Remembering My First Comic

Fantastic Four #19, October 1963

It Came From the Long Box...

Let me begin with a confession... I actually don't remember which comic book that began my odyssey into the world of sequential story-telling.  I suspect it was probably a comic from Dell, Harvey or Gold Key.  From looking at my oldest comics, the time I began reading comics must have been around 1965 or 1966.  As I look through the stack of these earliest relics from my childhood, I notice how worn and well-read they are all.  All but a few are without their covers.  Yellowed and dulled, they nonetheless remind me of a time when I would read this stack over and over again.

But in my search for my oldest comic (a bit like an archaeologist sifting through the ruins to find the earliest civilization), I come across a cover-less, but otherwise intact copy of Fantastic Four #19!  Published in October 1963, it may well be my very first comic - not that I remember reading it in 1963, because at that time, of course, I couldn't read.  My older cousin, George, who helped introduce me to the world of comics must have given this to me sometime later.  But from the shape it's in, it obviously has been read many, many times.  

The story is entitled, "Prisoners of the Pharaoh," this issue was written by none other than Stan "the Man" Lee and his more than able partner, Jack "the King" Kirby, who was the artist.  Talk about finding the Holy Grail, I can't believe that I had this in my collection and had forgot about it.  How could I not remember having and reading such an early issue of The Fantastic Four - THE comic that launched the BIG BANG over at Marvel in 1961?  This was holding history in my very own hands.  From this I deduce that even at a very young age, I had good taste in comic books.  In later years, when Jack Kirby moved to DC Comics, I would become a huge fan of his unique style of drawing.  I longed to be able to draw like him.  I can remember trying to duplicate his art from an issue of Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, but with little success.

Whether this Fantastic Four is indeed my first comic or just one of my early favorites, I cannot tell.  But it's place in my comic collection does remind me of all those wonderful, lost afternoons reading comics just like this one.  It's themes of time travel, special powers, cosmic conflict, battles between good and evil would repeat themselves in comic after comic, year after year, shaping me into an eternal fanboy.