Thursday, November 09, 2006

From Leaf Candy: The Secret Origin of Aquaman

1980. Kay-Bee Toy Store in the East Towne Mall. One of the semi-annual trips to the big city of Madison from little ol' Beaver Dam. Imagine my glee when my little sister and I were actually allowed into a toy-store instead of being dragged into some stupid shoe-store or that woman's clothing store that had the worst problem of discharging the most menacing static charges ever. Then imagine seven year-old me when I found this display:


Ohmygod! Packages of gum with mini-comics featuring the secret origins of DC super heroes! I HAD TO HAVE THEM! After all my years of watching the Super Friends I was finally going to find out how all these heroes got their starts. But when I asked for some money (a real rarity, since my parents had us trained never to ask for anything, ever.) I was told I could only get one. So with 63 cents in hand I got this one:









What a story! Whenever I watched the Super-Friends I always wondered about Aquaman. What was he like outside of the group? How did he get his start? Now I knew! And how romantic! Aquaman was the product of a love affair between a lighthouse keeper and the woman he saved on a dark and stormy night! This comic formed the basic shape of my idea of love for years to come. And the artwork! Even at the age I was, I knew this was top-notch. Now that I'm older and know more about comics (i.e. I'm a nerd) I've narrowed down the artwork to these three artists: Romeo Tanghal, Dick Giordano, or Jose Louis Garcia-Lopez.
Anyways, this was the start of my Aquaman fetish. Although, anytime my family would go back to the mall in Madison I would race past all the other shoppers to Kay-Bee to see if they had anymore of the other characters' mini-comics for sale. I would never find anymore there and I would often daydream about them knowing there were more secret origins to discover. Thanks to Ebay many, many years later, I finally got my hand on the rest. But upon closer inspection, none of the others were as well written or drawn as Aquaman's. I got the gem of the group!

3 comments:

88_keys said...

What a sad story-

Russell said...

That's Don Heck art, probably with Romeo Tanghal inks. I think the cover was by Dick Giordano, though.

Diabolu Frank said...

My guess on the artists would be Don Heck inked by Vinnie Colleta... and then I checked the Aquaman Shrine before posting... and Rob Kelly confirms!