Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

(Part Two)

Okay, then. Recap:

So... I'm all of eight years old, and (already) I'm becoming Nashville, Tennessee's grade-school equivalent of Silas Marner, re the hoarding of the Topps company's ultrawaycool BATMAN "collector's cards."

In labored, sweaty-palmed pursuit of same, I've already sold my baby sister off to the Mayo Clinic, for quasi-legitimate, under-the-table "medical experiments"; taken to hawking vials of uncut tar heroin to my fellow classmates; forged my mother's signature on more than half-a- dozen insurance policies, while (simultaneously) jury-rigging various and sundry kitchen appliances to detonate with lethal force, once activated; and pursued the notion (however briefly) of an armed, commando-style "raid" on the Topps building itself. (I still had those black "Batman" PJs, after all; I was "ninja" when "ninja" wasn't... y'know... cool.)

This, then -- my monomaniacal obsession with the TTopps cards in question -- was no longer quantifiable as anything so routine or mundane as mere "collector's fever."

Oh, no, no:

I had long since surrendered myself -- willingly; nay, eagerly -- to the sweet, sultry siren song of full-bore fanaticism.

Still... I persevered (as all madman will). And -- eventually; in laborious half-increments -- I did, ultimately, complete one full and pristine "set" of the fifty-five cards...

... only a scant measure of days, in fact, before the demon-lords of the Topps Trading Card Company (Company Motto "... And Their Smoke Did Rise Up Forever") released two additional sets of BATMAN cards.

Of forty-four cards each.

EIGHTY-EIGHT new cards altogether.

Oh, yes; I have known desolation in this, my life.

Thankfully these cards, at least, were not serialized "mini-stories." They could be amassed; traded; catalogued; and coveted in any damn order one pleased. (Oh, certainly... the Topps people tried to impose order, of a rudimentary sort, by placing jigsaw-like "mini-puzzle" pieces on the back of each; so that -- when "properly" assembled -- the backs of said cards formed exceedingly crudely-rendered "pictures" of Batman and Robin running towards the viewer, or somesuch. But -- given that the pictures in question were not rendered by [the increasingly eccentric] Mister Saunders... these were of [at best] secondary importance to my fevered "needs.")

I elect the word "eccentric" with no little care, in this wise. With the accompanying "sets" of BATMAN cards, Norm Saunders threw aside all airy pretense of even attempting to recognize the boundaries of simple good taste... as examples such as the one provided, above, should amply illustrate.

Oh, lordy.

(... and fare such as this, mind you, in the mid-1960's back when the Comics Code Authority was something to be feared and/or revered; back when precisely the SAME panel within the pages of any given issue of DETCTIVE COMICS would have occasioned Massive Coronary Occlusions, all around. I'm just sayin', is all.)

Ah. There's that far-famed MARS ATTACKS esthetic on display, then.

Thankfully, there were no "Face of the Joker," one-in-every-bloody-

pack-ever-made -type Cards Omnipresent, in either of the two accompanying collector's sets. Otherwise, I might well have been driven to a life of crime, before I was even allowed to venture outside past dinnertime.

I still bask contentedly, decades later, in such memories warming and fond as these:

A huddled group of six, maybe seven children; none of us having yet achieved the rarefied status of the public school fourth grader. We are crouched, Indian-style, in a rough circle; swapping BATMAN cards back and forth in increasingly complex multiple-trader manuevers; the pasteboards shooting in and out of our small, grubby fists like unto those of the trained Vegas "Faro" dealer. Whap. Whap. Whapwhap.

... or Kneeling on the bedroom carpet, metronomically arranging and re-arranging my (nearly complete, by this point) collection of BATMAN cards in flowing, Rube Goldberg-style displays. Only two or three precious pasteboards left unclaimed; their vacancies within my meticulous, bonsai-like patternings sounding louder than thunder in my ears. One of these is the ever-elusive "To Robin's Rescue" [see reproduction, below].

I know a kid who -- O, Blessed He! Fortune's Foundling! -- owns this card. With the ppracticed eye of the hunting kestrel, I scour my shoebox crammed full of "duplicate" cards (i.e., "swap bait"). How best to tempt him... how...?

Yes we were (all of us, at that age; that BATMAN-besotted time) as ruthlessly single-minded in our collective juvenile mania as was crippled financier Lionel Barrymore, circa IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. We sweated and schemed for those thrice-accursed cards as did not (yet!) possess; smirked and swaggered over those to which we could point and aver, with smug schoolyard finality "... mine."

So oh, yes, indeedy; I most assuredly do know a little something about this whole "fanboy" business."

It's not being being able to remember whether or not you've yet decently fed and watered your loyal canine friend and companion... yet knowing the issue numbers; cover artists; and Overstreet "grade" of every last comic book in your ever-burgeoning collection.

It's knowing more about the trials and travails of each and every member of The Legion of Super-Heroes than you do of those kids seated around you, in your own classroom.

It's not only having the delivery date and time of new comics to the pharmacy down the street memorized... but of actually having conspired to learn said delivery driver's first name; the better to inveigle and entreat him to allow you "first dibs," as he unbound those precious, wire-bound bundles.

That there are worlds unto worlds of giddy, pre-adolescent rapture and wonderment to be found within the tiltings and whirlings of the young fannish existence, I entertain absolutely no doubts what. so. ever...

... but it is also (oftentimes) a cold, flint-hearted state of affairs; one in which children (whether putatively "adult" or otherwise) find themselves acting out the roles of diminuative, falsetto-voiced pork belly traders, in their mechanistic, single-minded pursuit of that one... last... collectible; that sole remaining "key" issue or ultra-scarce "chase" card, around which their entire existence is all but predicated...

... which, I suppose (in shuddering, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God retrospect) isn't all that damned funny, really. Come to think.

Call it "Freedom By Way of Surfeit," if you like on my ninth birthday, my grandfather (a man ever patient and understanding of his beloved grandson's many and varied manias) gifted me a crisp, new ten dollar bill.

This was (to be sure) the single greatest amount of money I'd ever held in my own hands, up to that point. (This was, you'll recall, more than thirty years ago; when ten dollars was... well... ten freakin' dollars!)

As soon as I could conveniently and (one hopes) gracefully excuse myself I bolted out the front door and did my world-renowned "Secretariat" impersonation all the way to the corner pharmacy...

... and blew the entire, grandiose WAD on fifty packs of BATMAN trading cards.

Because I was still missing a scant, maddening two of 'em, you see.

(I won't keep you teetering on the knife's-edge of suspense I got 'em.)

It was no more than three -- maybe five minutes; TOPS -- later that the mental haze finally lifted...

... and I realized, in beardless epiphany:

"... oh, dear God... I need help."

... and you're only laughing, in turn, because you've been there TOO, boopsie.

When do you suppose the federal government is finally going to recognize our communal curse for what it is, anyway...?

"Archie" clinics, in place of methadone ones; free, government-

sponsored "Mylar" exchanges; Stan Lee, hosting lachrymose televised "benefits" annually, on our collective behalf.

Dig deep into those pants pockets, America.

There's an entire generation of potential Rob Liefelds out there, you know.

The gene pool you save... may well be your own.

"BIFF! BAMM! KA-POW!" The 1966 BATMAN Trading Cards (Page 1)

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