PART THIRTEEN OF FAVOURITE COMICS OF THE PAST - 'HAS-BEEN HERO'...

Images copyright DC COMICS

Before the memory of past events fades beyond my ability to accurately recall, I now cast the spotlight of history upon WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #178, which I had when I was a boy of between 8 and 10 years of age.  My original copy was torn into tiny pieces at some point (I don't remember why) and for a few years the scraps littered the layers of insulation fibre between the floor joists up in my loft.  In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if fragments yet lurked there to this day, over 40 years after my family moved from the house.

The scans you're currently looking at are from a replacement copy I acquired a good many years ago.  It's true to say that I've had it for a far greater period of time than I ever had the original, but in all that span, I've never yet managed to read the story's conclusion in the next-but-one issue, number 180.  (179 was a Giant-Size reprint issue.)  One day I must apply myself to tracking down a copy of the comic and finding out what happened, though it'll be a strange sensation to finally read the resolution of a tale I first started 43 years before.

Looking at this comic now, memories come flooding back; images of CORSON'S, the shop from where I bought it; the bedroom of my old house and the gloom of the loft where it met its final fate.  If you had this comic as a child then you'll have your very own set of recollections to accompany it.  If so, cast now your eyes over the following select pages and enter again that hallowed haven of yesteryear when the world was a much simpler, safer place and the future still lay a very long way off.  (Or at least that's how it seemed.)

And just think - somewhere out there is bound to be someone who read #180 all those years ago, but never saw #178.  Ain't life strange?

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UPDATE: I've now acquired WFC #180 - click here.

Further Update: I've now also acquired #179, a giant reprint issue unconnected to 178 & 180.