A Life in Four Colors - Preface

My love affair with comic books began relatively early. And I owe it all to my parents, who decided that a few comic books would be the perfect distraction for a child about to undergo surgery.

I was a few months more than five years old when my pediatrician decided that the only feasible way to deal with my persistent throat and ear problems was a tonsillectomy. I didn't really know or understand the details of this procedure, but I did understand that I was going to be in the hospital for a couple of days, that my throat would hurt for a while but it would get better quickly, and that I wouldn't be able to eat much of anything but ice cream. The first worried me, the second part scared me, but that third part sounded pretty good.

(Yes, in early 1959, a tonsillectomy required a few days' stay in the hospital. It was a different time.)

I wasn't happy about the upcoming surgery--a word neither my parents nor my doctor used in explaining all of this to me, as far as I can recall--so my parents decided I needed something to distract me. So they stopped at Garden Lakes Grocery, which had a comics rack, and told me that I could pick out four comics--one for each day of my hospital stay and one more for the night before.

It seemed like a spent hours looking over that rack for just the right comics, although I'm sure that it was actually less time than that. When you're a five-year-old kid, time seems to go by more slowly. I pulled out comic after comic, looking for the perfect comics.

Finally, I made my decision. I handed my four comics to Mom, and she and Dad took them to the clerk and paid for them, along with a few others items--including, I believe, some vanilla ice cream that would be waiting for me when I got home.

The fateful four comics? Dennis the Menace Giant #6, Little Archie #10, Spooky #30, and Superman #127. It's slightly surprising that only one of those four books was a superhero comic, but I guess it makes sense when seen through the eyes of a child. I knew Dennis the Menace from the newspaper, and I loved the strip, since Dennis was a kid just like me. That same logic probably extended to Little Archie: he, too, was a kid not much older than me, and his life looked pretty exciting when I flipped through the book. (Thanks, Bob Bolling!) Spooky was a ghost, but he looked to be a likable ghost. And Superman--well, he was Superman! And even better, the issue had him fighting a King Kong-esque giant gorilla!

 My choice was made. I took the comics home that evening, and just as my parents had promised me, I got to read one of the books that night before we went to the hospital the next day. The first comic I read? Superman, of course. I could read at the age of five, but my reading vocabulary was limited enough that there were some words here I didn't know. It didn't matter, though: the art made it clear what was going on.

The next morning, my parents took me to the hospital very, very early. I slept through most of the trip and the hospital admission in that way that only young children can--that "carry me like a sack of potatoes" sleep that seems almost unbelievable to anyone who hasn't witnessed just what a child can sleep through. (Of course, the whole admission process was much simpler way back then...) I woke up at the hospital, just in time for them to "put me to sleep" for the surgery, leaving me to wonder why they woke me up at all, since I was already asleep.

The surgery went well enough, I suppose, but just as my parents had warned me, my throat was really sore when I woke up. After a few hours, the nurse came in and asked if I wanted to eat anything. My mom knew what my answer would be, so she replied for me. "Ice cream."

A while later, I got strawberry jello.

Mom saw my disappointment, and she told the nurse that I had wanted ice cream. The nurse said she would check into it, but she left the jello so that I would have something to eat. Reluctantly, I ate the jello. Mom figured the best way to keep my mind off the ice cream, so she offered me the next comic in the stack--the Dennis the Menace. It took a long time to read it--I had wisely chosen a 100-page comic for one of my books--but when I finished going through it, with Mom reading some of it aloud to me, I wanted more comics. "We said one each day," she told me. Ah, but even at five years old, I was looking for loopholes. "Can I read the Superman again?"

Mom couldn't think of any rule that would prohibit me reading the book I had read the previous night, so she agreed, and once again, I thrilled to the adventures of Superman vs. Titano, asking Mom to help me with all the words I didn't know.

The second day at the hospital, I had sufficient voice to ask for my own ice cream.  I think I even asked for two bowls of ice cream to make up for the one I missed the day before.

When they brought me lunch, I had a bowl of chicken noodle soup and another bowl of jello. Something was going horribly wrong here.

And once again, Mom took my mind off my ice cream deprivation with another comic book. This time, it was the Little Archie. It, too, was a giant 25¢ issue, so there was a lot to read.  And Mom, have that prescience that mothers often have, also let me have the two books I had already read--Dennis the Menace and Superman. They sustained me through an ice-cream-less dinner as well.

The third day, the nurse told me that the doctor was going to let me go home if everything looked good. "I want some ice cream," I  asserted, determined to get my promised ice cream before we left the hospital. As it turned out, I got nothing at all, because the doctor come by before lunch was served. He looked at my throat, talked grown-up stuff to Mom, and soon after, we were on our way home.

Where the first thing I got was vanilla ice cream. And the second thing I got was that issue of Spooky that I hadn't read yet. It seemed like I spent all afternoon eating ice cream and reading that comic--and as you might expect, the comic book did not remain ice-cream-free. (Now, I look back on that as a portent of things to come, when many of my comics would be marred by drips of melted ice cream from a Candler's ice cream cone held in one hand while I read the folded-back comic that I held in the other hand. We knew nothing of mint condition comics back then...) And of course, I also got to re-read the three comics I had already read.

For two more days at home, I ate soup and ice cream and jello and oatmeal--and I re-read the same four comics, over and over again. Thanks to Mom, I even knew all of the words! Finally, the ice cream ran out.

"I'll get you Dad to stop by the store on the way home and pick some up," Mom said. "What do you want?" Of course, she meant "what flavor of ice cream do you want?" But my answer wasn't an ice cream flavor.

"More comic books."

So a lifelong love of comics began--and a lifelong mistrust of the medical community, who still owes me some ice cream.