I've lately been using my otherwise-dormant Instagram account to just post images of the covers of comic books I remember owning 'n' loving as a kid. I'm not sure what the cut-off date is for when I stopped being a kid…or even if I've reached it yet. But I won't be posting anything published after the vast majority of 32-page comics went from costing twelve cents to fifteen. It's as good a dividing line as any.
Some companies had flirted with fifteen earlier, then looked at the sales figures and scurried back to twelve. The industry-wide move to fifteen started around March of 1969 at DC and was followed a few months later by Marvel and other publishers. The only exception was Gilberton with their Classics Illustrated line which had always kind of been published in a different reality with different means of distribution. As it happens, the first comic I've posted today in the gallery on Instagram is a Classics Illustrated.
Also, I've started to receive requests from folks that I post certain issues they remember. No. This is not about the comics you remember. It's about the comics I remember. There's nothing stopping you from using your Instagram account — or even opening one — and posting the ones you remember.
I am though trying to make some point about how there was a time when comics were not as much about heroic adventure and had more talking animals. That point could be made clearer if I also posted some romance comics or hot rod comics (Charlton had a number of hot rod comics) but I wasn't a follower of them back then and I didn't buy many war titles or westerns. Just imagine more of these in the mix.
I post two a day and the images above are the ones from yesterday. It's not always the case but I do remember where I acquired many comics from my childhood and there's a bit of a story about each of these two.
I've written before here about the Don't Give Up the Ship comic book. The other comic book came into my possession in a swap with a friend of mine named Rick. This would have been around when I was eight. Somehow, I had gotten two copies of an issue of Action Comics that Rick didn't have and he had two copies of this issue of Jimmy Olsen that I didn't have.
Would that all trade agreements were that simple. A year or so later, Rick decided he was too old to be reading comic books — My God, he was almost eleven — and I bought his entire collection — about two hundred comics — for a nickel each. Rupert Murdoch has probably never felt as proud of an acquisition as I did. And on a percentage basis, mine may have been more profitable.
Yeah, I know: Not much of a story. Sorry. I may have some better ones about some of the other comics I post on Instagram. You can view the gallery at this link. Do check in often.