Comic Books

Chris’ mother didn’t approve of comic books.  My mother didn’t either.  Neither of us were permitted to buy comics.  We weren’t exactly forbidden from reading them though.

I remember the extreme pleasure I had one day when my parents dragged us over to their friends, the Hardins, for a family to family visit.  The Hardin children were permitted comics.  They had comics galore upstairs in their attic family room.  My brothers played trains,or something, with the Hardin boys.  I read through the treasure boxes of Archie and Veronica, Superman and Lois Lane, Nancy, - even Mad Magazine and Action Adventure comics.

Chris had much better, more regular, access to the restricted material.  Every week the Stephens brothers had a hair cut. The barber shop kept an ample supply of comics on hand. Chris read while he waited and even read while his hair was being cut.

Beyond the barber shop, Chris continued his interest in comics.  Somehow he acquired a few, which he put into his little red wagon.  It was the start of his first book business.  Chris wheeled the wagon back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the empty lot.  He traded comics - one from the wagon in exchange for three from the customer.  The ratio worked.  The customer had already read, any times, the three he gave up.  They were devalued in his mind compared to the one he hadn’t read yet.

Chris’ little wagon comic business prospered.  The wagon filled up and then some.  Now, seventy years later, Chris likes to speculate on the value of that inventory.  Millions probaby! The inventory didn’t make it through their next move though. The comics “mysteriously” disappeared.  Chris’ mother never did approve.

My mother might well have committed the same judgemental high crime and dreadful waste of a future fortune.

In this handful of photos of Chris that Isabel’s Uncle Gregory gave her, the one all the way on the right is the comic book entrepreneur himself.