SUPERMAN SINGS 'SKIP To My LOO' - PART TWENTY Of FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST...

Copyright DC COMICS

I have a startling confession to make - I can't keep it in any longer (apt words when you discover my shocking secret).  Whenever I go into the toilet to 'perch on the porcelain', I can't do so unless I take something in with me to read while I go about my business.  I've been the same since I was about 7 or 8, when my mother would chide me for taking so long in the bathroom.  If I don't have something to read, the only alternative is to try and squeeze imaginary blackheads from my thighs, but that soon gets boring - so it's either a pile of comics or a book or three to help me while away the time in the smallest room in the house.

But to digress for a moment: When I was younger, I would sometimes buy a comic more than once.  See, once I'd read the original, I might cut pictures from it, swap it with a mate or, horror of horrors, even throw it away.  Then, perhaps weeks or months later (sometimes even a year or so), I'd see another copy on the spinner-rack in my local (or another) newsagent's, and be transfixed by its pristine newness and simply have to buy it.  However, as comics tend to be a means by which I remember my life - due to the fact that I associate times, places, events, and even people with them - it can sometimes be confusing years later when conflicting memories of the same issue purchased at different times and locations become mixed-up in my mind.

The SUPERMAN mags in this post serve as a perfect example.  I bought both of them when I lived in one house, and then bought them again a few months later after moving to a new domicile.  "How is that possible?" you may be wondering.  Well, batches of US comics came over to Britain as ballast in ships and, presumably, some of them would lie in warehouses for months, perhaps even years. This meant that long after many of these issues had first gone on sale, the same comics could reappear in shops several months later.  It led to an odd but exciting mix on the spinner-racks - you could buy a particular mag one month, only to find numbers preceding it (by quite a margin) on subsequent shopping trips some months down the line.

So, in my advanced years, sometimes when I look at the covers to these two comics, I might associate them with the second occasion I bought them, rather than the first.  Then again, sometimes not - it just depends, I suppose.  Arguably, I may associate the cover to #242 more with the house in which I currently reside because, for some strange reason, it made more of an impression on me the second time I purchased it.  However, its contents, especially the back-up tales, are inextricably linked to the previous house, because I remember reading them while sitting on the loo a few months before.

Which brings us back rather neatly to where we started - my bathroom.  But there's only room for one person in here at a time, so kindly close the door on your way out - and leave me (and my comics) to the privacy to which we're entitled.