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THE ORIGINAL CAPTAIN MARVEL (1941-1953)
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Started by Marty Mann,

94 posts in this topic

D84

D84

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On 2/13/2019 at 5:08 PM, MrBedrock said:

The first comics I ever bought were Iron Man 46, Hulk 150 and Amazing Adventures 11. It was early 1972 when I realized what was so cool about the stuff on that spinning rack in the corner of the U-Tote-M (our local convenience store). I was immediately hooked and started checking the rack every few days on my way home from school. One of the kids in my class mentioned that his older brother Andy had a bunch of comics. I made a beeline to his house. Andy was two years older but had comics going back into the early sixties. This was the first I had seen of anything vintage. He said there were gatherings of people who collected comics and gave me a flyer for something called The Houston Comic Collectors Association. They had meetings in downtown Houston of the first Tuesday evening of every month (or something like that...it might have been Thursday...I'm getting old). My dad drove me and another friend, Joe, down there and in I went. There were about thirty or so men in there milling around tables filled with boxes of comics. As nine year olds we felt very out of place but I mustered the courage to take a look. On the wall behind one of the old dudes selling comics was something I had never seen before that mesmerized me. I can still picture it...a copy of Captain Marvel Adventures 17 with Captain Marvel flying and being shot at by a Japanese Zero. The first golden age comic I ever saw!

That was the first brush with Captain Marvel that influenced my life. I was hooked on golden age comics from that day forward. The second Captain Marvel incident has become something of a legend around Houston and is the primary reason I choose to make comic book retailing my profession.

The first real comic store opened in Houston in 1970. It was called Roy's Memory Shop. Roy's primary competitor was a shop called Third Planet which, after some permutations, name and ownership changes started business around 1976 run by a guy named T.J. Johnson. The third major store in town was Camelot, opened in 1978 in downtown Houston. There was a long time, old time Houston area comic collector named Ken Ladd who collected Captain Marvel. He had near complete runs of all of the Marvel Family of titles. He was one of the kindest most soft spoken guys you could ever meet and he shopped at all of the stores and was a regular at the conventions and at Roy's movie night get-togethers. I had worked at Camelot from 1978 until I left for college in Austin in 1981. I kept in touch with folks in Houston and set up at shows while in school so I was able to hear about all of the goings on in the hobby...but my plan was to graduate from school and go get a real job. Then I heard that Ken Ladd had sold his collection to Third Planet. I knew Ken had a couple of high grade Captain Marvels in the run that I would love to have so I made the drive back to Houston. Third Planet was set up with a sort of foyer in the front where the cash register was. The ceiling was two stories high and the wall behind the counter went up to the ceiling. T.J. had put the Captain Marvel run up the wall with the earliest issues the highest up from the floor. The books I wanted to see were in the teens. I was looking at the wall when T.J. asked if he could help. The conversation went from there...

"Yes, I'd like to see those two Captain Marvels up there."

"Do you want to buy them?"

"I think so, but I'd like to look at them first."

"Well I'm not going to get them down unless you are going to buy them."

"Well I don't know if I will buy them if I can't look at them first."

"Well if you aren't buying them thenI'm not getting them down."

"Well then I'm not buying them."

Comic books are joyous, fun, escapist entertainment. Comic book stores should be the coolest places in the world to visit. There is no reason anyone should ever have a bad experience in a comic book store. Ever. I didn't end up with any Captain Marvels but that day I decided to open a comic book store. Third Planet is still open. T.J. stills runs it. It is still a craphole and an inspiration to me. And we have had a boatload of people who got annoyed with Third Planet bring their old Captain Marvels and sell them to us.

I was at Third Planet recently (went by Westeheimer the same day but you hadn't shown up yet) , and T.J. was following me around like I was going to steal something.

That guy and his store are a great example of how not to run a comic shop.

 

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