I usually bought my comics at 7-11, but my Dad would occasionally take me to this store, which had a huge selection of magazines, paperbacks, and comics. I don't think I had ever seen a digest comic before, since my local 7-11s did't carry them. So seeing a book one hundred pages long, full of stories I'd never seen before, just got me so excited, and I bought every one I could get my hands on.
As a kid, I always loved the Justice Society, and the whole Earth-2 concept--a whole other world of superheroes, published long before I was born, seemed so cool. So when I saw this book, with its fun, celebratory, and beautifully-executed cover by George Perez, I snapped it up.
This book features three classic tales:
"The Untold Origin of the Justice Society" by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton, and Bob Layton--I love how this story so wonderfully intertwines real-life history in with the creation of the JSA. There's so many cool moments--The Spectre defeats a Nazi simply by staring at him, Superman catches a giant Nazi bomb in his two hands, the non-powered Atom, posssibly out of place on a team that features Superman, Green Lantern, Dr.Fate, and The Spectre--is the one to saveFDR's life, and then the President himself forms the team! How cool is that?
"The Day That Dropped Out of Time", a Golden Age JSA tale, by John Broome, Irwin Hasen, Lee Elias, Paul Reinman, Joe Kubert, and Frank Harry
...and finally "The Big Superhero Hunt", a Starman/Black Canary solo tale from The Brave and The Bold, by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson
This is one of my all-time favorite digests; I love how it spans across four decades of stories to give you a nice sense of the team's history. Just superb!
4 comments:
The Voorhees News and Tobacco shop is still there, but it's been co-opted by Blimpies. It's a mere shadow of it's former self. We used to stop there on the trip down to our summer rental and I would stock up on Archie digests, mad magazines and paperbacks for the two week vacation.
i actually bought one of their vintage comic spinner racks ("hey kids! comics!") since they had four of them, with only enough comics to maybe fill two.
every time i see an old-timey place like this, that sells all kinds of mags, books, and comics, i make it a point to go in and buy something.
This is probably my favorite Digest that I have. The content alone makes it special to me, since I'm a JSA/Earth Two nut, but the story of how I got it is stilli emblazoned in my brain. To make a long story short; My mother came home with this digest, having bought it on her way home from work. When she came in, my father made me inform her that I had gotten a public spanking at school that day. We had a fire drill while our teacher was out of the room, and I decided to be cute and run around screaming with my hands waving around. Well, of course the teacher came back in and caught me. She grabbed her paddle as we exited the building. I was spanked in front of not only my entire 2nd grade class, but all of Eastside Elementary School.
My mom made me feel SOOOO guilty about that digest. She let me keep it, as a reminder that she expected better of me. The lesson stuck, obviously!!!
Chris
you got spanked IN SCHOOL?? ouch!
hmm, i would think that this digest would make you wince everytime you saw it. :) glad you were able to convert it into something positive!
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