{"id":21098,"date":"2015-12-07T22:38:17","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T03:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=21098"},"modified":"2015-12-07T22:41:14","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T03:41:14","slug":"the-day-i-sold-300-comic-books-for-5-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/07\/the-day-i-sold-300-comic-books-for-5-00\/","title":{"rendered":"The day I sold 300 comic books for $5.00"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. <\/p>\n

I remembered Joe and Morty’s candy store on Aveue P, in which I was unable to decide whether to buy X-Men<\/em> #1 or Avengers<\/em> #1, as I only had 12 cents in my pocket and they’d both come out the same day<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I certainly hope I’ve become a better writer since then!<\/p>\n

\"ShorelinesMyFriendTheBookstore120572\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And if you’re wondering why that story was published under a pseudonym … it’s because I already had another piece scheduled for that issue, and the editors didn’t want any byline running more than once. So I became Edward Lawrence Mann—that is, Ed L. Mann.<\/p>\n

And since I’d already dug out the December 5, 1972 copy of Shorelines<\/em> and happened to be in a scanning mood, here’s that other story—a commentary on the school bussing controversy then going on in Canarsie. (If you’d like background, check out this piece in the Chicago Tribune<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

As for the commentary below, I don’t think it would have been possible for 17-year-old me to have been more hyperbolic.<\/p>\n

\"ShorelinesJHS211120572\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After this was published, it caused quite a stir at South Shore High School, which included one of my gym teachers calling me aside after he’d read it so he could defend the anti-integration protesters. <\/p>\n

It was not a comfortable conversation. But I didn’t care. It had to be said. It had to be written. And whatever its infelicities, I’m as glad now as I was then that I wrote it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[719,18,506],"class_list":["post-21098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-canarsie","tag-comics","tag-shorelines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21098"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21112,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21098\/revisions\/21112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}