How did you list your comics? by Ian Baker

Spiderman © Marvel. Book © Ian E Baker

One of the few artifacts that I have kept from my teenage days are my notebooks listing all of the comics that I collected back in the 1970s. Every time I bought a comic I would assiduously document the purchase, deriving a great sense of satisfaction as I dutifully noted down the title of the lead story in each book. Documenting what I had purchased was all part of the collector instinct. As a twelve year-old I would enjoy just looking at the titles listed in the notebooks, and dreaming of the days when the gaps would be filled. 

Revisiting them now, these collection checklists contain a wealth of information that trigger memories of key comic book acquisitions. It also provides some insight into when my teenage interest in American comics waned.

Four small notebooks cover a period predominantly from my age 12 to 16 , a span of years that seemed to go on forever at the time.

I believe that my purchase of the first notebook co-incided with my Dad building a shelving unit for me to stack my comics in separate piles in an alcove in my bedroom (they had previously been in one wobbly pile at the back of the wardrobe), and the structure and physical organization of my comic collection probably prompted me to create a ledger.

As the first book filled up, I bought a second, and then a third, to document my collection as the number of titles I collected grew, and I started to squeeze each comic into a plastic bag from a roll of bags bought from Long's in Albert Rd, Southsea. (An early attempt at comics preservation which would result in "rolled spine" at best and toxic damage from unstable plastic at worst).

Hulk and Thor © Marvel. Where did those transfers come from?

Things that jump out at me, looking at them today:

1. The notebooks were from Woolworths and very robust - “Winfield Memorandum 381” - small ledger books with nice binding and stitched pages. (Incidentally - did you know that the brand "Winfield" was the middle name of Frank Winfield Woolworth)
2. I put Marvel stickers on the covers to add some flair. (Where did these stickers come from ? Mighty World of Marvel? Spider-Man Comics Weekly?)
3. On book #2 I illuminated some of the interior pages and a back cover with rub-on Transfers/water tattoos of key Marvel characters (Where did the transfers come from?)   
4. I used the latest Dymo tape technology to add titles the book covers. (Remember the Dymo? I think I still have mine.)
5. Batman #246 and Detective #428 are missing in checklist book #1 - this reflects a brief period of a dock strike (or a warehouse fire??) when DCs did not get imported into the UK for one month. Luckily I got the missing issues as import copies sometime after April 26 1973.
6. Amazing Spider-Man stopping at #120! Just before the death of Gwen Stacy! But I list the two issues that my Gran brought back from the US for me 6 months later.
7. I added tabs to the pages for ease of access (I believe these tabs were from my Dad’s work, I think).
8. A few pages of my Dad’s handwriting listing MWOM 1-19, and SMCW 1-59 for me, around Mar 30th 1974. Both of my parents were very tolerant, even supportive, of my comics collecting. They probably thought it kept me out of teenage mischief, plus they liked my two comic collecting friends Nigel Brown and Geoff Cousins very much.

Spider-Man © Marvel. Example of my Dad writing up some titles for me 37 years ago.

Checklist book #1 was probably started sometime after a holiday visit to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight in April 1972 during which I picked up twenty or thirty back issues of Batman and Detective at Mr Keen’s antiquarian bookshop in Ventnor’s Pier Street. That goldmine of comics at 2p each really kick-started my comic collection.

Reading checklist #1, at that time my collection was limited to the following titles, and pretty Batman-centric:

• Batman  (it all started with  Neal Adam’s Batman #234 “Half an Evil”)
• Brave & Bold (because Jim Aparo’s art was next best to Adams’)
• Daredevil (because he was Marvel’s “Batman”)
• Detective (‘cos Batman was in it)
• Justice League of America (‘cos of Batman, despite Dick Dillin art)
• Marvel Super Heroes (I liked the early 60s reprints)
• Marvel Tales (early 60s reprints)
• Phantom Stranger (because I was so impressed by Jim Aparo’s art from Brave & Bold #98 and the great Neal Adams cover of PS #17)
• Amazing Spider-Man (apart from Daredevil the only other Marvel hero I liked)
• Teen Titans (‘cos of Robin)
• Wanted (DC reprints)
• World’s Finest (‘cos of Batman)

