World’s Finest Comics #157 (May, 1966)

This comic book features an “Imaginary Story”.  (And if your response to that phrase is “but aren’t they all imaginary?”, rest assured that famed British comics author Alan Moore agrees with you.)  “Imaginary Stories”, also known as “Imaginary Tales” or even (as in this very issue) “Imaginary Novels“, were a fixture of editor Mort Weisinger’s “Superman family” comics of the 1960s.  They allowed the creators to explore “what if?” scenarios in which Krypton never exploded, or Jimmy Olsen married Supergirl, or Superman was murdered by Lex Luthor (sounds like a bummer, I know, but it made for a classic story) — in other words, scenarios that wouldn’t or couldn’t fit into the “real” ongoing continuity of the comics.      Read More

Justice League of America #44 (May, 1966)

Justice League of America #44 was the first comic book I ever got through the mail.  It came in a brown paper wrapper.  And it was folded in two, lengthwise.

Which, of course, would significantly lessen its future value as a collectible, but my eight-year-old self hardly cared about that.  After all, I was the kid who cut the logo off the cover of Superman #181 and cut up a story page in The Brave and the Bold #64 for the subscription coupon on the back — said subscription coupon being the very reason why I was now receiving my first issue of JLA through the mail, just a few months after I’d mailed the coupon in, accompanied by a single dollar bill.  (One dollar for 10 issues!  I saved a whole 2 cents per comic book.)  Read More

The Wild Wild West #1 (June, 1966)

The very first comic books I bought for myself, in the summer of 1965, were DC comics, and for the most part I stuck with that publisher for the next couple of years.  I wasn’t completely an exclusive DC customer, however; I also bought comics from Gold Key, the comic book imprint of Western Publishing.  Gold Key produced superhero series like Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom; they also had the licenses for Tarzan, and for the Disney and Warner Bros.cartoon characters.  However, I wasn’t very interested in any of those.  No, I bought Gold Key comics because they published comic books based on my favorite television shows — and in March, 1966, one of my very favorite shows was The Wild Wild WestRead More