First State Comics: Introduction

In 1981, when I was fourteen years old, my family relocated from the Long Island New York home that I’d known for most of my life to Delaware, the first state, which was becoming a hub of corporate activity thanks to its law regarding taxes. My father had been sent there to help set up a new division of the Chase Manhattan Bank corporation for which he worked–a big opportunity for him, an unwelcome disruption of a comfortable life for me. And especially disrupted was my comic book collecting.

The area we lived in on Long Island had easy access to any number of outlets that sold comic books, including a recently-established Direct Sales comic book shop from which I’d begun to purchase all of my new books. This was possible in large part thanks to the Pennysaver newspaper route that I worked twice a week, which brought me in enough income to underwrite whatever comic book spending I felt was necessary. But the development we’d be moving into in Delaware was brand new and remote, in an area that wasn’t yet fully developed. There was absolutely nothing around within bike-riding distance, which left me in a bit of a pickle. I wouldn’t get my driver’s license for another two years, so I was completely at the mercy of other people to get around in terms of access to civilization. Additionally, that paper route was gone–there was no way to secure something similar in the new area as those spots had already been long snatched up. So I was facing a new environment with dicey prospects and a dearth of income.

For a time right at the outset, I attempted to get my new comics by mail order through Geppi’s Comic World in Baltimore. Steve Geppi (who would eventually form Diamond Distributors) offered a monthly mail-order service that would come right to my doorstep. But I quickly learned about the downsides of this arrangement. For one thing, those shipments were made Cash-On-Delivery, which meant that I had better have the necessary funds available to me when the postman arrived with my package or i was going to be screwed; not having a reliable source of income made this a dicey proposition at best, and I sweated the situation out month after month, swiping nickels and dimes from my father’s bedside table in an effort to gather up enough before D-Day. But the other difficulty was that, in my regular family travels, I would continually come across outlets that has new comics for sale that I didn’t yet possess–and I had to leave those books behind rather than buying and reading them right then, because I had those issues on order. This was always painful–and getting an entire month’s worth of comics all in a single shipment wasn’t ideal either. it was a feast-or-famine situation, with neither eventuality being particularly satisfying. Before too many months, I gave up my Geppi’s subscription and opted to go ad hoc, counting on my now-increased familiarity with the area and my family’s regular activities to provide me with the purchasing opportunities that I needed.

Eventually, though, as detailed at the start of the GOODBYE, HELLO feature:

Goodbye, Hello: Introduction

I hit a point where my finances weren’t able to keep up with all of the new comics that I wanted to buy, especially since the exploding Direct Sales market was providing a wealth of new and innovative releases that I wanted to sample as well. I wound up cutting my buying list dramatically so as to better match my available resources. It wasn’t really until I got my driver’s license in 1984 and started my job as a cook for a Roy Rogers restaurant that I could finally start to expand my horizons a bit further.

In any case, there’s an entire bevy of comic books that were impactful to me in one way or another during this time. And it’s a period that I’m never going to reach in the main Brevoort History of Comics feature at its current rate of two comic books every week. Even getting to the end of 1979 will still take years. So as with the earlier GOODBYE, HELLO series, I thought it might be worthwhile to look at some of the books that I bought during this decade, my last as simply a fan. So that’s what FIRST STATE COMICS will be all about. This decision was made easier due to me having excavated a handwritten log of my comic book purchases for a part of this period, which indicates what I bought and when, and how much I paid for it. I kept a running log of my purchases for years and years, only giving it up shortly before I cut back on my pull list, though regretfully, my earliest such log had vanished over the years.

The first two books that I might have discussed in this area I’ve already covered extensively enough in other places. So I’ll direct your attention to those entries. The first was NEXUS #1, the black -and-white magazine from Capital Comics that launched Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s cosmic crusader. I got my copy in my first or second shipment from Geppi’s:

Brand Echh: Nexus #1

And the second book was the thoroughly terrific 200th issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, a title that I’d loved almost from the start of getting into the hobby. My copy, though, was a bit dinged up in the Geppi’s shipment, the cover wrinkled and bowed. The fact that it was squarebound made this easier to happen. This was another thing that made me give up the mail-order service, not being able to select copies that were in good condition for purchase.

Perfect Game – JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #200

And so, we’ll continue from here moving forward, on an irregular basis!