It's a Bird!

It's a bird. It's a plane! It's Superman: From the 30s to the 70s. The book that started an obsession, and ended up becoming a mission. 

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I'm sure my father bought it for me, but I have no idea why I obsessed over the thing. The art was mostly crude. The stories were universally terrible. (If he had given me the Batman: From the 30s to the 70s book I probably would have gotten into Batman.) But something about the history of the thing, those early covers with their bold colors and dynamic layouts pulled me in. I never read the stories, but would go back to that dusty hardcover again and again and flip through it, stopping at each double page spread of covers, from the early issues up through the 1970s Neal Adams ones. My kid brother at some point got a hold of the thing and destroyed the cover, then went to work on the pages with a magic marker. I kept it anyway.

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I collected comics on and off for 20 years or so. But it wasn't until I saw a copy of Superman 32 (It tickles!) on a dealer's wall at a comic show for a couple hundred bucks that I realized I could afford any of those old Superman comics I obsessed over all those years ago. 

Like any good drug, it only took one hit to get started...