June, 1962 – News From ME

A number of interesting things happened in the month of June, 1962. For instance, Marvel brought out Amazing Fantasy #15 (the first appearance of Spider-Man), Journey Into Mystery #83 (the first appearance of Thor) and Tales to Astonish #35 (first Ant-Man). At the time, I think I was more interested in what was happening with Dell Comics and a new company which mysteriously appeared. It was called Gold Key comics.

I was ten years old at the time and I still had great interest in Dell Comics like Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Beep Beep the Road Runner. I had no idea why some of my favorite Dell Comics were turning into Gold Key Comics. I also had no idea that ten years later, almost to the month, I would be writing Gold Key Comics like Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker and Beep Beep the Road Runner, many of them drawn by the same artists.

As I learned later — and explain in greater detail here — Dell Comics for decades had been printed by a company called Western Printing and Lithography. Not only that but it was editors who worked for Western and freelance writers and artists who freelanced for Western, who created the contents of those comics. And it was Western, not Dell, which held the rights to produce comic books of the Disney properties, the Warner Brothers properties, the Walter Lantz properties, the M.G.M. properties, etc.

I do not have a good photo of that Von's Market back then but I have a not-great one taken a few years later and you can see that Von's in the background. I shall post below just the section which shows the Von's and if you click on it, you can see the entire photo…

The above photo was probably taken in the early eighties, not long before the Von's and every single building on that side of the street was turn down and replaced with a giant mall called The Westside Pavilion. With great insensitivity, they did not erect a little plaque to identify the spot on which I first purchased a Gold Key comic book.

When people who don't know from comic books ask me why they've always mattered to me so, I don't have a great explanation — at least not one that satisfies them. "They just did" ain't much of a reply. I'm thinking maybe I need to drag these people down my personal Memory Lane and point out the impact that comics had on who I was and who I became.

I can remember where I purchased certain comics 60+ years ago — a high percentage of the (approximately) 3,000 comics I owned by the age of twelve. I found my first Marvel Super-Hero comic, Fantastic Four #11, at Bart's Books, a second-hand bookstore in Santa Monica. I bought my first issue of MAD (#70) at Westward Ho, a market at the corner of Westwood Boulevard and Ohio Avenue in Westwood Village near UCLA. Memories like that. I wouldn't have those if comics didn't mean a lot to me.