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| BATMAN copyright DC COMICS. Art by WALTER HOWARTH |
Here's a nice little item I picked up in Gosport when I was living down in Southsea in Portsmouth back in 1981. 31 years later, I'm reminded that I probably had my original copy for only a few weeks when I first bought it back in the faraway 1960s. Looking at it today, I remember having quite a few issues of this run, and also seem to recall a SUPERMAN companion series. (Even though there isn't one listed on the back-page ad, below. I could be wrong though.)
If memory still serves, I got all four of these titles in my sadly-missed local WOOLWORTHS, and - on the day I bought them - I recall standing in line for a visiting fairground's 'parachute jump' (slipping into a harness and jumping off the edge of an iron fire-escape staircase - no actual parachute involved) situated in the rear car-park of the tenpin bowling alley in the main shopping precinct of my home town. As I waited, some ned kept asking me to let him read my new acquisitions while the queue wound its way along. I refused of course, because even at that tender age, I was smart enough to realise that he'd be off the moment I handed them over, never to be seen again.
Never got my parachute jump that day - the queue was moving so slowly that my parents, hovering in the background, got fed up waiting and summoned me and my bruv back to the car (a blue and white NOBEL 200). Ah well, at least I had my BATMAN and U.N.C.L.E. World Adventure Libraries to console me.
A SAINSBURY'S supermarket has been built on the site of the long-gone bowling alley, and an ICELAND shop now occupies the premises that once belonged to Woolworths, but - somewhere in the back of my mind and in surviving black & white photos of the period - the way things used to be still exist whenever I feel compelled to reconnect with my past. And who knows? Maybe one day I'll even make that long-abandoned 'parachute jump'.
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I like the Joker in this illustration- devilish but with a hint of Cesar Romero!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, Dougie. Actually, as far as the Joker goes, the cover reminds me of the type of Batman cards that Topps produced.
ReplyDeleteThe Joker does look like the Batman trading cards from 1966. They had painted illustrations by the pulp magazine artist Norman Saunders.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, I think Bob Brown did the initial drawings or designs, which Norm Saunders then painted.
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