I have always loved both characters, Batman and Superman. When I was first able to walk and talk, the Batman TV show inspired me in myriad ways, starting in January 1966. Later in the same year, in the fall, the New Adventures of Superman cartoon was on CBS on Saturday mornings, and I loved that, too, especially the eight-minute Superboy sequences parked between two eight-minute Superman shorts. There have been times in my life where I have swung like a pendulum from one side to the other. As a small child, I couldn’t help but be swayed by Batmania. It was in full effect, like it was made for me. I had Batman slippers, Batman pajamas, Batman dinnerware. If Batman action figures (besides the Captain Action outift) had existed then, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere without one. As it was, I had a plastic cake decoration that served the same purpose.
1966 Batman cake topper by Wilton
But as I got older and Batmania started to fade from the national consciousness, I started to learn that Superman had an older and deeper public presence. He’d had a radio show from 1940-1949, a series of animated movie shorts from 1941-1943, and a television show from 1952-1958. When the 1966 cartoon show came on, I didn’t have the first clue that it used three of the voice actors from the radio show (as did the animated shorts in the 40s) because I didn’t know there had been one!
As far as I knew, the New Adventures of Superman were the first adventures of Superman. When I found out that Superman had had a radio program, I was eating breakfast in 1976, reading the back of a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes:
By that time, I had been introduced to War of the Worlds and the Lone Ranger, but I had no inkling that there had been a radio show featuring Superman. I thought for about a second about asking for it, but I might as well have asked for the moon because I was still living with my stepfather, who had burned all of my comic books and forbade any such stuff in his house. Oh yes, I have them now, all four volumes. Of course I do. But I don’t really need them, because we live in a time of wonders. Back in the early 1990s, a company called Radio Spirits really got into cleaning up and preserving old radio broadcasts, including Superman. At first they released them on cassette, then compact disc, and among their popular releases was Superman. I was an early adopter, buying both cassettes for the car and my vintage-appearing radio/cassette player, and later, CDs, and then finally switching to USB drives, I can listen to Superman for pennies per episode. And I do. I listen to it every day on my way to and from work. I guess you could say that I’m swinging back toward the Superman side of my fandom right now. I’ve even gone to the point where I have a reproduction box of Kellogg’s Pep, which was the sponsor for the show, as well as one of the comic buttons that they advertised twice an episode.
Superman had his own sort of Batmania in the late 1970s with the December 1978 release of Superman The Movie. Double-album movie scores, trading cards, t-shirts everywhere, oversized comics celebrating the character’s past and present, movie tie-in novels, quiz books, there was no shortage of Superman.
One of my favorite products of that line of Supermania was (and is) the novel, Superman: Last Son of Krypton, by Elliot S. Maggin. Elliot was one of the prominent Superman writers of the period, and I thought he wrote a wonderful novel. Despite the fact that there were photos from Superman The Movie included in the book, the novel did not share its ice-planet vision of Krypton. It pulled strictly from the mythos of the comics, and their wonderful and sometimes absurd situations, even sometimes adding to them by suggesting that Jor-El sent a telepathic probe to seek out Earth’s greatest mind in order to have someone fitting receive baby Kal-El’s rocket as it arrived. Instead, the anonymous scientific genius, whose not-so-subtle nom-de-voyage was Calvin Eisner, arranged for the elderly Kents to be the first to find the rocket under the illusion that they were at a certain location to buy a used tractor at a good price. “Eisner” had wisely chosen not to raise the child himself, but instead chose the salt-of-the-earth Kents after meeting with Smallville’s Chief Parker and getting the lay of the land, if you will.
