“Tune in Wild Man of Borneo on bongos. Count Basie Orchestra on triangle. Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone. Back from his recent operation, Dan Druff, harp. And representing the flower people, Quasimodo on bells. Wonderful to hear Brainiac on banjo.” From The Intro and the Outro, written by Vivian Stanshall.
Do you know where you were on May 29, 1958? I know where I was. I realize most of you weren’t around then. I was just two months shy of my eighth birthday, and that was just another day I tried to read a comic book. A very specific comic book, which has now morphed into a t-shirt.
It’s an adequate metaphor for my unusual life. I had been reading comic books since about the time I could walk. Well, actually, my sister babysat me by reading her comic books out loud, but being a precocious and obnoxious little shit, I fell in love with the medium, and with assistance from my aforementioned sister, I taught myself how to read.
As was my parents’ want, I was attending a Hebrew school after my regular school day, walking the mile from public to private classroom. It was a waste of my parents’ money: they were trying to convert me from atheism to the family faith. I was born a non-believer so their attempt was fruitless. Nonetheless, I attended class, failing miserably at learning the language but enthusiastically debating the sundry Rabbis over doctrine. Those guys love a good argument, and my skill at being a verbose asshole earned me a good spot on the Honor Roll. Hey, go know.
The Hebrew school I attended was a small storefront on a arterial road, where the El Pueblito restaurant is in the logo panel above. It was directly across the street from Weiner’s Drugs (non-extant) and their fabulously gigantic “Hey, Kids! Comics!” spinner rack. I had class three days a week, the latter being on Thursday. That was the day new comics hit the newsstands, and I state with complete certainty that each and every Thursday I went to that drug store to scope out new releases before I whipped out my skullcap. Most certainly, I was at Weiner’s on Thursday, May 29 1958 where I purchased a copy of Action Comics #242.
The purpose of a magazine cover is to attract the attention of readers who are frequenting the racks. Evidently that particular cover, drawn by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye and featuring the debut of a major new villain, grabbed my eye.
I put it inside my school desk, but I would lift the lid and read a few pages whenever I got bored. So I quickly made it half-way through the Brainiac introduction story before I got busted. My teacher confiscated Action 242 — I hope she enjoyed it, even though she publicly held to the then-popular axiom about comic books causing juvenile delinquency and rapid stupidity in children.
Well, I screwed that warning up. Comics became my career. One of them, at least.
So you can imagine my pleasure last week when I saw that fabled cover on a DC-branded t-shirt listed on Amazon’s DC Comics web store.
Sixty-seven years later, my embarrassment (well, that was their intent; everybody already knew I was a comic book addict) turned into big deal Warner Bros. merch released in the immediate wake of their half-billion dollar — and counting — blockbuster, Superman The New Movie.
I count that as vindication.
Nine years after Action 242 was published, musician/artist/writer Vivian Stanshall, of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band fame, wrote the song whose the lyric (in part) that resides below the logo panel on this week’s Brainiac On Banjo. I’ve been using the title to define my APA stuff (honest) and my subsequent jaunt through the shallows of the internet, and a surprising number of people got the reference. For me personally, that was the greatest result, maybe the only result, from my tenure at after-school parochial instruction.
Yup. I believe in Superman.
