It seems unbelievable to me that it was 50 years ago that I received my first superhero action figure. But for Christmas 1972, my Grandma Blowers (rhymes with flowers) gave me the Mego Superman figure. I had wanted Batman, my favorite character, but I was thrilled, nonetheless, to open up the Man of Steel.
Someone else’s Mego Superman. I opened mine!
I don’t even remember what else I got that year for Christmas because it didn’t matter. This was by far my favorite toy. Superman flew all over the house, lifted many heavy things and saved people from disasters.
My stepfather didn’t appreciate the gift like I did. He was opposed to boys playing with dolls and he made sure to let me know it whenever he could. He was a professional emasculator in that way. He had already stopped me from playing with my GI Joe months before. Poor Joe languished in the bottom of the toybox, where my brother and sister had access to him. But when I was anywhere near my grandmother, he didn’t dare say anything to me because he wanted to stay on her good side. Superman prevailed!
Over the years, grandparents on both sides added to my brother’s and my Mego collections. My brother got Spider-Man, while I got Star Trek’s Captain Kirk in 1973. My brother got Spock the next year, so we had cooperative play in two different genres. I always wanted the rest of the Star Trek crew and the coveted USS Enterprise playset, but I knew that was unlikely so long as I lived in my stepfather’s house. We had to be satisfied playing at our father’s and grandparents’ houses, or even at school. Well, as an adult, I have rectified that.
The original Mego Star Trek figures and the USS Enterprise playset
When I was in third grade, Mrs. Burkholder was the best teacher of all time. On nice days we had recess outside, but when it rained, our indoor play consisted mostly of playing with action figures. Most of the boys had GI Joes, but by this time, my younger siblings had taken care of my Joe. His clothes were nowhere to be found. But, without my stepfather’s knowledge, I brought Superman to school. Sure, he was only eight inches tall compared to the GI Joe’s 12-inch height, but that just meant that he was Superboy instead of Superman, and I was just fine with that. I learned to read because of Superboy, after all.
The only other Mego figure I ever got was the Shazam! (Captain Marvel) figure, which I got in 1978. I was 13, which you might think was too old to be playing with such toys. But this was an important time in my recovery from the years of abuse I wrote about here. My dad and my grandparents gave me the time to catch up on the imaginative play that I had missed, and I will be forever grateful to them for that. I had enjoyed the Shazam! TV show and remembered seeing a house ad for a battle between Superman and Captain Marvel. Since none of Superman’s powered villains were made by Mego, I wanted someone about as powerful for him to fight. In my Solution Squad story “The Case of the Eight-Inch Action Figures,” I wrote a scene where young Radical remembered that battle.
Radical remembers!
A few years back, I even had a Mego Radical figure customized. Talk about a thrill!
Package art by me!
Over the years, Mego has had the licenses for so many properties, it was like the predecessor of Funko, which makes its Pops for just about everything there is in pop culture land. And now that they’re back in business, they’re even releasing a line of 50th anniversary figures, which I’ll be sure to get. They’ll probably never leave their boxes, but I have vintage ones for that!
My 50-year-old vintage Superman in a custom diorama by Mike Sutter
When I was a child, from age seven to twelve, I suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the man who would become my stepfather. I’ve talked and written about it elsewhere ad nauseam, but I think it’s appropriate to mention it here in this new venue. Unfortunately, the trauma I experienced is the central experience in my life. Every day, I deal with the effects.
It’s only fair to issue a trigger warning:
Trigger warning: Descriptions of abuse follow.
The abuse I experienced was both physical and emotional. I was beaten nearly every day on my bare behind with a wooden ruler with a metal backing. It was called “the stick.” At least, that’s what happened at first. I was eventually punched, kicked, and had my head held underwater so long that I had to literally fight for breath. The physical abuse escalated to the point where my mother thought he was going to kill me. The worst of the physical abuse came when I was eight, and he tore my infected fingernail off with a pair of pliers. This was ostensibly to avoid a doctor visit, which would have cost money. I ended up in the emergency room.
If you can quantify such things, the emotional abuse was worse. I was called worthless, stupid, lazy, and weak on a daily basis. But perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to me was when he burned all of my comic books in front of me. You’ve probably already read here what they meant to me. He claimed that they would give me nightmares, but the only thing that gave me nightmares was the burning of the comics.
The abuse finally ended on my 12th birthday, when my mother let me choose who to live with, my dad or her. That decision took 0.005 nanoseconds to make, and just after Christmas, I moved in with my dad, where I was safe. No one ever laid a hand on me again.
I bring all this up because, as the title of this post would imply, my abuse is the elephant in the room. Which room? Every room I’m in. As I said above, I struggle with the effects every day. Yes, I’ve had counseling. But as anyone who has ever experienced this to a certain degree will tell you, it doesn’t go away. It will never go away. The best you can do is learn how to carry it. And I think I have.
