The adverts from Vince Harris and Derek Powell had addresses near the Bartley Green Reservoir, on the outskirts of Birmingham and I lived in Shirley, also on the outskirts of Birmingham and not that far away from them!
So, I screwed up my courage, marked out a route, in the
A to Z map book of Birmingham and one wet, saturday morning,
set out to meet them.
It was quite a shock to discover that these two "kids" (I was, after all, already 16, out of school and working) had collections that put mine to shame. Not only that but they were connected to the larger comic book community, buying, selling and trading comic books with the early dealers of the day.
In so many ways, they were far more knowledgable than I was and they were happy to educate me.
That first afternoon, my strongest memory is of sitting in Derek's bedroom and being amazed that he had a complete run of the first six issues of the Hulk. I was vaguely aware that they existed but I had never seen them and I was in awe!
I borrowed these images from Mycomicshop.com
because I never actually owned any of these issues
and even if I had, they would have been
traded away, back in the late Seventies, when
I let my Fantastic Four #1 go.
Returning to the main thread of the story,
Vince and Derek invited me to join them, the following weekend, when they went into Birmingham city centre.
There were a couple of places that they wanted to show me and a dealer, Pete Lennon, who sold comics out of his car, down by the old Bullring Market.
If I remember correctly, I think we met up at the tables, inside the market proper, of a secondhand book and magazine dealer.
I was introduced to Pete Lennon that morning, who was what my mother always described as a "wide boy", a wheeler-dealer, always on the lookout for a sucker to fleece. Not a bad guy, he simply was what he was.
Later that same morning, we walked up Corporation Street to a Science Fiction & Fantasy bookshop named
JAPETUS
the first place that I ever saw the Frank Frazetta Conan paperback covers. In their basement, in an incredibly small space, sat a longhaired young man, Alan, who sold brand new american import comic books!
I bought Marvel Premiere #13, by Frank Brunner, a comic that I still own today...the SAME comic! I might have bought #14 too but it is too long ago to be sure and which ever way it went, I became a regular weekly visitor to Japetus' basement for about a year.
After leaving Japetus, Vince and Derek took me to see a brand new bookshop on Summer Row, over by the reference library.
That was my first visit to the
ANDROMEDA
BOOKSHOP
and the first time that I met the proprietor
ROG PEYTON.
I have detailed, in an earlier posting, how shabbily I treated him at that first meeting, placing orders for comics that I never returned to buy and I take this opportunity to apologize to him again,
for being such a callow youth.
One moment, from that first visit to Andromeda, really stands out because it was a missed opportunity. On a top shelf, at the back of the shop, there were two copies of Berni Wrightson's
Badtime Stories, priced at two pounds and fifty pence each.
I remember looking them over but they were by an artist that I had never heard of and they weren't superhero style stories.
The price was more than I could afford anyway and I walked away without one!
Within a couple of years I would be kicking myself over that decision!
That's all for today, kiddies.
More later.
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