Sunday, February 8, 2009

Discovery of the Golden Age of Comics

I started reading Playboy when I was 13. Yes, really—reading it. Oh sure, the pictorials were eye openers and cleared up a lot of mysteries for me, but I was reading John Updike and Ian Fleming and enjoying Shel Silverstein's journal drawings of Fire Island. I loved the James Bond serials, and because of that, went out to buy the paperback 007 novels. I truly was a 'mature reader' at 13. 


The first Playboy I ever bought—right off the newsstand at my local drugstore. I must have looked old for my age, or else the clerk didn't give a $#*@. Playboy covers in the 60's were lovely—very well designed and executed, with the bunny logo being artfully incorporated in each cover. They were sexy and classy. Art Paul was a fabulous art director. In the 70s he gave me a nice motivational interview, but never gave me a job. C'est la vie. 

Fleming, Ian Fleming.

Probably the best playmate of the year ever.

An interview with Peter O'toole. Very cool.

This is the issue that introduced the golden age of heroes to me. Jules Feiffer was a terrific contributor of text and cartoons with his own inimitable style. I had all of his books of cartoons, like Sick, Sick, Sick and all the diatribes of Bernard Merganthaler—was that his name? I'm winging this from memory, having divested myself of those books decades ago.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It was only within the last few years that I got a couple of copies of that issue of Playboy with Fieffer's article on the Great Comic Book Heroes. My parents got me a copy of the book about the time that it was published.