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This is another letter I wrote to my friend serving in Iraq. I guess the point of the letter is to provide a distraction from his immediate reality, so its kinda like a short story, tho' it is a true story.
Did you like it?
Hey Dennis,
Before I tell you about Dan, I will have to give you some background on a few things, namely EC comics, which were published (the golden years) from 1951 – 1955. When they ceased publication and converted MAD to a magazine format (that was all that was left), they created some of the finest "Twilight-Zoney"-type stories and had some of the finest art in the industry.
In fact, EC is still the yardstick by which all other comics and comic art are measured. (Now please don't think that I am a "comics guy". I really am not. For one thing, I am married and have a life). But my formative years were spent (misspent?) reading MAD magazine and especially digging the art. ( As you may or may not know, I'm a bit of an artist myself, I mean look at this years Christmas card for proof, eh what?).
Some of those early MAD specials included comic book bonuses inserted into the binding of the special that were reprints of the 1950's color comics. I happened across a biography of Bill Gaines (MAD's eccentric publisher) which described the EC years when EC published a full stable of horror, crime, war, suspense, & sci-fi comics.
The comics that paid the bills were the horror comics, Vault of Horror, Haunt of Fear and the famously remade by HBO: Tales From the Crypt. (BTW please don't judge the quality of the horror comics by the insipid cable show of the same name…Tales From the Crypt…a poor adaption, to be sure).
Anyways, when I saw the art and read the stories, I was blown away…they were great!
Many years passed and eventully I read somewhere that a guy from Missouri was reprinting the entire EC line of comics. It seems that eccentric publisher, Gaines, did something that no other publisher did in those days...he saved all the original artwork! He put it in a vault and locked it away. Decades later, a fan found out about it and got permission to shoot directly off the original art. (The art was excellent, the artists had competed with one another to see who could turn in the best artwork, knowing that even as they turned it in, production reduced it to comic book size and printed on pulp paper stock, the fine details they'd put in their art would be lost, they didn't care, they were trying to turn in a better job than the other guy) so it was done and eventually 18 slipcased volumes were released, each slipcased volume containing 3 to 5 oversized hardbacked books slipped inside. said books containing clean, perfect B&W reprints of the original art and stories, with color covers. these volumes weren't cheap, about $150.00 (the cheapest set) or more per volume, depending on how many books were in each volume. (the ones that are now out of print are going for much much more on Ebay, and the original 50's comics, depending on various factors go from $50.00 and up (way up, brother). well, I wanted them (actually it'd be more accurate to say I lusted after them) but they were so expensive, I couldn't bring myself to buy any, I just bought one book out of a slipcase…color reprints of MAD volume 2, and that was $30.00! then at work I would grab out of Guido's case a weekly Comic Newspaper and at break I would check out the "for sale" ads in the back, then finally I found what I was looking for…some guy was selling the slipcased volumes of the EC comics! and he was local (loco?), out of Glendale! I contacted him on the phone, hoping that somebody else hadn't swooped in before me and cleaned him out. He sounded so strange, and disjointed on the telephone that when he gave me his address and set a time for me to view what he had. Gretchen insisted on coming with me, and in fact, we even left a note sitting prominently in the middle of our dining room table saying where we were going, when we left and when we expected to return, the guy sounded that weird on the phone. but I also knew the was a "comic book guy" so that does tend to make allowances for retarded social graces and halting speech. so down to Glendale we drove, and we found this little 1960's era Glendale-type house on a shady street. Hmmmm, it looked normal enough from the outside. Gretchen was to wait in the car while I checked out the goods, I went up to the front door and just before I knocked I saw in the front window stacks and stacks of video tapes and lots of toys, the kind of toys you find in comic shows and the kind of toys you find in the dollar store, and the kind of toys you might find run-over in a parking lot, all piled scatter-shot all over the table. upon knocking a voice told me to come around to the side of the house ( I later found that the front door was blocked by piles of stuff) and there stood Dan. he must have been late thirties, around six feet tall with a soft, somewhat pear shaped body and long matted mousey brown hair. He hada pronounced speech impedement…he struck me as a drug casualty, a stoner who'd gone too far and gone right over the edge, and couldn't get back (in fact, in making small talk with him later, that's pretty much what he said, that he used to do a LOT of drugs, and even some of the rarest EC stuff he had freaked him out as it seemed to be giving off some really bad vibes and so he would throw it away, or hide it in the public library or some such ) I stepped into his house through the kitchen door and there in the kitchen was Dan's mom. she was standing at the stove dressed like a Russian peasant woman, well at least a Russian immigrant woman, with a scarf around here hair and she was frying potatoes in a large iron skillet in some kind of saved and reused fat. Dan mumbled something like "ThasMyMa" and I said "Nice to meet you" but she ignored me. (I later came to learn that she had NO use for ANY of Dan's friends (which she obviously took me to be) and her protective nature about just who-was-I-calling-her –son-and-what-did-I-want-with-him further hinted at maybe some rotten druggie friends who introduced her Dan to drugs and ruined his life) so Dan says "followMe" and leads me into a living room (the living room was, by the way, stacked chock-a-block with boxes of videos, record albums in and out of their sleeves, toys and clothes and newspapers and magazines and stacks and stacks of unlabelled boxes. it looked like a crazy persons house, like the sort of thing you read about in the National Enquirer. the whole house had that stuffy "closed-in" stale unmoving atmosphere which hints that windows are never opened, carpets never vacuumed. ) and he points to a big pile of EC boxed sets tumbled one upon the other. he said "thereTheyAre". I looked at them and sorta feigned disapproval at the condition of his wares…though they weren't bad, and I didn't want