A Life in Four Colors Part Forty-Five

As I've said before, comics have played a major role in many of the most important parts of my life. I had no idea just how major a part they would play, though.

In December of 1967, I made my usual comics purchases. One of those comics was Batman #199, a rather forgettable issue with an eye-catching cover that shows Batman desperately trying to purchase a copy of a Batman comic book. DC (and in particular, editor Julius Schwartz) loved that sort of story: come up with an offbeat cover with a preposterous image or situation, then have the writer deliver a story to match. 

The comics-reading experience always included the letters column; I enjoyed seeing what other readers had thought of prior issues. So once I finished the comic, I flipped to the letters column--and my eyes were immediately drawn to two words. 

Cedartown, Georgia.

Cedartown, located just a half-hour from my home town, was very familiar to me. My parents were born in Cedartown; my maternal grandmother still lived there, and we visited her once a month or so. I had stayed with my grandmother for a week a time during the summers when I was younger, which meant I knew the town. I knew pretty much every store that carried comic books. I had probably bought comics in the same store where this mystery letter writer bought comics.

It had never occurred to me that there might be someone in Cedartown reading comics and then writing letters of comment. So I looked above the city and state to see who this mystery fan was.

Susan Hendrix. 

I was doubly surprised. While I had known girls who read comics (Tricia Mullinax and Debbie Ezelle were two childhood friends who were also comics readers), I hadn't known any girls who were interested in actually writing about them, in either fanzines or letters of comment. Oh, I knew that there were girls reading comics--one of the most prominent letterhacks (the term used for those who frequently wrote letters of comments to comics) was Irene Vartanoff--but I didn't ever imagine that any of them might live in my general area.

Cedartown was a local phone call from Rome. Without giving it too much thought (if I had, I probably would have chickened out) I looked up Hendrix listings in Cedartown. There weren't that many of them. So I began calling; when someone would answer, I asked for Susan.

One wrong number. Two. Three. Four. Then came call number five.

"Just a minute," the boy who answered the phone said (I would learn later that it was Susan's brother, Wayne). Then he turned away from the phone and called loudly for Susan. A moment later, a girl's voice said hello.

I don't really remember precisely what I said. I didn't have that part planned out very well, I guess. I remember asking if this was the Susan Hendrix who read comic books. She hesitated before saying yes. I then asked if it was the Susan Hendrix who wrote a letter to Batman. More hesitation, then another yes. Then I told her my name, told her that I read comics, too, that I also wrote letters of comment, and probably blathered on for several more minutes. We talked about comics a little; we talked about the factual error in Batman #195 that inspired her letter; we talked about our interests in science fiction and music. And I asked if I could write her a letter to tell her more about myself. She said I could... and she said she'd write back. (I didn't need to ask for her address; back then, the letters columns included full addresses. 103 King Street. Less than two miles from my grandmother's house.)

Months later, as we got to know each other better, Susan told me that her first thought was that someone from her high school had seen her letter and was calling to mock her. She came very close to hanging up when I asked about reading comics.

I'm very lucky that she resisted that first impulse.

My life changed that day, although it would be several more months before I would get an inkling of how significant that change would be. We would talk and write letters to one another for six more months before we would first meet--a meeting that took place at my grandmother's house in Cedartown. 

(Three years after that meeting, Susan and I would get married... but that's another story, and I don't want to get ahead of myself. So you'll have to wait a while for that part of my tale...)