60's Comic Books

The most memorable comics for me were the ones with ther really bizarre covers. Two that were my most cheriished both belonged to Batman. I have really vivid memories of the "Human punching Bag" and the "Two-Way Deathrap" issues. I was first introduced to comics in 1963 by a neighbor kid. It wasn't long until I was buying them all. My other fav's were: The Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman.

Of course, there was nothing better than the 80 page giants! I remember when they first came out, and the excitement we all felt going out and buy our first one. I think my first 80-pager was "Justic League of America", or maybe The Flash. I can't remember for sure now, only that I loved them.

Famous Monsters of Filmland had in me, a most loyal fan. My first magazine from them was this "Hunchback" issue from 1964. It cost me 50 cents--almost all of my allowance, but to me, it was worth every penny. My first and only Hunchback experience was building the Aurora Model. From that day forward, I was captivated by such a unique monster. Little did I know then that Quasimodo was anything but a monster. He was in fact , a hero. 60's revolutionaries protested the system; Quasimodo poured molten metal on it!

I only knew of some of these monsters. Many of them were stars of movies that I'd never even seen before. They now live in the celluloid archives of B-movies that can be otherwise referred to as "Psychotronic". English translation: cheapo drive-in flicks designed to get teenagers out of the house. They usually showed in double, sometimes triple features.

Among these great drive-in masterpieces were "The Amazing Colossal Man" (who graces the cover of the FM mag at the right), "The Killer Shrews", "Teenagers From Outer Space", "Invasion of the Saucer Men" and the most memorable "Attack of the Giant Leeches". Anthony Quinn portrayed the Hunchback in a movie that I still haven't seen. I saw stills from it in one of these FM mags and was obsessed with seeing it.

"True Ghost Stories" and "Ripley's Believe it or Not" comics were my absolute favorites. No other comic in the world ranked with these. There were some great stories that I always thought should have movies or TV shows. It was fun to hide away somewhere with a bag of chips and peanut butter sandwich flipping page, after ghostly page.

One of the memory triggers that do it for me with these comics was when my parents would go to the Franz bakery outlet and buy Dolly Madison snack cakes in bulk for discount prices. They were the best ever--even better than Hostess. There was one great story about a woman that kept appearing on a deserted highway, and a man swerving off the road trying not to hit her. Great stories these were!

This comic brings back strangely vivid memories that are truly hard to describe. Yet, the feelings from the memories that this book brings back are strong enough to warrant several "clips" from the original 1964 spread.

On the day that I bought this comic, my mom, my brother Pat, and myself all went over to stay overnight at my Merle's house, my mother's best friend. It was an unusually gray day for August, extremely dreary andnot like summer at all. It was eerily apropos that I'd purchased this particular comic.

It was a long walk to Merle's house, perhaps a mile or more. I remember reading this comic in their living room, seeing the weird gray skies out the window. Merle had lots of kids that I always played with, but for some reason they were all gone. I really love to think about that particular weekend, and just how free and easy my mom was to just decide to go spend the night at her friend's house. That night I stayed up watching an old WWII movie where some soldier got ran over by a tank.