there. I couldn't wait until the school-bus ride home to read it, so during algebra class (it was one of those days when the teacher answered a few questions at the start of class and then gave us a bunch of problems to work on for the rest of the period) I put it in my binder, leaned back and got lost in the story. Until I was about halfway through: a girl sitting a desk or two behind me noticed what I was doing and started giggling, which caught the attention of the guy sitting next to her, who then rather loudly made some smart-a** comment, rather loudly, about how he wished he'd gotten one of those algebra books with color pictures in it, and I realized the jig was up, put it away and got back to my schoolwork...
I got framed (not)!
In 6th grade (1973) the two teachers (men) had a stack of comics in each classroom that we could read, but were not allowed to take out of the classroom. (Don't recall titles but for an issue of Combat Kelly by Marvel)
Some kid must have taken some out and put them in his locker. Next day, the teachers get me in the hallway and ask why I have comics in my locker. We look in my locker, nothing was there. Then they said they were there but that they had removed them.
Anyhow, nothing happened which is good b/c those two guys were swat happy as in hard oak on your @ss! They each had a favorite paddle with holes drilled in it to reduce air friction. (This was public school, too, not Catholic! At the Catholic school the teachers would just hit you with their hand, lol, nothing as sophisticated as a paddle!)
Marvel Tales #131, a reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #154, featuring a fight with Sandman is the first comic that comes to mind.
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_154
We had a reading period on Friday afternoons, we could read anything. I had nothing to read, so I traded a Hostess Fruit Pie to a kid who had that Marvel Tales issue. It was a great done-in-one featuring Spidey and one of his top foes. I would've liked the story anyway, but I like it more due to how and when it was acquired!
William- impressive tale about your comic creation. Did you copy any of it before letting the teacher keep it?
Edo- yeah, it often seems you can count on some Joker to spoil the fun...:)
Charlie- we had teachers with those holey paddles too. Ohhh, how times have changed.
J.A.- excellent! Trading a fruit pie for a comic. Wonder if the comic had a Hostess ad in it (wonderfully poetic)...
I only remember reading one comic in actial school time - an unknown GL/GA 100 page issue in which our heroes separate (obviously) to deal with multiple threats. I was about 7 years old and I suspect this was my first exposure to DC characters not called Batman. I think the comic was donated to the school by some kindly soul.
Yeah, I second Redartz's question to William: do you still have a copy of that comic book you made?
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