POST From The PAST: The STEADY STRANDS Of SUN - PHEW!

Copyright relevant owner.  Art by Neal Adams

I first published this post a fortnight shy of ten years ago, and considering how warm the weather's been lately, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to give it another outing.  I could easily be talking about today's climactic conditions in the paragraph below, so I'd say my timing's impeccable.

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The past few days have been of the gloriously warm, sunny, summer kind that we imagine all our childhood summers to have been like, and as I stepped off the train from Glasgow early yesterday evening with The DEADLY HANDS Of KUNG FU #12 in my possession (bought from a back issue shop in the city), my mind drifted back to a similarly gloriously warm, sunny, summer late afternoon of 36 years before [now 46 remember], when - as a mere freckle-faced teenager - I'd first purchased my original copy of this black and white magazine. 

I'd also obtained the very first MONSTER FUN Holiday Special on the same day.  (IPC were quick off the mark with this one, as the weekly publication had only been out for a very short period - a matter of weeks, in fact.)  I remember that it reprinted the initial SAM'S SPOOK strip by LEO BAXENDALE, which first appeared in SMASH! in Jan/Feb of 1971.  It still sported the "starts today" blurb on the top left-hand side of the logo, no doubt the result of an editorial oversight as such blurbs were usually removed from out-of-sequence reprintings.

(NOTE: My memory of this was confirmed when, a week after typing the previous paragraph, I obtained a back issue of this comic also.  I've inserted the cover and Sam strip above.  Click to enlarge.  Interestingly, the page had previously been resized into two for the Smash! Annual for 1975, issued towards the end of '74.)

Art by Rudy Nebres

Back in 1975, a friend was with me when I bought these two publications, at some stage during a day out in Glasgow.  On our return, I accompanied him (still clutching my precious comics) as he visited his sister's in-laws, who resided not too far from the house I'd lived in when Sam's Spook first made his debut, and from which my family had moved only three years before in 1972.  (In fact, their house was the architectural double of my old one, so it was almost like revisiting my former home.)  It's because of this that I associate both these comics with my previous neighbourhood just as much as with my then (and still) current one.  Funny thing, memory, eh?

Art by George Perez, Rico Rival, and The Tribe

I'd bought this ish mainly for The MAN With The GOLDEN GUN cover art and article, having seen (with the same friend) ROGER MOORE's second 007 movie not too long before.  (It had its UK premiere on December 19th 1974, but my local cinema didn't screen it until sometime in '75.)  Reading it again for the first time in nearly 40 years [now nearly 50], I was surprised by how much of it I remembered - even down to actual paragraphs.  The mag also had SHANG-CHI, MASTER Of KUNG FU and SONS Of The TIGER, with artwork by RUDY NEBRES and GEORGE PEREZ, plus a BOND pin-up by the great GRAY MORROW.

I often think back fondly to that particular summer day - and many another day from long ago also.  (Perhaps I may even have warm recollections of yesterday in the years to come - I hope I've got at least another 50 ahead of me, optimistic as that may be.)  Little did I then realise that my friendship with the pal I'd known since I was 7 would last barely another six years, but such is life - something to look forward to in blissful ignorance of what might happen, and to look back on in fond reminiscence (hopefully) of what did.

I hope all your summers turn out to be gloriously warm and sunny - even if only in memory.

Art by Gray Morrow

RAMBLING REFLECTIONS OF THE RATHER REMOTE KIND...

When you're in your early 20s, you feel as if you've been around forever and can't even conceive of a time when you didn't exist.  You know there was, of course, but it just doesn't feel like it.  (The same thing could probably be said whatever age you happen to be - at least in my own experience.)  I'd lived in five different houses by the time I was 20, and due to the furniture being the same from house-to-house, they all had pretty much the same ambience.  In memory, therefore, those houses (the four I remember anyway, as I was only one-and-a-half when we moved from the first one) are preserved in amber, as there were no significant changes in their furnishings during our time of residence in them.  (The occasional addition, but no deletions.)

When I first moved to my current home it was the same, but eventually (several years in) some furniture was disposed of and replaced, and the house now no longer preserves the 'vibe' it once had, the interiors having evolved a different look and feel to that of my earliest years here.  It now has a different 'personality' (while still retaining a few remnants of its old one), and its current ambiance no longer precisely matches that of any of our previous residences.  I therefore often find myself casting my mind back to earlier times, which isn't difficult considering the sheer volume of replacement toys, books, comics, and records I've managed to obtain that remind me of my early days.

When my gaze falls upon those doppelganger items from yesteryear, I find myself yearning to return to those times and places, and since the majority of my collection reminds me of one house in particular, I tend to find the notion of one day moving back there quite an attractive proposition, because they'd all be 'at home'.  The only trouble with that though, is that I'd be bound to miss the houses before and after whenever I looked at items that preceded and followed my residence in the home under discussion.  So while I'd feel I belonged there whenever I looked at an issue of Fantastic or Terrific, I'd most likely feel out of place when I looked at a copy of MWOM or SMCW.

As I've said before somewhere, it's a case of missing what you don't have, but if you reacquire it, you then miss something else.  I miss my previous houses because I no longer live in them, but if I were to move back to one, I'd miss the others - including the one I currently inhabit.  That's why I moved back here 34 years ago after living elsewhere for over four years, having previously stayed here for 11 - I missed it and wanted to try and turn the clock back.  Now, strangely, I even miss the house I left to return here, though I didn't at the time - it took around 17 or 18 years for that feeling to finally kick in.

Anyway, I began this post several hours ago before getting distracted by other things, so I've now forgotten precisely where I intended to go with this.  All I know is that whenever I look at one group of toys or comics, the prospect of again living in the house I inhabited when I first got them seems extremely appealing to me, but having lived in a number of houses in my lifetime, I feel the same way about every former abode whenever I look at or handle other groups of items first acquired during my terms of residence in them.

I suppose posts like this aren't fair on you poor Crivvies, due to the fact that if I don't quite know what I'm trying to say, then you can't be expected to either.  Hopefully you'll be able to make something out of it.