Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time re-written every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?” — from The Way We Were, written by Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch.
This week I’m going to wax on about my old neighborhood and the part it played in my comic book centric universe. I just don’t start out that way.
Last Thursday afternoon, I woke up to the story about the murders outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. Two young staffers were slain and a thirty-year-old Chicagoan was arrested subsequently. Given his statements at the scene and in the mandatory manifesto he published the night before, there’s little wiggle room for this guy to beat the rap.
I was told the accused shooter was a resident of the Albany Park neighborhood. He lived just a few blocks from where I grew up. I enjoy irony and synchronicity, so my ears perked up: when I was living in the area it was an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. And, so, my memories took the safe path to nostalgia.
Albany Park was where my sister, nearly seven years older than me, was coerced into babysitting me when my mother went off to the grocery store around the corner. Having better things to do, she would read me her comic books as a means to entertain herself and, inadvertently, foster my love for the medium and my lust for reading.
Several years later, my father and I were walking down Lawrence Avenue and we crossed by one of the ubiquitous cigar stores that littered big city America in the 1950s. I asked if we could stop in. This confused my father because, to the best of his knowledge, I didn’t smoke cigars. I told him I wanted to check out the comics on their magazine rack. He laughed and said “well, at least you’re not going in their back room to play poker.” Illegal gambling sites often were to be found in the back rooms of cigar stores and barber shops, although the tables were replaced by voting machines during Chicago’s many elections each year. In this manner, my father boosted my education quite significantly.
Back then, there were many comics racks on the two block stretch of Lawrence between Kimball and Kedzie Avenues. One was at the L train terminal; that’s where I bought my first Batman comic that featured The Joker. I later bought the first issue of The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis and the first silver age appearance of Hawkman at that newsstand. At the other end of Lawrence was a coffee shop with a long outdoor series of comics racks and that’s where I purchased the first silver age appearance of Green Lantern. Two block south of that was a drug store where I copped the first issue of the first Fantastic Four #1.
Cities are living things. They evolve rather slowly as new families move in, bringing their cultures and dreams with them, and Albany Park is no different. Since few buildings went up during the Depression and the subsequent World War, it took a while before some of the ancient buildings were replaced. The local movie palace, the delis and hot dog stands, the cigar shops, and the amazing record store with a bunch of private listening booths all went away. The ensuing generations had their own stores, and many of those have been replaced by now.
Albany Park was the location of one of Chicago’s very first comic book stores. Back in 1971, perhaps the kindest, most gentle and lovable man I’d ever known, Joe Sarno, opened The Nostalgia Shop, later renamed Comics Kingdom. The store actually started several years earlier in the basement of his Albany Park home. He also started The Fantasy Collectors of Chicago, a group of fans that met every month in the community room of a large bank. We sat around and babbled, and traded and bought and sold old comics. The favored at that time: EC Comics, All Star Comics, Carl Barks, and The Spirit. I remain a big fan of all four.
Joe also promoted pulp magazines, illustration art, newspaper comic strips, old time radio shows, science fiction teevee shows and other pop culture phenomena that were comic book adjacent. As I was relatively young back then, I learned from Joe and my elders about the roots of this amazing storytelling medium. The Fantasy Collectors had quite a noteworthy pedigree.
He also co-founded the Chicago Comicon, an institution of which I was proud to be a member.
Joe died in 2010, leaving enough loving fans, friends and family to fill Wrigley Field.
My Albany Park days were quite a critical part of my becoming whatever it is I’ve become, and when I’m back in the old neighborhood I usually check the location of that restaurant that had those massive outdoor comics racks.
It’s long gone, but I can clearly see the memories.
