Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird—it’s a plane—it’s the Boomer’s Superman

This is a thing of beauty.  I wasn’t going to share it here, but with the new Superman movie out this summer…  this is an 814 page collection of Superman comic books from the late 1950s thru the early 1960s.  It weighs a ton and every page is drenched in color.

A year ago a friend sent me a link to this book, and my eyes almost popped out of my head.  A Superman Silver Age Omnibus!  814 pages!  $100.00!

But I’m not the comic book fan I once was, and couldn’t bring myself to shell out a hundred clams for this fella.  I stuck it in my Amazon Wish List account.  Then last week, Amazon alerted me there was only one copy left and I noticed the price was reduced almost half to $53.70.  SOLD.

Silver Age comics were comic books published from 1958 to 1970.  I began collecting comics in 1968, when they were 12 cents an issue.

(Your average comic book now is 5 bucks.  They’re not marketed to kids like they were in my day.)

I don’t think this OMNIBUS is marketed to kids either—more to “older kids” like myself, Baby Boomers who loved these simpler, more innocent stories from a bygone age.

Silver Age Superman was drawn by Wayne Boring, Curt Swan and Kurt Schaffenberger, who did all the “What If” stories and “Superman’s Girl-Friend, Lois Lane”.  The books were bright and fun, with stories about red kryptonite, bizarro supermen, super cousins, super pets, beauty queens from the 30th century or the lost city of Atlantis, juvenile delinquents from outer space.

One of my favorites were Zigi & Zagi from Alpha Centauri; after arriving on Earth, they stop at a hot dog stand, gobble up some dogs and tell the vendor not to change the recipe.  They fly off in their jet packs while the vendor exclaims they owe him 2 bits each.  “Come back here!!  Superman!!”

In the late 1960s, if I could get a quarter from my dad or mom, I’d stop at GC Murphy’s on the way home from school and buy a comic book and dime candy bar (and still have 3 cents left over for penny candy). 

In the spring of ‘69, I saw this sign above the comic books:

SORRY KIDS!  ALL COMICS NOW PRICED 15 CENTS!

They had the exact same sign above the candy bars, also now 15 cents (except Reeses & Mallow Cups).  My first taste of inflation! 

For the record, I gave up collecting comic books in 1979, after graduating from high school.  Not because I was becoming an adult and had my future to think about… they went up a nickel in price 5-6 times in the 1970s, and now cost 45 cents for my favorite titles.  I just couldn’t bring myself to shell out that kind of bread for 5-6 books every week. 

Look at all the comic books reprinted in this volume; these early covers contain 3-4 Superman stories each.  Until I see the new Superman movie, I am in for some super-duper reading.