Maggin additionally added layers to Lex Luthor, who actually merits some sympathy due to his upbringing in this story, as well as its 1981 sequel, Miracle Monday. Both books really dig into what it was like for Clark Kent to grow up, perhaps implausibly, in the same hometown as the boy genius who would grow up to be his archenemy. A lot of time is spent in both books, especially the second, exploring what it would be like to grow up with superpowers, and even just to have superpowers. That kind of expanded storytelling appealed to me in a more adult way than comics ever could, and did what so few kinds of entertainment of the day did: It made me think. As a kid living in the country without the virtues of streaming entertainment or even cable television, I had pleny of time to think during the day, letting my mind wander into the clouds where Superman could dwell. The memory of the day I met Elliot and shook his hand, telling him what his stories meant to me, will remain with me forever.
Elliot Maggin and me. Of course I was wearing a BATMAN shirt when I met him!
The Superman movie that Elliot’s book supposedly tied into was quite different. It was a very interesting period piece, honestly. The Metropolis of 1978 was supposed to reflect the Manhattan of the time. Now, I visited Manhattan in 2004, and I thought Times Square was incredible. Shops everywhere, a three-story Toys R Us, so much fun! It was a far cry from the downtown of 1978. “Funky” would be the nice word to use. It’s been the setting of many movies that feature the filth and the grit of the area, like Midnight Cowboy, for example. And Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane seems to fit right in with her harsh and cynical no-nonsense attitude.
Right about that time, a book called Superman: Serial to Cereal was published, and went into some detail about the screen history of Superman, including the Fleischer cartoons, the movie serials starring Kirk Alyn, and the Adventures of Superman TV show, starring George Reeves. The Adventures of Superman came back to TV in my area thanks to syndication, and I rushed home to watch it every day after school. I even checked off the episodes that I saw in the checklist in the back of the book.
This was a connection that my dad had with me. This show had started when he was nine years old, and he had watched it faithfully. This, more than even comic books, is where his impression of Superman came from. I find it funny now that he thought Christopher Reeve was too scrawny to be Superman, compared to the obviously padded suit that George Reeves wore.
Yes, I still have the original book!
It was in this same book that I learned of the existence of the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons, but it would be a few years before I ever saw one. I saw the Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons at my very first comic book convention in 1984. Someone was playing a VHS tape on a tiny portable TV. Since then, I’ve bought them on VHS, DVD, and now on Blu-Ray. As I said above, the connections to the radio show were strong, as they used the voice actors for the radio program when making the cartoons. The Fleischer design of Superman is generally the visual image I use when participating in “the theater of the mind” of the radio show. The Superman of the animated shorts and the radio show is sometimes quite different from that of the comics.
There have been various homages to those incredible pieces of animation history. Some of them are direct, and some of them are more subtle. Such is the modern world where everything is available at our fingertips. I was once one of the very few who appreciated the cartoons. Now, they’re ubiquitous. It’s a great time to be a fan!
Emerging from obscurity: The 1940s Superman cartoons’ influence today
Following the massive success of Star Wars, magazines were keen on remembering movies of times past that were similar in theme and genre. Science fiction was for a time no longer simply the milieu of nerds. One of the first such magazines was Science Fantasy Film Classics, which debuted with this issue:
Science Fantasy Film Classics #1
Naturally, because Star Wars was on the cover, I asked my grandma to buy it for me, which she did. She loved how much I read about everything that interested me. But this particular magazine had something that caught my dad’s eye, too. It had a feature about Forbidden Planet, the 1956 science fiction version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He had seen Forbidden Planet when he was 12, so in a a way, it was very much his Star Wars. I had read the article, but didn’t think very much about it, because in 1978 there was no way to see a movie like Forbidden Planet unless it was shown on television, and 1956 movies were too old to be profitable in prime time. Cue the CBS Late Movie.
Back in those days, the CBS Late movie would come on following the news, up against Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show. They would fill a two-hour time slot with whatever content they had readily available. Reruns of McCloud back-to-back with another hour drama like Kojak, or MASH, followed by a 90-minute classic movie. So, imagine my surprise on Friday, January 6, when my dad roused me out of a deep sleep at midnight because, “JIMMER! FORBIDDEN PLANET IS ON!”