I don’t intend to write about this a lot, but almost everything I do write about will likely have at least one reference to it, so I didn’t want my readers to be in the dark.
One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is thinking about time spent with my Grandma and Grandpa McClain. And one of the things they always had on hand that made it fun was a bowl of candy. So, we stopped today at Wakarusa Dime Store, which is simply loaded with nostalgic candy, and I filled a bag with three of the candies that were always on-hand at their house: Starlight mints, butterscotch disks, and red anise squares. Now, if you’ve never had a red anise square, it’s a candy that tastes like black licorice. Anise seeds are sweeter than fennel, one of the other sources of that licorice flavor. I know, no one else in my family will touch them, but if you’re a fan, you might want to check them out!
I didn’t have a candy dish to store them in, so we stopped at an antique mall and I found a cool basket that is much safer in my office, with the dog and cats always about.
Where to even begin writing about my life? My first words were “Batman” and “Robin.” That’s no joke. My mom wrote it down in my baby book. The television show now known as “Batman ’66” (back then it was just “Batman”) debuted on January 12, 1966. I was 13 months old, and my dad was a big comic book fan when he was a boy, so we watched it. To my mother’s amazement, I was enthralled. Batman and Robin jumped around and punched people, and when they hit bad guys, sound effects appeared on the screen. And the Batmobile? The coolest car ever to exist. I’ve never cared much about cars, but to this day, I make one exception to that rule.
Burt Ward as Robin and Adam West as Batman
You may be aware that the Batman TV show became an instant cultural phenomenon, inspiring what is now known as Batmania. Products featuring images of Batman and Robin were everywhere. And as a toddler, I had my share of Batman items, from slippers to punching balloons to cake decorations to playsets. My mom (and especially my dad) loved to buy that stuff for me. When I grew beyond eating from baby jars, my dinnerware featured, guess who? Batman.
I still have a set of these, though not the originals.
The problem was, I absolutely refused to eat on anything else. I ate my cereal in the Joker bowl, and I drank my milk from the cup, which had Batman on one side, and Robin on the other. So, my mom had to wash them every single time I ate anything. The TV show continued until March 14, 1968, when I was just over three. How do I remember any of these events, being as young as I was? I have no idea, but I do. I certainly remember not going anywhere without my batcape, which consisted of a towel around my neck fastened with a safety pin. And I remember my parents being concerned about me going to kindergarten because I wore it all the time.
The author on his Batcycle
Batman may have gone off the air in March of 1968, but it was at this time that my dad started buying me Batman comics. The first one I remember was very scary, as Batman and Robin walked through a cemetery. Again, a very early memory.
Batman #202, cover date June 1968, actually published in March.
I received Batman comics for the next couple of months, which led to me beginning to read. Batman #204 and #205, especially had me interested. In those two comics, a villain named The Schemer had a bunch of henchmen disguised as blind men. They all wore placards reading, “I AM BLIND.” Once my mom read to me what they said, I identified the phrase every time I saw it in those two comics, and they appeared quite often. It felt good, “reading” for the first time and I wanted to do more.
The next three Batman comics bought for me by my dad.
By September, the live-action TV show was replaced by a Batman cartoon. I was already a huge fan of Saturday morning cartoons, including Superman, Aquaman, Space Ghost, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and more, but adding Batman to the mix was very exciting. The Batman/Superman Hour was my very favorite show, especially the Superboy segments that appeared between the two Superman segments in Superman’s half of the hour. I mean, what’s not to like about a super-powered boy and his super-powered dog? Batman continued to spark my imagination, but now my interests were expanding.
Batman and Robin still fell into deathtraps, even in the cartoon.
After that, I started “reading” comics featuring the Justice League of America (Batman was in it), World’s Finest (Batman AND Superman were in it), and Teen Titans (Robin was in it). Superboy remained one of my favorites as well. It was in the spring of 1970 when I turned the final corner on reading. I had just gotten Superboy #165, which reprinted the first appearance of Krypto, Superboy’s dog. My mother was pregnant with my little brother at the time, and unbeknownst to me, having some problems with my dad. At the end of the story, Krypto flies off into space, leaving Superboy all alone, in tears. When I asked my mom why he was crying, she told me to read it for myself. I made it my mission from that point on, to do just that.
The comic book that finally inspired me to learn to read.
After that, I read everything. I read road signs, I read comic books, I read Big Little Books, I read Sunday School pamphlets. I couldn’t get enough. My collection of comic books grew, and I read them over and over again. And by the time I started school that fall, I was reading with fluency and expression. I read so well, in fact, that they wanted to skip me right to first grade. My dad wouldn’t allow it, though. He was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get a job if I graduated at 17. I loved school and everything about it, mainly because I could read. They even sent me around to show the first graders how it was done. Nothing like shaming kids to motivate them, right? Regardless, Batman was instrumental in my development both as a child and as a student. And that influence continues in my life even today. More on this later. But for now, to the Batmobile!
