1970 video about collecting comic books
Joey Anuff let me know about this entertaining short video from 1970 about "Captain George" Henderson, proprietor of Canada's first comic book store in Toronto. (I was expecting to see a 10-year-old Cory browsing the racks, but no such luck.)
Adds Joey, "Captain George also did a radio interview with the CBC two years later."George Henderson lived, ate and breathed comics - years before it would be popular to do so. A lifelong fan of superhero comics, old adventure strips and science fiction, in the 1960s he parlayed a dead-end writing career into a successful life as a bookseller and retailer. Established in downtown Toronto in 1967, Memory Lane Books became a mecca for generations of comic fans and is considered Canada's first comic book store. In this clip from 1970, Captain George discusses his then young store and the emergent hobby of comic collecting.
UPDATE:Another awesome CBC video about comic book collecting, this one from 1979. I love the shirtless Frazetta enthusiast!
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You repeat a large chunk of the text in the quote... might want to re-check that.
You saying that Jimmy Two-Times can't be a contributor, be a contributor?
This Canadian comic book fan was just looking through her own comics, and just inherited more (The movers just stopped by with 12 boxes less than an hour ago) I decided, "That's it! I'm selling most of these. I can't take it anymore!"
While these days, my comisc would likely get me a few cents per issue, it would still hurt a bit if I sold them for $100 apiece. The price is not what matters, it's the story, and moreso, the memories, as the owner of Dragon Lady points out in the other CBC interview.
I remember leaving home at the age of 16 in the late 60's and moving to Toronto. Among the few prized possessions that I dragged with me were boxes and boxes of my complete Marvel comic collection that included each and every Number 1 edition.
A year after arriving in Toronto, I had some friends help me drag those boxes up to George Henderson's comic book store in Markham Village. After he picked his jaw off the floor, George turned his door sign to 'CLOSED' and we spent the rest of the day counting and pricing my entire collection. My collection even had the very first 6 issues of The Incredible Hulk (long before it had been discontinued and then re-started years later).
George paid me over $5,000 for my collection (much to my regret today!). But it made for a very gratifying call back to my Father that night: "Dad, remember all those 10¢ comics that you said were a waste of money?"
The video player on the CBC's website is just awful. After downloading the plug-in for Firefox (didn't work) I tried IE. It stopped and restarted 4 times before I gave up. Why does the CBC hate their viewers so much?
While on a trip to Toronto in the 70s I stopped in his store to pick up the latest issue of "The Swamp Thing". We discussed a recent Batman "crossover" and what was probably the first use in mainstream comics of a profanity by a mainstream character. (Batman says "Damn!" after being knocked on his ass.) We agreed, as comic nerds will do, that it was a seminal moment; and if "Damn!" comes, then "Goddamn!" shall not be far behind.
But the first real comic book store I remember was the San Francisco Comic Book Co. in that city's Mission District. An enterprising young man named Gary Arlington opened it in 1968. It was the only store I knew of that sold only comic books. If his was not the first, it was certainly one of the first.
The comic book was born in 1938, only thirty years earlier, and my parents and grandparents did not greet it favorably. Compared to the Sunday newspaper "funnies" comic books were considered crude and puerile, which of course they were. Fifty years later came the great reversal.
Today the "comic book" is Art, and the newspaper strips feature either smart-assed talking animals with pot bellies, or boring domestic sit-coms, both poorly drawn and poorly written, and are of no interest to anyone, not even the alcoholic newspaper editors who select them.
Holy crap, thanks for posting this. I used to troll through Cap'n George's for the old movie posters, lobby cards and 8x10 glossies and was an ardent reader of his "Whizzbang". He always had time for a chat whenever I stuck my ignorant head through those doors. That was a real flash to past.
Cheers.
Hey, I suggested this URL months ago!
Tragically for all those, like myself, who have magical childhood memories of Cap'n George the Cap'n ended up going to jail via some kind of sex charges. Rumous abounded about what exactly the charges were but I never got any exact answers.
@#8,
Comic books are bait.
Seeing as Cory was born a year later...