I was instantly awake. We had just talked about Forbidden Planet that week. Mind you, we were only able to watch it on our 9″ black and white TV, but it hardly mattered. As I watched the movie, enthralled, the C-57D floated through space similarly to the starship Enterprise. The links to the familiar didn’t end there. Here was Robby the Robot, whom I’d seen on Lost in Space. Chief Quinn was played by Richard Anderson, who I knew as Oscar Goldman. Police Woman’s Lt. Bill Crowley, Earl Holliman, was Cookie.
Earl Holliman as Cookie, with Robbie the Robot
Forbidden Planet was like the best episode of Star Trek ever. The C-57D is dispatched to determine the fate of the Bellerophon, a scientific research vessel that had been sent to Altair IV 20 years before. There, they find one original survivor, Dr. Morbius, and his young daughter, Altaira. The rest of the Bellerophon crew is dead, including Altaira’s mother. Morbius, the lone survivor, is not happy to see the crew of the C-57D, and wants them to simply go away. He has been studying the lost civilization of a race called the Krell, who harnessed the powers of the mind to create incredible scientific advances. Morbius himself has been able to created incredible technologies like Robbie the Robot, who acts as servant, manufacturer, and protector to Morbius and his daughter. When the captain, played by a very straight Leslie Nielsen, inform him that they are required to investigate, Morbius tries resisting them at every turn. However, he is foiled by his daughter Altaira, who has grown up without peers on Altair IV. She is very interested in the captain and his crew, and therein, a very Kirklike struggle begins.
I love this movie, and the more I saw it over the course of years, finally in color, then in digital widescreen format, I loved it even more every time. I picked up the novelization at a yard sale years later, and, as I always did, I read it cover to cover, trying to glean every last bit of information from it.
Perhaps most importantly, though, my dad and I bonded over something that we now had in common, and even though I was up until 2 AM, I got my full night’s sleep, waking up late. But I was dreaming of Altair IV.
Possibly the worst film I ever saw in my life was one my dad took me to see in Traverse City at the State Theater, downtown. On the heels of Star Wars, we would go see anything with a science fiction-sounding title, and Starship Invasions fit the bill. Starring Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee, this movie stank up the place.
Movie poster
I am just going to quote this summary by viewer Paul White: “Captain Rameses and his Legion of the Winged Serpent brigade are out to claim Earth for their dying race. Out to save Earth is an alien guard patrol located in the Bermuda Triangle, the League of Races. LOR leaders warn Rameses that he’s breaking galactic treaty rules. The alien villain responds by launching an invasion which telepathically drives Earthlings to suicide. The LOR implore UFO expert Professor Duncan to help them. Eventually, the two alien forces battle. Will the Earth be saved?”
Yes, you read that correctly: “…telepathically drives Earthlings to suicide.” This is one of two things that stand out in my memory about this film. A terrible-looking flying saucer, shooting little bolts of lightning at our planet from its central antenna. Cut down to Earth to see people killing themselves. This horrifying scene, and the worst robot effect ever made. I could literally have made a better robot in my Grandpa McClain’s garage. Zero stars, both thumbs down, and the only reason I bring it up is because it was so horrifyingly bad.
But I got to see a movie with my dad, so everything was okay in the end. We laughed all the way home.
One reason I didn’t see my mother very much after I went to live with my dad was that we lived so far apart. My mother and stepfather had settled on living in the upper peninsula of Michigan, and my dad and I were in Mesick to stay. It was a three and a half hour trip by car. What you have to realize is that in 1977, there was a nationwide speed limit of 55 miles per hour that was instituted during the Ford administration in 1974 in response to the oil embargo the nation was facing at the time. That made trips back then interminably long. So, my mom and stepfather picked me up on their way down to their parents’ houses for Christmas and brought me back with them for visitation on the way back. I got traded for my brother on the way down, so he got to spend some quality time with my dad and grandparents without me there. We picked him up on the way back north.
