I never wanted a comic book more than the 25-cent DC giant Secret Origins, which was on newsstands in June 1961, the month I turned 7.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone. The comic sold out instantly at my newsstand in Effingham, IL. I was so disappointed I burst into tears on the spot. Then I was ashamed at having cried.
But we almost never got to read characters’ origins in those halcyon days, and to acquire a bunch of those in one comic would’ve been a thrill.
I wouldn’t learn until years later than DC’s apparent discomfort with reprinting 1940s material would lead them to cheat a bit on the Secret Origins title, meaning that the real origins of the Superman-Batman team, Wonder Woman and Green Arrow would remain secret.
In fact, the only “Golden Age material” to be found in all 80 pages was an old copy of Flash being chuckled over by police scientist Barry Allen while he ate lunch in one panel.
Instead of Wonder Woman’s real 1941 origin, we got a retconned version by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito reprinted from Wonder Woman 105 (April 1959).
Green Arrow and Speedy got even shorter shrift, merely a text page that summarized their origins.
So that dark, sunny June day I had to content myself with the origin of a new superhero in Archie Comics’ Adventures of the Jaguar 1, the second issue of Charlton’s Gorgo, the battle between Batman and the super-powered Villain of 1,000 Elements in Detective Comics 294, learning The Secret of Tigerman in World’s Finest 119, seeing the debut of The Legion of Super-Villains in Superman 147 and the exciting third Superman Annual, featuring The Strange Lives of Superman.
That one was almost as good as Secret Origins.
Almost.
Despite its deficiencies, Secret Origins remained The One That Got Away. I hadn’t learned, at 7, that desire often makes the unattainable seem more wonderful than reality can ever be.
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| The witty Bruce Kanin weighs in... |
Daryl Coats wrote: Very well written and moving. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteBob Doncaster wrote: Bought it off the rack. Let a neighbor kid borrow it and never got it back
ReplyDeleteGarrie Burr wrote: Those wonderful ads! Eventually, sometimes 20 or 30 years later, I was able to read most of the books I wondered about but never was able to buy brand-new. Though often their reality never matched the wonderful stories, these cover pictures pushed my young mind to create for myself, that they were so easily able to spark my imagination makes them something quite priceless to me.
ReplyDeleteMatthew Grossman wrote: It’s funny, by my youth origin stories had become so ubiquitous and frequently told, I went out of my way to avoid them.
ReplyDeleteBob Hughes wrote: I finally ended up with a coverless copy with half the first page ripped off. I still felt oddly cheated by the Superman/Batman story (which was the one with the ripped page- but it was #$@# anyway so who cared?) and the Green Arrow text page. Green Arrow never got any respect. He never even got a Showcase run! Even Tommy Tomorrow got a Showcase run!
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman wrote: I was a year older than you Dan (and I guess I still am! :)) and I snagged a copy of SO, after anxiously looking forward to it after seeing it in the ad that you posted.
ReplyDeleteI understand why DC didn't dig into the Golden Age because many of the origins had changed, especially WW and GA. For me, the book was an incredible and total joy! Except, I was disappointed that they had cut GA just to a one page text (which, of course, was necessary for US postal regulations).
I had read the GL story, which was disappointingly from GL 1 (which I had bought and read new off the newsstand) and not Showcase 22 (which I had not bought or read) and I may have read by that time the Adam Strange story, since I had borrowed the Showcase issue from my friend's older brother. (It would be more than a decade before I had a chance to read the cover feature, the Planet and the Pendulum!)>
But everything else in the book was new, fresh and exciting. Not knowing that WW had a different origin, this is the one that I knew as her true secret origin for several years. The Flash origin was exciting and J'onn J'onzz looked sooooo different than from the way he was then depicted. The Challs had a powerful six or so pages--it took another decade and a half to read the rest of the story-and of course, there was the Superman/Batman team-up. They saved the origin of Superman for a recent issue of that title, when they updated the 1948 story (which, of course, I knew nothing about.)
BTW, one reason that DC did not publish Golden Age stories much was because of the expense--they didn't have the stats to work from.
Marty Zeigler wrote: Those ads used to thrill the hell out of me. Not only these full-pagers, but also the two-book ads that would often appear at the bottom of the last page of stories. "On sale November 17!" an ad might say, and so I'd rush to the store on November 17, only to discover that the clerk hadn't displayed them yet. Or you'd see a pile of comics wrapped together, and damn if you didn't spot the familiar Green Lantern logo peeking out from the middle.
ReplyDeleteI'd even get excited over ads that would appear in old issues when I managed to acquire them. Of course, by then it would be too late to head for the store, but still, you found yourself wishing you had it.
And let's not even mention the editor's notes that would crop up in stories. They were ads in themselves. Editor's Note: See Green Lantern Issue #8, "Prisoner of the Power Ring." And immediately you found yourself wishing you could see it, just as the note suggested.
Daniel S Taylor wrote: Right there with you. I wanted that comic so badly. It couldn't help but be a little disappointing when I finally saw one.
ReplyDeleteMark Waid wrote:
ReplyDeleteMark Waid It wasn't any sort of "apparent discomfort" that kept them from reprinting any Golden Age material; it was simply that stats beyond five or six years old didn't exist at the time, which limited their sources. Add to that the fact that these were intended to be easily produced cash cows (no reprint fees to creators = more profit), and it all makes more sense.
Joseph Lenius wrote: I wasn't reading comics at that point, so I didn't "miss" the SO Anniual in the same way that Dan did. And I did get it some years later as a back issue. But the comics that almost made me cry were Fantastic Four #25 and Spider-Man #24 -- when back then Marvel's POOR distribution resulted in me not being able to find them anywhere in and beyond my Chicago neighborhood!!
ReplyDeleteJohn Watson wrote: I was in 6th grade when Secret Origins hit the stands and I was waiting impatiently for its arrival. More than anything, I was absolutely dying to finally read the full origin of my favorite group...The Challengers of the Unknown! I can't begin to describe my disappointment when I saw that only the first chapter from Showcase #6 was reprinted. That didn't stop me from reading the book cover to cover many times. I finally DID score a nice copy of Showcase #6 almost 20 years later and it was well worth the wait.
ReplyDeleteJim N Canmer wrote: Ah yes... those elusive, unobtainable back issues were made even more desirable by those wonderful house ads. To this day, I remember those Ira Schnapp house ads more fondly than the comics themselves.
ReplyDeleteRichard Foltin wrote: I remember waiting expectantly for this book after seeing the ads -- but unlike Dan was lucky enough to get a copy the day it came out. That copy is long gone, but I replaced it in the late '80s. Came across it in recent days in the course of going through my collection and was struck, as I always have been, by the vivid coloring on the cover, especially the magenta background in the heading which is offset nicely by the Challs' uniforms just below.
ReplyDeletePhilip Rushton wrote: As a kid I dreamed of owning that but however many spinner racks I searched it remained elusive. Years later I did manage to buy a copy, but to this day I've refrained from looking inside because I'm afraid that the reality will spoil my memory of that dream of a perfect comic!
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