LONDON ONTARIO & MY SECRET COMICS ORIGINS

SECRET ORIGINS

by BK MUNN

Comics from 40 years ago: MAY 1982. 

I fell down one of those online rabbit holes of looking at old comics by year and month, and realized what an important year 1982 was to my mental "development" and the evolution of my taste. This issue of The Comics Journal came out in May 1982 but I didn't buy it until a few months later. At the time, I was buying my superhero comics from spinner racks in corner stores. If Guelph had a comic shop then, I don't think I knew about it. I was visiting my cousins in London, Ontario during summer vacation and they took me to a magazine shop, one of those places that specialized in international newspapers and other exotic publications. They also had a large wall of new comics, and I remember I was very excited to find all four issues of the New Teen Titans miniseries that I hadn't been aware of as that sort of thing didn't usually make it to drug stores and Mac's Milk in Guelph. The regular monthly Titans comic book was my favourite at the time as a teenybopper and here were four brand new comics drawn by my favourite artist George Perez (Perez just died last week, reminding me I hadn't bought a new comic by him in 35 or so years). 

Along with the comics was this issue of TCJ with its electrifying Neal Adams cover, the first "fanzine" I'd ever seen in the wild, and the whole thing blew my 12 year old mind.  It wasn't really a fanzine but a 130-page real magazine full of serious "adult" articles and reviews of comics I'd never seen or heard of (or imagined!). Along with the epic Neal Adams interview (Adams died recently as well; all my childhood heroes are passing!), there were long articles about Moebius, the early Dr. Seuss, Judge Dredd and 2000AD, underground comics, illustrations by the Hernandez Brothers, a cinematic 2-page ad for Cerebus the Aardvark, and a whole lot of trash talk about my beloved Marvel and DC comic books. It was like an education in the history and potential of the comics artform in one single magazine and changed the way I thought about my little pubescent collecting hobby. Of course the first thing I sought out was the Adams' "Ms. Mystic" comic advertised on the cover (it was a major disappointment after the hype Adams gave it in his interview, hilarious in hindsight), but eventually I also bought my first issue of Cerebus and by 1986 or so, with a regular subscription to the Comis Journal magazine arriving in my maiIbox monthly, I had transitioned to the full-on insufferable teenage comics snob I still am today, reading only the arty-est, punkest, and most impenetrably obscure small press and self-published comix, and collecting ancient cartoon ephemera long forgotten by mainstream society. I blame this issue of The Comics Journal for keeping me interested in comics long after the then-accepted period of juvenile infatuation, continuing well into middle age, and for my continued stunted social development and collecting obsessions.

Notes on Guelph Comics History, Part Two: Tales of a Guelphite

Well, here's Tales of a Guelphite #1, which publisher David J Knight tells me he is planning to turn into a continuing comics anthology. The first issue has no comics but covers some aspects of comics culture in Guelph, and includes my article detailing the secret history of Tragedy Strikes Press. I'm happy that some of this history is now in print, and mostly in the words of some of my favourite cartoonists (thank you: Nick Craine, Jay Stephens, and Dylan Horrocks). It was quite a thrill to be a comic book nerd living in Guelph when these cool underground comics were being published here, and even more of a thrill to talk with the creators who published them, all these years later. A much longer version of this history may appear online in the future, as I had to do quite a bit of trimming to fit the wordcount, and several other interviews didn't make it into the article, but for now you can pick up a copy of the zine at Royal Cat Records.

Notes on Guelph Comics History, Part One

I'm starting to do a little bit of research into my hometown's hidden comics history as preparation for writing about our homegrown comic book company, the late, lamented, Tragedy Strikes Press.  Below we have two images from the Guelph Mercury newspaper archives, housed at the Guelph Public Library. The first is a gathering of kids trading (mostly coverless?) comics at the library in 1976. It looks like that may be a Superboy comic face up on the table, but I can't identify anything else. The second photo was taken at the first comic shop I remember going to in town, Card N Comics (located on the same street I have a business on today!), and one of the principles in Tragedy Strikes Press, co-owner Fiona Kenny. What a wonderful random sampling of the early-80s comics culture on display in that shop!

Caption: "Comic Swap Serious Business"
Notaton: "This photograph shows Sean McCarthy, Sean Hayes, Dafydd Waters, and Derek Booth taking part in a comic book trade at the Guelph Public Library."
Guelph Mercury, November 24, 1976

Caption: "Spidey, Old Buddy"
Notation: "This picture shows Fiona Kenny of Card N Comics, putting an affectionate arm around Spider Man."
Guelph Mercury, January 7, 1984.

Hardboiled Comics Critics

"Two privates appeared from nowhere, pale in their uniforms like young ghosts trapped by reality. I got out and followed them across Main and into a magazine shop near the corner. The unlit neon sign of Tom's Cafe was almost directly across the street. Beer on Tap. Steam Beer. Try Our Spaghetti Special. The soldiers were inspecting a rack of comic books with the air of connoisseurs. They selected half a dozen each, paid for them and left. 'Milk sops,' the clerk said. He was a gray-headed man with smeared spectacles. 'They draft them in didees these days. Cradle to grave in one jump. '" 
--Ross Macdonald, The Ivory Grin, 1952.