As I mentioned before, my stepfather’s parents were great, treating me exactly the same as any of the other grandchildren. Christmas at Steve’s parents’ house was fun, with a houseful of step-cousins. I still remember the clamor over Star Wars among the kids. Each of them was given a little knockoff wind-up robot to play with. There were no Star Wars toys for Christmas that first year, but the market was definitely there. We duelled with lightsabers in the form of gift wrapping tubes. I wasn’t given a wind-up robot, but I had fun watching the younger kids play with theirs. I was the oldest, and that year, I was given not a child’s gift, but a young adult’s gift. I received my first tape recorder!
JC Penney cassette recorder
It may not seem like a big deal now, but it sure was then. My step-grandmother had been thoughtful enough to include a three-pack of cassette tapes and off I went. I recorded everything that was happening, using the included condenser microphone. And as was usual back then, my imagination soared with ideas of how I could use this wonderful gift. When we arrived at my Grandma B’s house, I asked my cousin Peter if we could record some of the old-time radio shows from my Uncle Mike’s reel-to-reel player that we had listened to a few years before. I went home with a cassette tape with War of the Words on the first side and half of the second side, and the origin of The Lone Ranger following that. I’m pretty sure everyone was wishing they had bought me an earphone too at that point, because I was playing it non-stop.
On the way back up to the upper peninsula, we stopped to pick up Jeff, and I ran to my room to retrieve my earphone. It was just a little one-piece earphone that came in a small leather case. I had bought it at a garage sale for 10 cents, but it worked great! Now I could listen to my recordings and not bother anyone. I grabbed some batteries from my grandparents too, so I could listen to it in the car. Thank heavens for prepared grandparents. They always had extra batteries handy.
I had a nice week with my mom and brother and sister. I treasured those few moments we got each year, being together as a family. My mom surprised me with my very own track suit. It was blue, with red and white stripes down the sleeves and the sides of the pants. And she embroidered my name on the back. I thought that was super cool.
When it was time to go home again, they had a surprise for me. I was going to go Greyhound…by myself. The plan was for Steve to take me to the bus station in St. Ignace, a 45-minute drive, and then I would ride to Cadillac on the bus, where my dad would pick me up. The problem was, the bus left at midnight. I was kind of scared. What if I fell asleep? I’d never stayed up all night before. They assured me that it would be all right. So, armed with fresh batteries for my tape recorder and the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I got on the bus in the middle of the night and rode five hours home. It’s only 4.5 hours now, but you can drive faster now than you could then.
The Route of the Night Bus
Can you imagine sending your newly-minted 13-year-old son on a bus by himself without even a cell phone or even identification in this day and age? It was an adventure. The bus driver assured me I could go to sleep and that he would wake me up in Cadillac, but it was too exciting.
The Greyhound SceniCruiser
The bus trip was uneventful. My dad picked me up early in the morning, and we went to the Big Boy for breakfast before heading back to Mesick. I asked my dad for a quarter to play the jukebox at the table. That’s one of the cool things about Big Boy back in the 70s; there was a mini-jukebox at every single booth. You could play three songs for a quarter. Fleetwood Mac was on the jukebox, as well as the disco version of the Star Wars theme by Meco. That was hilarious.
Tabletop Juke Box at Big Boy
I started going over the menu, since this was such a rare treat to have breakfast at Big Boy. We’d shared many a lunch and dinner there, but never breakfast. My eye was drawn to something that sounded wonderful: the Mexican Fiesta Omelet. It was an omelet filled with chili and American cheese, with diced raw onions and tomatoes on top. Its origins as Mexican are sketchy. It’s questionable whether chili originated in Texas or northern Mexico. Be that as it may, that’s what it was called on the menu. The flavors of this omelet exploded in my mouth. It was one of the most wonderful dishes I’d ever eaten. And it came with hash browns? So much the better! To this day, it remains one of my favorite foods.
