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Less than four months short of 47 years, today I finally got to read the conclusion to a two-part SUPERBOY tale, the first instalment of which I read way back in December of 1968. (For the full story behind that event, click here.) It doesn't seem like anywhere near that length of time, and I'm amazed that it's sped by so quickly. Several school pals who were alive when I read the first part have long since departed this mortal vale, yet because my mind has returned to '68, it feels like they're still out there, going about their everyday lives just as they once did in happy days of yesteryear.
What's interesting about the conclusion is that Superboy colludes in what appears to be the death of two alien life forms. Okay, so they're not flesh and blood (and they're evil), but they're sentient beings, so I'm somewhat surprised at this story receiving editorial approval. While it certainly displays a degree of imagination, it feels like the wrap-up was written by a different writer to the first part. Either that, or he didn't know how he was going to tie it all together when he began it.
As with WORLD'S FINEST #180 (see here), I read my newly acquired SUPERBOY #148 in a room, the door of which displays the actual number plate of the house in which I lived when I read the first part of the tale, nearly 47 years ago. What's more, the room has furniture which graced my previous room's interiors, so there's an almost tangible air of continuity and connection, which appeals to my overdeveloped sense of nostalgia.
But there's more! My screensaver is the view from my old bedroom window of the house in which I stayed when this mag was first published, so it was easy to make-believe as I sat down to type this that I'd read it in the same room where I'd read the first part of the tale, ten days before Christmas on a dark December late afternoon in 1968.
Okay, my mental associations with this mag are imaginary rather than memory, but don't let that prevent you from sharing your own personal reminiscences (if you have any) of this comicbook with your fellow Criv-ites in the comments section.
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Y'know, now that I think about it, this story seems strangely familiar, making me wonder if I'd perhaps read it out of sequence before I bought #146. This would account for me not realizing I'd already read the denouement in advance of the first part of the tale, especially as the wrap-up takes a slightly different turn from what one would naturally expect from the set-up. Perhaps it was one of the issues contained in a DOUBLE DOUBLE COMIC? Still glad to have it though, whatever the case.
2 comments:
Well done in tracking that down Kid, I hope you enjoyed it - I don't think I ever read this issue but I do remember as a kid being fascinated by the covers to most DC comics, some of the covers were better than the actual stories inside. I think comic covers are a lost art now, not the actual drawing/paining of them but the ability to have a cover that made you want to know what was happening inside - today covers seem to be mostly splash pages with little bearing on the actual story - I assume this is an early Neal Adams cover?
It looks like Neal Adams to me, McS, but I don't think it's one of his better ones. I also don't like the positioning of the speech balloons, I'd have placed them differently. I agree with you about today's covers - most of them seem to be just pin-ups. I think editors don't want speech balloons on covers anymore because they think it makes a comic look juvenile. It's as if they're embarrassed by the fact that comicbooks were originally for kids. And I did actually enjoy the story of Superboy #148 - the writer's imagination was working overtime, which made it interesting.
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