… a few weeks after my eighth birthday, when I walked up to the counter of a convenience store (most likely a Tote-Sum or a Short Stop) in Jackson, MS, and plunked down twelve cents to purchase a comic book for the first time.

(As an aside, it may not have been the first comic book I owned.  My dad worked as the Fire Control Director at the Mississippi Forestry Commission and there were a couple of comics I had about Smokey the Bear that I think he may have brought home from the office.  One of those was the Dell Four Color #1214 pictured here, which the Grand Comics Database tells me was published August, 1961, when I was four.  The main content of this issue consisted of several realistically illustrated conservation adventures that just happened to feature an anthropomorphic bear in a pair of dungarees and his two youthful sidekicks — another, younger bear, and a raccoon.  Anyway, if that comic was bought in a store, it was bought for me, not by me.)  Read More