When I told my dad that I had a recording of the very first radio episode of The Lone Ranger, he got excited. The Lone Ranger had always been his favorite fictional character. We used to get up at 6:30 in the morning on Sundays just to watch it on TV together. When we got home to the trailer, I crashed for a while, and then when I played the radio show for him and it was fun to see him as excited about something as I was. He was equally excited that now we didn’t have to go to my grandparent’s house to listen to music. We could listen to cassette tapes at home. It’s funny, growing up without a lot of money. You tend not to take things for granted after that.
While I liked spending time with my mom and brother and sister, I was now finally back home again where I belonged. I had a home where I was safe and warm in my tiny room with my sleeping bag. I had a snowmobile. I had my comic books and trading cards and magazines. But most importantly, I had my dad, my grandparents, my aunt, my dog, and my friends and teachers. And I had just traveled a couple of hundred miles, alone. The timid, beaten boy who had gone to live with his dad a year before was gone. At the end of 1977, I was someone else, entirely. And I liked him.
Thanksgiving weekend arrived, and I thought I was finally going to get to spend one with Grandma and Grandpa McClain. I was wrong. Part of my mother’s and father’s visitation agreement was that I would spend the major holidays with my mother and my brother would stay with my father. So, on their way down from Naubinway, in the upper peninsula of Michigan, they stopped in Mesick and swapped sons. Jeff stayed with my dad and I went with Mom, Steve, and my sister Wendy down to west Michigan to spend the holiday with their parents.
Somehow, it always worked out the same way. Steve was the oldest of six brothers and sisters. His family celebrated Thanksgiving during the day, while my mother, the second oldest of four, celebrated with her mother and siblings in the evening. The logistics of family holidays always fascinated me. Mom and Steve would leave from work on the Wednesday before, pick me up and drop Jeff off at around 8:30 or 9:00 at night. Then they would complete the three-hour drive, ending up at Steve’s parents’ house around midnight. Then, all the Hammonds would stand around in a circle in the kitchen, drinking and catching up, while we kids would go to bed in our respective spots. We all had assigned places in the old farmhouse and we knew where to go.
Everyone in Steve’s family was always kind to me. I can’t think of a bad thing that I would ever say about them. They loved my mother, and out of respect for her, they treated us kids well. We would literally wake up to the sound of roosters crowing in the morning. Steve’s dad had been a farmer, but then worked for DeNooyer Chevrolet as some kind of mechanic. I knew that very well, because “The Stick” that Steve beat me with was a promotional item that he had gotten from there. It was a 14″ ruler because DeNooyer would go the extra distance, or some such. I doubt you could even read any lettering left on the wooden side of The Stick, because it had been blistered into my rear end so many times. Steve’s mom was an acerbic lady, and much to Steve’s consternation, smoked. Steve was a rabid anti-smoker, and railed against anyone who did that, especially my dad.
We got up in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, and the women, my mom included, would start breakfast. Mom and Steve always brought milk, bread, and eggs so that they wouldn’t be putting Steve’s parents out too much by feeding us. The men would all go out deer hunting, because deer season was in full swing by Thanksgiving Day. I wanted to go too, even though I was still only 12. I had taken hunter safety, and I had hunting clothes, but you had to be 14 to get your deer hunting license. It dawned on me that day that I would miss next year, too. Gun season ended on November 30 and I wouldn’t turn 14 until December. I was mad. I wanted to be part of the group of men very badly, but they wouldn’t let me. “Maybe next year,” they said.
A word on hunting: I know there are people who are dead set against it. Sorry, I’m not one of you. Steve’s family subsisted on hunting. At his family’s house, I had eaten rabbit, squirrel, raccoon, deer, and just about anything else that walked on four legs. I’m pretty sure we ate opossum once, but I can’t swear to it. They ate what they killed and I just don’t see anything wrong with that.
