A Kids Life in the 1940s, Part 4 - Comics

Collecting comic books in the 1940s was a universal endeavor. We did not think about collecting in the classic manner - we just liked to read them. In the mid-forties, when I began buying them, they cost only a nickel, but doubled price soon thereafter. I remember suffering my first shock of economic inflation when several of us boys went into Whitaker’s neighborhood grocery, each of us with a nickel in our pocket. Three or four of us went in; I don’t remember just who was accompanying Don and I, but it probably would have been either Bob Hundley, Jim Douglas, Gerald Giles or his brother Bob. Don and I could have pooled our money and bought one, but the experience threw us into a state of confused indecision, and we left in disgust.

I did not read comics during those first years of collecting, because the stories were told in the cartoons and drawings, and reading wasn’t really necessary. I was not a good reader for most of my public school years, and I use to wonder if all my early reading problems could be blamed on comic books, but in retrospect I think I could equally justify blaming Dick and Jane readers. Their stories could also be delved from the drawings, and they weren‘t nearly as interesting, so I don’t think comics really did me much harm.

As I said, we did not collect comic books in the sense of true collectors Our comic books were not stowed away in protective plastic covers. They were read, and re-read and traded with other kids in the block until covers were lost and pages were torn or missing. We kept the comics in a box and discarded old ones only with reluctance as there was always a chance of trade. True joy was in finding a kid in another neighborhood with a box of comic books that had not yet circulated through our sector of town. Standards of trade were the same everywhere. One for one if they were of equal condition; two for one if covers were missing; two for one on double sized comics; and what ever the market would bear if pages were missing. Comic book collecting waned by our early teens and we graduated to Mad Magazine, a new publication that emerged in the mid fifties. I never returned to those wonder days of Superman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Donald Duck, The Hulk, and The Swamp Creature.

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