 |
| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
I remember once chatting to GRANT MORRISON (name dropper) about The SINGING DETECTIVE. It was many years ago and I can't quite recall where we were talking. It was either in a comics shop or at a mart in the MOIR HALL in Glasgow. He was very much taken with DENNIS POTTER's serial, and when I mentioned a scene from a much earlier Potter TV adaptation that was repeated in 'Detective', he said that's what he liked about him - his obsession with certain themes and images.
Personally (and cynically), I'd have put it down to lack of originality, but what do I know? Going by Grant's definition, the amount of times I've blethered on about how quickly time passes as we get older, maybe I display the same sort of obsession that he so admired in Potter - and what follows is another such example.
See the cover above? (Of course you do - why do I even ask?) It only seems like a few short years ago that I bought it, and I even remember doing so back in 1989. I wasn't really a reader of CAPTAIN AMERICA's mag back then, so I made the purchase based purely on the cover art (very much in the style of JACK KIRBY) looking just like a '60s MARVEL comic. It's cover-dated July, which makes it almost exactly 30 years old this month (though it probably went on sale around April - in America anyway).
I can't believe it (as VICTOR MELDREW would say), as that means I'm now twice as old as when I bought the comic back in '89. Anyway, in a blatant attempt to drum up your participation (trust me, it's good for your soul), is there anything in your vast accumulation of treasures that you feel is a relatively recent purchase, only to be amazed when you realise it was acquired around half your life away (or longer)?
Go on - take up as much space as you need in our comments section.
Back in 1974 when I was leaving the UK to get married in the US, I purchased from a comic dealer in London, the original art board for the second to last page of Dan Dare drawn by Frank Hampson.
ReplyDeleteIt depicted the landing on Terra Nova. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to own it then and now realising that I've owned it just over 45 years and it seems like yesterday.
Back in the early 90's when I needed an email address and felt so Dan Dare like using desktop computers I decided on Terranova47, in honor of Hampson's futuristic tales and my birth year.
So longer than half a life away.
Great response, T47. 1974 only seems like yesterday to me as well (okay, maybe a couple of weeks). I owned a page of Dan Dare art for a good number of years, but I eventually sold it. I never bought Eagle as a kid so Dan Dare didn't mean so much to me, though I now have the first issue. 45 years, eh? Where did it go to?
ReplyDeleteI don't own a vast accumulation of treasures (or any treasures at all) but I first saw the original King Kong on TV in 1976, 43 years after its' original release in 1933 - and now 1976 itself is 43 years ago. That kind of thing always amazes me!!
ReplyDeleteYou have your memories, CJ - they're treasures worth keeping. Yeah, that kind of thing always amazes me as well. It's 36 years since Sean Connery played Bond in Never Say Never Again (he was only around 52 - far younger than I am now) in 1983, a mere 12 years after Diamonds Are Forever. Yet that 12 year period seems far longer to me than the 36 years duration which followed it.
ReplyDeleteI know it's a cliché, but there's no doubt that time (seems to) speed up the older you get - unless you're in solitary in prison or something. I can only guess that it's 'cos whatever memory space you had empty in childhood was being filled up with possibly important stuff that you needed to refer back to later, so it needed more subconscious scrutiny? Nowadays, you can still learn new stuff but it's not as important for future development/survival, so it's a bugger to memorise it. That would explain why we can remember a comic from the '70's, for example, exactly where we bought it, who was there when we read it, etc, whereas anything you buy today means almost nothing by comparison. Nowadays I pencil inside the covers of books I'm given as presents: the person, the occasion and the year. Otherwise they just merge into each other. If only I could figure out why the days spent sitting at a keyboard in an office drag on whilst the months and years now whizz by?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how when you're a kid, HS, birthdays and Christmases seem an eternity away (even when it's only a few weeks), whereas now, they've come and gone before you know it. And that's despite Christmas starting in October these days, though I'm talking mainly about the big day itself. One thing I have found is that on the few occasions I've been in hospital, time drags by. You think two hours have passed, but when you look at the clock, only ten minutes have expired. Weird, eh?
ReplyDeleteYeah, the expectation of an event does seem to play a big part. As a kid I certainly don't remember the supermarket hard sell starting as early as it does now but even so I'd regularly cry me eyes out on Christmas night because after what seemed an incredible amount of build-up it was suddenly all over - is that it for another year? After all the toy ads on TV, the fab Christmas TV specials, the annuals advertised in the comics, the carol services organised at school (back when you could call it Christmas and not bloody winterval or some such) and everything being aimed towards that one event, it was suddenly just gone like any other day and, as you say, the next one did indeed seem an eternity away. It was special because it seemed a rare event and a chance to get toys & annuals you would never get during the rest of the year. I suppose, as wage earning adults, we can now go and buy ourselves any current book/toy or one from childhood without thinking twice about it, but they never mean as much 'cos we haven't had to ask for 'em and hope!
ReplyDeleteI find myself hoping that I'll have enough money to be able to buy the next book I want when I see it advertised somewhere, HS, so there's still hope in my life (to a degree). But you're right, nothing seems quite as magical as the things we had in childhood, which is why I've spent the last 35 years or so trying to acquire replacements for the things I had back then. Another thing that surprises me is that there are only a few days between Hallowe'en and Guy Fawkes night - yet as a kid it seemed that they were separated by several weeks. (It did to me anyway.)
ReplyDelete