I was interviewed last night by someone writing a book about the early days of comics fandom and how it led to the rise of the dedicated comic book shop. As part of that, one of the things I was asked to recount was how and where I used to buy my comics when I was growing up in Brooklyn.

I remembered Joe and Morty’s candy store on Aveue P, in which I was unable to decide whether to buy X-Men #1 or Avengers #1, as I only had 12 cents in my pocket and they’d both come out the same day. But I also remembered an article I wrote years later for my high school newspaper about My Friends bookstore, where I’d been induced by my parents to sell all my comics because they felt I owned too many of them.

In any case, because my interviewer wanted to see the piece, and I went to the trouble of scanning it for him, I figured I’d share it here as well. Basically, this is me looking back on around 1968 from the perspective of 1972.

I certainly hope I’ve become a better writer since then!

I don’t know whether you noticed what I just noticed. But I was wrong when I claimed there that selling 300 comic books for $5.00 netted me “exactly three-fifths of a cent per comic.” It was actually 1.667 cents per comic. And it took me more than forty years to notice. (more…)

Earlier today over at io9, Charlie Jane Anders posted about Archy and Mehitabel, the philosopher cockroach and the alley cat created by Don Marquis 99 years ago in the pages of the New York Sun. Back when I was a teenager living in Brooklyn, I was so in love with the prose poems purportedly written by Archy as he bounced from key to key on a manual typewriter that I did an homage for the student newspaper of South Shore High School.

Here’s what I looked like back then. Here’s what I sounded like back then. And below, from the February 1973 issue of Shorelines, is what I wrote like back then, when I was but 17 years old.

Well … what I wrote like when I was 17 and channeling a cockroach anyway.

If I’m recalling correcting, the piece won me some sort of student journalism award from The New York Times. And no, I don’t know what they were thinking either.

But now that I’m in the fullness of my powers, however, it occurs to me that it might be time for another homage.

Hmmmm …

If you’d known me back when I was a Brooklyn teenager, you’d have sworn I sounded like one of Welcome Back, Kotter‘s Sweathogs. And if you didn’t know me back then, you were just going to have to take my word for it.

Until now.

Because I’ve managed to get my hands on the April 2, 1972 episode of Malachy McCourt‘s radio show, where I appeared, two days after my 17th birthday, to take part in a two-hour program on high-school newspaper censorship. McCourt had invited me and my South Shore High School pal Barry Chaiken (plus a few students from other New York schools) after we’d published an interview with him that resulted in us being forced to cross out several words deemed unacceptable from thousands of copies of Shorelines, our school paper.

The two hours of audio are fascinating, not just for the picture of the student struggle for an unfettered press, but also because of the news reports on Vietnam, the presidential campaign, and the death of Gil Hodges, who’d suffered a heart attack that morning.

I’m sure that eventually, because of its historical import, I’ll upload it all. But for now, here’s a snippet from the end of the program, as I respond to McCourt’s request for a few final words.

Scott Edelman on the Malachy McCourt radio show

Be honest. If I hadn’t told you who that was … would you have recognized me?

After my breakfast with Sean Howe at Shopsin’s Saturday morning, and a brief visit to the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, I headed north for lunch with high-school friends at Nice-Matin, proving along the way that I am no longer a New Yorker.

First, I mistakenly took the 6 train to 77th Street, ending up on the East side rather than the West side, which meant I had to hike crosstown through Central Park. A pleasant walk amid the falling leaves, but still …

And then, after I came out of the park at 81st Street, I was so turned around that instead of walking two blocks south to 79th Street as I needed to, I walked two blocks north and wondered why I wasn’t finding the restaurant. Eventually, after much bewilderment, I realized I was on 83rd Street.

East, west, north, south—they were all blurred together. I guess when I trekked to New York this time, I left my mental compass home. So I got to the late lunch later than I expected.

Here we are at the other end our lengthy lunch which was so engaging it ran until what should have been dinner time: Donna Grant (the best-selling author), Mark Diamond (the lawyer), Barry Chaiken (the doctor and vintner), Marc Frons (the journalist), and me (whatever the Hell I am):

If you’re in the mood to, you can see what four of us looked like one year ago when we had our first mini-reunion. Not much difference, eh? (more…)

As I wrote earlier this week, during Sunday’s mini-reunion of editors and writers from my high-school newspaper, one of the attendees brought along a disk containing scans of many back issues of that student newspaper, Shorelines.

The cover of the October 22, 1971 issue—published when I was 16—featured the photo of me that you see at right in which I’m standing next to my social studies teacher, Daniel Weitz.

No story accompanied the photo; I guess the staff just thought that the sight of a student towering over his teacher was amusing.

The jacket I’m wearing—decorated with a “War is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things” patch on one arm, a peace symbol made up of studs on the back, and other hippie fashion accoutrements (I think that’s a “Frodo Lives” button on my chest, though the photo is too grainy for me to tell for sure)—can be seen in other photos of the time.

Sadly, that jacket no long exists—though I do still have one of my dashikis and a few of my headbands. And with Halloween coming up, who knows? It might be time to wear them again!

As much as I enjoyed my brief visit to the annual meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society as recounted in my previous posts, the primary reason I’d headed into Manhattan occurred later that day—a mini-reunion of writers and editors from my high-school newspaper. I was part of the first graduating class of Brooklyn’s South Shore High School, which meant that it had no newspaper before we got there, and so it was up to us to invent the paper’s journalistic traditions instead of having any to follow. The writers and editors of that newspaper, which we dubbed Shorelines, were advised by a teacher named Ernie Seligmann who is no longer with us, but whom we all loved. We were a tight bunch then, but as the years went by, time, as usual, tore us apart.

For the last few years, we’ve been trying to arrange a reunion of those staffers, but until Sunday, we were never able to achieve even the smallest critical mass. Finally, four of us were able to be in Manhattan on the same day. We gathered at Marsielle restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen on 9th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets to finally catch up. Below you can see Barry Chaiken, Donna Grant, me, and Marc Frons.

Though I’d seen Donna within the past year, I hadn’t seen Barry since 1993, and hadn’t seen Marc since 1985. (more…)