Comic book memories
-------------------

I often start off my phlog posts by offering greetings to any new
sundogs at the Zaibatsu, but goodness, there have been so many new
signups lately that this hardly even seems feasible this time!.
This place is thumping!  A warm welcome to you all, I already love
a lot of what you guys have uploaded.  Keep it coming!

So, Spider Man creator and general Marvel bigwig Stan Lee died earlier
this week.  I am not, and never have been, a huge comic person, so I'd
be lying if I said this had had much of an effect on me personally.
But it's not quite as if I had no idea who the guy was, and in fact
his name played some small but strangely influenial role in my
childhood.

Sometime in the early 90s I would guess, on a long, multi-day family
holiday roadtrip to one of the Eastern states of Australia (probably
Queensland, where all the big amusement parks are), in an attempt to
keep me entertained in the back seat my Dad stopped at a second hand
book store somewhere in what seemed like the middle of nowhere and
bought me what I can only describe as a fuck-off stack of comic books.
At least a foot deep.  In my memory they came in a plastic shopping
bag, but that can't be right, the weight would have destroyed it, I
think.  This was some totally disorganised random pile of comics that
they place probably just wanted to be rid of and priced at bargain.
There were all sorts in there, but definitely a lot more Marvel stuff
than DC stuff, and possibly more Marvel stuff than anything else
(although there was a healthy dose of Phantom in there).  I
especially remember there being a lot of G.I. Joe comics in there,
which I think I probably enjoyed the most because I was already
familiar with a lot of the characters from toys and the cartoon show.

During that trip I devoured all those comics, and not just the actual
comics themselves but all the weird and wonderful crap that was also
in there.  All of the adverts, all of the letters from fans, all the
instructions on how to join the various fan clubs, all the interviews
with the artists, etc.  And that was where I learned the name Stan
Lee, and also his catchphrase "'Nuff said".  He must have had some
kind of regular column or something that I got to read a lot of.  I
am astonished at how well this stuff has stuck with me for years
despite being of almost no value and never getting exercised, with me
having been totally uninvolved in comic book fandom of any kind (well,
alright, except manga, but that's hardly relevant here) for decades
since this early exposure.  I can tell you, without any shadow of a
doubt, that one of the various ranks/titles/whatever one could achieve
in some Marvel fanclub, somehow (by referring your friends?) was Keeper
of the Flame.  There must have been a dozen of those titles, but that's
the only one which is indelibly stamped in my memory to this day.

This is pretty much the full extent of my knowledge of and connection
to Stan Lee.  I have no idea if he was "a good person" in any larger
sense at all and I don't want to make any bigger a deal of his passing
than is appropriate.  But it's kind of sad when someone connected to
happy childhood memories, even in a fairly nebulous way, dies,
so...Rest in Peace, Stan.