to collect them, I wanted to read them and dig the art. I asked him how much he wanted for the whole pile. He seemed a bit cagey, didn't answer and asked if I didn't want to see the other stuff he had…he led me into a hall, the hall was a typical width of a hallway in a typical suburban home, but running down each side of the hallway, on either wall, were brown cardboard boxes, each filled to the brim with pornographic magazines, most appeared to be early 70's vintage, and in fact, they even ran in front of the doorway of his bedroom so you had to step over them to enter. now, I gotta admit to being a bit ill-at-ease going into Dan's room, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was intensely curious as to what I would find there, in both the EC what-else-does-he-got way and also the Travis Bickel (Taxi Driver) crazy-person sort of way. the walls where painted a dirty powder-blue, and showed evidence of many, many posters glued to the walls then ripped down. just the paper remnants remained. Dan explained that he had several cover sets of the EC horror comics (the publisher had run off extras of the covers and sold the covers of the entire run of the different comics…these were the same size as the reprint volumes, bigger than actual comic book covers at 12 X 8.5 inches), well, he had them glued to the walls of his room, but once he was trippin' and the gore and grue freaked him out and he tore them down and that was also part of the reason he was parting with the other EC stuff. he pulled out a big box of original 1950's EC comics, all wrapped and boarded as they came from comic shows…also with the price stickers still on them…$55.00, $75.00, $45.00 and the like. he sorted thru them and started piling up ones seemingly chosen at random on his dirty bedspread, he also added some pretty rare fanzines and convention programs…them he pushed them towards me and said I could buy these too. I still had know idea what he wanted for all this stuff, and anyways, I came for the box sets and couldn't afford this other stuff, I figured if I could pay maybe $75.00 for a box set, or maybe get him down to $50.00 for a box set, well I'd have to choose which ones I wanted most and leave the rest behind, since I'd brought maybe $400.00 or $500.00 with me…I thought maybe I could get him to cut some kind of deal like 5 sets for $$$ (however much) and get a better deal that way. I could easily see that they needed the room and should be glad to get rid of some of the stuff (tho' admittedly clutter did not seem to bother the family). so he loaded up his arms with the stacks of original EC's and the rare fanzines and tossed them on the pile of box sets (there were 14 box sets, totaling 44 books, about 300 pounds of heavy paper-stock and cardboard) then went over to a book case and pulled out a couple other things, and tossed them on the heap and said, "HowAbout300DollarsForTheLot?" Whoa!!! I couldn't believe it! he didn't want to sell the humor books (MAD and Panic) and was missing (had previously sold) one of the war sets (Two Fisted Tales) but wow, this was a near complete library of the reprint box sets…plus a passel of original 1950's comics and misc ephemora all for a measly $300.00…I hemmed and hawed a bit, but just a bit, them said that, well, I guess that'd be okay. and started to load the heavy box sets into the back of little red Honda CRX. Gretchen had been getting worried since I'd been in the house for so long…she was starting to think the worst, but I came out and barely contained my glee as I set the first box set in the back, the car lowering noticeably (these babies are heavy). I fished the 300 smackers out of my pocket and put it in my other pocket so it would appear that that was all the cash I had. I wanted to get this stuff loaded before something happened and this good fortune vanished…I didn't want Dan to change his mind. I went in and forked over the cash and kept loading box set upon box set. only now I was scanning the house to see if there was anything else I wanted, I asked Dan about if he had any Wally Wood stuff (Wood is probably the fave EC artist for the majority of those-in-the-know.) he said "justThis" and tossed me a Wood Fanzine saying "I'llThrowThatInToo". just about that time Dan's father came home from work. he was a tired-looking little man with a big gut and a cheap dress shirt and a rayon tie. he was what I imagine Willie Loman looks like in the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman. he sat down in a beat-up easy chair in a dark corner of the living room and turned on the TV, sitting uncomfortably close to the screen and didn't say a word to anybody. greasy frying smells still came from the kitchen and as I carried out my purchases, Dan told me about how he had bought a copy of Terror Illustrated 3 (this is the Holy Grail of EC collecting…they had printed the issue, but the distributor had gone belly-up before it could be collated and bound (stapled) so the whole lot was destroyed except about 100 copies that were hand stapled and kept at the EC offices in NYC and given out to people who wandered in to see the offices of their favorite artist. no one knows how many of this issue exist, but very few have surfaced) well, Dan had a copy, but he said that he gave it away because it was giving off some kinda bad vibe and he couldn't deal with it. he also told me about how he'd bought a MAD #1 and was waiting for the bus to take his MAD home, but he got thirsty, and went to get a soda, leaving the bag containing the MAD on the bus bench and when he got back…it was gone! I noticed some uncashed SSI disability checks sitting around in Dan's name and figure that's where he's getting the dough to buy all this stuff. I said my farewells and left.
For a few years later I had a gnawing at me, that Dan is just sitting down there in Glendale, accumulating lots of great stuff that he's just gonna dump on somebody at bargain basement prices, and I wanted that somebody to be me…so I called Dan, but couldn't get thru the firewall that was Mrs. Dan, his mother. so I dropped him a line inquiring about a few items I was looking for and sent him a few Xeroxed articles about EC. a few weeks later I got a poorly wrapped parcel in the mail…it was some not-too-rare EC stuff that I already had and a hand lettered note from Mrs Dan in the form of an invoice asking something on the order of $75.00 for maybe $20.00 worth of stuff. I returned the stuff and haven't been in contact with Dan ever since. its probably been 7 or 10 years by now, but you know, sometimes I still wonder about what great stuff Dan has spent his gov't checks on and is he ready to get rid of it yet. I wonder if I can still find his telephone number.
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Links to pages: 0, 1, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
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