I then added Marvel's Iron Man soon afterwards , and by the end of August 1972 I had expanded my collection still farther to include: 

• Amazing Adventures (because of Adams artwork on the first War of the Worlds)
• Avengers (the Adams-drawn Skull-Kree war storyline)
• Green Lantern-Green Arrow (because of Adams and I liked the new Green Arrow)
• X-Men (Adams' run)

At this point I was pretty disciplined and focused in my collecting.  This was more a byproduct of limited pocket money rather than any other reason, I suspect.

I pretty soon started running out of space to list new comics in book #1 in February 1973, so it was a trip back to Woolworth's for a second book. 

As I started checklist book #2 on April 26 1973, the impact of being able to buy mail-order back issues from Alan Austin’s Fantasy Unlimited had enabled me to start collecting old DC Batman annuals and Batman 80-page giants, and old X-Men issues. My weekly Saturday afternoon comic hunts with Nigel Brown surfaced new titles Secret Origins and Swamp Thing.

The impact of the success of the UK Marvel weeklies was now being felt, with spotty distribution of many US Marvel titles, and outright bans of importation of some titles (Spider-Man, Avengers, Iron Man all suffered this fate to some degree, and my collecting of those titles came to an abrupt stop).

With the reduction in Marvel titles in the newsagents, my collection expanded to encompass more DC titles, plus Marvel’s Conan (which despite some distribution gaps was still around). And by the end of February 1975, I had developed robust runs of 

• Conan
• House of Mystery
• The Shadow (DC and Archie)
• The Demon 
• The Creeper (back issues)

As I started checklist book #3 in March 1975, I had expanded the collection yet again to include:

• Adventure Comics (loved the Spectre stories drawn by Jim Aparo)
• Black Magic (Jack Kirby reprints)
• Batman family
• The Brute (Atlas)
• Captain America (Jack Kirby’s return)
• Destructor (Atlas)
• House of Secrets
• Joker 
• OMAC
• Our Fighting Forces (Great Kirby comic)
• Planet of Vampires(Atlas)
• Secret Society of Super Villains

By the time I started my 4th and final checklist book in February 1976, I was simply noting the issue numbers, and not bothering to record the titles. I think this was symptomatic of a waning enthusiasm for comics now that Neal Adams had left the scene, which co-incided with my increased interest in the opposite sex and 1940s pulp heroes!

Edition #4 of the checklist simply lists wanted issues of :

• First Issue Special
• Mister Miracle (back issues)
• Secrets of Haunted House
• Doc Savage (Marvel colour and B&W)
• Invaders
• Marvel Double Feature
• Tales of Suspense
• Deadly Hands of Kung Fu
• DC Showcase

I know of a few other titles that I collected but never documented:

• Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction, 
• Dracula Lives! 
• Plop! 

And that was it. I kept collecting sporadically until I sold everything in the early 1980s, before a resurgent interest around 1987 with the arrival of Alan Moore and Frank Miller to revitalize the comic scene.

Looking back, my comic heroes of those years largely were bereft of super powers, and used a mix of science, detective and athletic capabilities to right wrongs. I was drawn to light horror anthologies and increasingly stories based on pulp heroes from a previous generation. And I would buy any series that featured art by Neal Adams.

I’ve always had a bit of a passion for building checklists and ordering data. Later on, in 1979, when my interest in collecting had moved on to pulps, I spent a year of my university degree working at IBM. My enthusiasm for getting into computer programming was driven by a desire to list all of my Doc Savage pulps on a computer and then be able print out the lists in various sequences.

So I have comics to thank for my career in computers and ultimately my desire to live in America where non-distributed titles were an unknown phenomena!

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If anyone can confirm where the Spider-Man sticker, or the Thor and Hulk transfers came from, please chip-in in the comments below.

[Thanks to Duncan McAlpine’s https://www.comicpriceguide.co.uk for confirming my memories of  non-distributed issues of Marvel's in the early to mid 1970s]