While we kids would keep ourselves busy and out of the women’s hair, they prepared Thanksgiving dinner. After putting the younger kids, Wendy and a few of her cousins, on the floor in front of the TV to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I found myself in the den, as I always did, pulling out the coverless copy of Batman #203 that I kept stashed there. I read it cover-to-cover, as I always did, put it carefully away again, and then looked for something else to read. Steve’s mother always had a treasure trove of trashy novels, but I would occasionally find something interesting. And I did. I found a paperback copy of Peter Benchley’s The Deep. I had read Jaws when I was a year younger, even after being traumatized by peeking at a particularly gory scene in the movie from the back of the station wagon when I was 10. Despite that, I liked Benchley’s writing. I asked if I could borrow The Deep to read it, and Steve’s mother laughed at my being somewhat precocious, a 12-year-old asking to read a fairly serious bestseller like that, and she told me that I could have the book. I couldn’t believe it! I thanked her and off into a corner I went.
By the time the men came back, empty-handed but in good spirits (they drank while hunting too), the football game was about to start. Watching the Detroit Lions play on Thanksgiving Day was a Michigan tradition, and it was no different in the Hammond household. I watched the game too, though to be honest, I had only a rudimentary understanding of football, thanks to hanging out at the games in Mesick, and cheered for the Lions as well. The Bears beat the Lions 31-14. I don’t actually remember the score; I just looked it up.
After a delicious turkey dinner, I helped clean up the dishes just like I did at home, and then we packed up to go to my Grandma B’s house. If there was anything better to my 12-year-old growing self than Thanksgiving dinner, it was two Thanksgiving dinners. Grandma B only lived a short 35-minute drive away in Otsego, and I looked forward to seeing my own aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone was usually already there when we arrived, and we split off into our peer groups, as usual. I was the oldest, then Eric followed, younger by only 10 weeks. Then Peter and Cathy, just a bit more than a year younger. Then came the second wave, with Scott, my absent brother Jeff, and Dennis, with Wendy and Melissa bringing up the rear. My cousin Masami was in their group too, but was not often with us even for holidays. Her father, my uncle Norman, was in the army and was stationed in Japan, where she was born. Uncle Norman had married a Japanese woman, my Aunt Naeo, so Masami was half-Japanese.
Eric, Peter, and I would always read comic books or play pretend games, but we were getting older now, and such games were beneath us. So, we just kind of hung out, talked about the usual pre-teen woes and stuff, and probably Star Wars. Everyone talked about Star Wars. We kept an eye on the younger kids as they played out in the back yard. This was a different experience compared to times past, when I had to curb my behavior for fear of Steve. He had done nothing even remotely threatening toward me the whole time we had been together. I didn’t trust it, though, so I kept my behavior in check anyway.
After dinner, we said our goodbyes and headed back to Steve’s parents’. There wasn’t enough room in Grandma B’s house for us to stay. On Saturday morning, after Steve and his dad came back from an early hunt, we loaded up the car and headed to Battle Creek. Mom wanted to do some Christmas shopping and go to the movies. She asked me what I wanted for my birthday, which was coming up in 10 days, and instead of choosing some fanciful thing I knew she would never buy, I asked for something sensible: a digital watch. She asked me what I meant, and I explained that there were now watches with the same kind of LED (light-emitting diode) display that her calculator had. We found one at a reasonable price and she bought it for me.
We had all seen Star Wars a number of times, and Smokey and the Bandit as well. But there was a new release from the guy who had directed Jaws, Steven Spielberg. It was called Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We were all kind of excited to see it, and my mom got us a big bucket of popcorn to share and had me sit by her. I had missed my mom a lot, and was glad to be able to spend time with her outside of all the holiday festivities. She had to poke me a few times during the movie, though, because I kept checking the time. You had to press a button on the side of the watch. It didn’t just stay on all the time. I couldn’t help it, the novelty of the watch took over. If you pressed the button twice, the date would come up. If you pressed it a third time, there was a running count of seconds, which would remain unless you pressed the button a fourth time. The directions warned against doing this very much because it would drain the battery. Eventually, I got settled in, but I still remember thinking, excitedly, that we lived in the future!
