Comic Book History

While growing up I had an odd relationship with comic books. I was a voracious reader, the type of kid who would read all the time, and during breakfast with nothing else in front of me, would read the cereal box.
And I was lucky. My father owned a luncheonette in the Bronx, in which he sold comic books of all kinds. It was the kind of old-fashioned place where there were stools at the counter and several booths to the side. The store was kitty corner from where I lived with my parents and younger sister in a ground floor apartment on the Grand Concourse, in the Bronx. Before I was old enough to cross the street by myself I was allowed to go "under the subway" to the other side of the avenue where the store was.

I'm not sure how old I was when I got into the comic books, but I vividly remember going to the luncheonette regularly with my mother and sister for lunch. Sitting at the counter and having a blt (bacon, lettuce, and tomato) on toast and a vanilla malted (I've been searching ever since for a malted as good as my father made). After lunch, I'd settle down at one of the booths and consume comic books. I had the run of the place and they all entranced me: Little Lulu, Richie Rich, Superman, Batman, League of SuperHeroes, Archie and Veronica, a really massive comic book of collected Old Testament stories, another one of heroic dog, and many of the Classic Illustrated Series. I particularly remember White Fang. But I also read all those wonderful nasty scary comic books with the grim gruesome, disgusting covers. Oddly, those are the only ones of which I vividly recall what they looked like but of which I can never remember the titles.
My family moved out to the suburbs when I was eight but my father owned that luncheonette for another several years, until 1963, and my mom and sister and I would still go visit him while he was working.
I was unlucky, in that my parents would never let me take any of the comic books home. So they were even more ephemeral than they would be for most kids. I could read any I had time for, and believe me, I zipped through as many as I could every visit but they were never mine to keep and cherish and read over and over.

Copyright © 2002 Ellen Datlow