Texas Instruments digital watch
There were a few times when I caught my mom sniffling and even tearing up during the movie. I didn’t think that it was a particularly sad movie, but later on, I figured out why. She missed me. And darned if I didn’t think about her every time I checked my watch.
Although my dad and I were living in our own trailer now, my grandma’s house was a short run across a field. I had gone back and forth so often that there was a path between our houses. When we moved out of their house, my aunt Nancy moved back in. My aunt was closer to my age than my dad’s. He was 12 when she was born. She was only nine when I was born. So, when I was much younger, I was like an annoying baby brother who was always hanging around her. I used to watch Dark Shadows with her after she got out of school sometimes when I was four, until I would get too scared. Boy, would she get mad.
Nancy had married young, at only 18, to an older “friend of the family,” that she had grown up having a crush on. He turned out to be abusive, so she left him and came back home. Now that she was turning 22 and I was a less annoying 12, She introduced me to one of my most powerful artistic influences, Fleetwood Mac. She had an external cassette player, which she usually hooked up to her stereo system in the basement that my dad and I had just vacated, but for me she brought it up to the living room of my grandma and grandpa’s house. I listened to the cassette of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on her over-ear headphones. She had a big case full of cassette tapes. She listened to them in her Ford Pinto station wagon as well, so she’d let me borrow one or two for a week, while she had the rest for her drive to and from Traverse City, where she worked as a secretary for Grand Traverse Auto. If you’re going to discover music as an important thing in your life, you really can’t go wrong with Fleetwood Mac.
I wore Rumours out, but I also discovered Seals & Croft, England Dan and John Ford Coley, The Doobie Brothers, Captain and Tennille, and more. I found myself watching less TV and listening to more music. There were some really happy days for me, sitting in my grandma’s recliner with headphones on, reading comic books and magazines, and eating a candy bar. Marathon was my favorite. For the money, you couldn’t go wrong. The hard caramel forced you to eat it slowly. Sometimes I picked up Bottle Caps or Spree, because I could portion those out. I was only treated once a week on Fridays, so I wanted to make my treats last.
Marathon Bar
My reading was now expanding beyond comic books and movie adaptations. Every magazine in existence had Star Wars on the cover. It was a phenomenon. Science Fantasy Film Classics launched with Star Wars on the cover, and it ran for years.
Science Fantasy Film Classics Vol. 1, Issue 1
When I had read the feature article on Star Wars about a thousand times, I read about the other movies that were in the magazine as well. I had never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey nor Forbidden Planet. When I asked my dad about the latter 1956 film, he raved about seeing it in the theater when he was my age, 12 years old. I really wanted to see it then, but there was no way to do so back then. We didn’t have streaming services, or even cable TV. There were no home video stores yet. Either you would catch it in reruns somewhere or it was lost to time.
My favorite magazine back then was Starlog. My first issue was #11. I’d seen it in the bookstore in Cadillac several times, but the cost was the same as several comic books.
Starlog #11
I wanted to read about the makeup men in the cover blurb. I wanted to learn how these movies were made. And what’s that? There was a Superman movie coming! We knew this from DC Comics at the time, because they were running a contest to see if YOU could be in the Superman movie!
I think my grandma and my dad indulged me in these purchases because I wasn’t just reading comic books anymore. On the other hand, I wasn’t reading them any less. Although the Star Wars comic series finished off the events in the movie with #6, the comics continued. MORE Star Wars!
Star Wars #7
These Star Wars comics were crazy. Han Solo and Chewbacca were off on their own with more adventures and misdeeds. But, it was all approved by Lucasfilm, so it counted as far as I was concerned.
Superheroes were starting to fall by the wayside in my view. I wasn’t even paying attention to the Marvel Memory Album Calendar anymore, especially with Tomb of Dracula (what else?) representing the month.
