Ruminations of an Old Goat

If you ask most comic book fans, you'll discover they started reading comics when they were in elementary or middle school and just kept on reading them. Certainly most of the fans I know started like that. I'm not like most fans.

Oh, I read comic books when I was a kid. I had a couple of Star Trek comics and a Thunder Agents comic at home, but mostly I had a friend living across the street who got his older brothers' comics when they moved on to other interests. We'd sometimes just sit in my friend's room and read comics for hours on end. The only thing I really remember from those reading sessions is that some of the comics featured Daredevil. Other than that, I didn't read comics at all until I was a freshman in college. One reason for that might be that Clemson, SC, didn't have any place I could regularly find comic books. The main reason is that I preferred spending my money on science fiction books.

That all changed when I was a freshman in college. I was in the local bookstore checking for new science fiction arrivals when something different caught my eye. Two trade paperbacks, the first ones I'd ever seen, were facing out on a shelf. What caught my eye was Spider-Man on one cover and my old friend Daredevil on the other. Spider-Man was on the cover of a book titled Origins of Marvel Comics. Daredevil appeared on Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. The two books reprinted the origin stories for more than a dozen of Marvel's most popular heroes along with commentary from Stan Lee. I flipped through both books and felt of surge of interest. I was ready to buy both books until I noticed that each one cost $6.95. That was about the same price as three or four paperbacks! I could afford one but not both. Daredevil was the deciding factor. Minutes later, I left with a copy of Son of Origins of Marvels Comics. I was back the next week to pick up Origins of Marvel Comics.

Having my appetite whetted for comic books, I discovered what I'd known all along -- they were hard to find in Clemson. So I asked the folks at bookstore where I'd bought the two origin books. I was a regular customer and they knew me well. The manager agreed that there ought to be some place to buy comic books in a college town and decided to do something about it. A few days later, they added a spinner full of the latest Marvel and DC comic books. Score!

Even with the bookstore carrying titles, there wasn't much effort made to keep things very current. Finding the next issue of a comic book was a hit and miss affair at best. I struggled along, mostly managing to follow the titles I was reading, until the summer after my freshman year. That's when a local guy opened a newsstand in town. He carried all sorts of magazines, all the regional newspapers and even the Sunday New York Times. But that wasn't the first thing I noticed when I walked into the store. What I noticed was the large, carefully arranged shelf full of comic books. It was four-color heaven! More importantly, from that point on I was always able to find the current issues of the comic books I read.

As the years passed, I would discover comic book stores that were somewhat local, was able to buy collections from from friends who were no longer interested in reading comics and generally spend way too much money on comic books. I would also gauge the reactions of various girlfriends to my two major choices in literature -- science fiction and comic books. When I found a girlfriend who had read a fair bit of science fiction and who started reading comic books with me, I married her. (We'll celebrate our 28th anniversary in October.)

In 1981, a couple of months before getting married, I headed back to college full time. I had spent the last couple of years as an off and on student, but the impending marriage had me thinking seriously about my future. Walking on campus the first day of classes, I spotted the unmistakable image of some Marvel superheroes on a notice posted around campus. It was posted by a guy interested in meeting up with other comic book fans in the hopes of starting a club. I tore off the guy's phone number and gave him a call. The guy was David Willis, a freshman at Clemson.

Just talking on the phone, we hit it off well and discovered that our comic book reading lists were nearly identical. I thought the comic book club was great idea and offered to help David in any way I could, including posting a notice down at the newsstand (where I had been working part time for several years). Soon, we were holding regular meetings, drawing a combination of college students and local kids who had seen the notice at the newsstand. Just getting together and shooting the breeze about comic books was great, but after a few months I had an idea for a new club activity. I suggested we create and publish our own comic book.

Like science fiction fans harbor the dream of writing science fiction someday, comic book fans dream of creating comic books someday. In other words, everyone thought it was a great idea. I can't say whether any of the other people in the club put much thought into characters and stories, but I certainly did. A few weeks after suggesting the club publish a comic book, I told David about four characters I had come up with. He thought they were great characters, too. The thing was, I didn't want to turn my new creations over to the rest of the people in the comic book club. When I mentioned this to David, he completely understood.

"I'd publish it myself," I told David, "if I had the money."

"How much would it cost?" David asked.

"About $2000," I said.

"I've got $2000," David said.

It's been 27 years since that conversation, so I seriously doubt I'm quoting it accurately. But that's the gist of it.

What amazes me the most out of all of this is that David's parents let him take his $2000 and go into a partnership with someone they'd never met to produce a comic book. A few years earlier, my parents had gone along with my idea of investing money in a science fiction magazine, but I'd been 21 at the time and was going to partner with the owner of the newsstand, a reputable businessman they'd known for three years. But David's parents not only went along with the idea, they were fully supportive of it. (Mine were fully supportive, too, but my situation was quite different from David's; I was 24 and married at the time.)

David didn't just supply the money for the comic book, though. He found our first artist. He found our second artist, too, after the first artist landed a monthly book with Marvel. I was the primary writer, but I consulted with David and my wife on all of the early stories.

After many trials and tribulations, the first issue of our comic book was released in August of 1982. We did a lot of things completely and totally wrong but we somehow managed to keep things going on our own for seven issues. Then we worked out a deal with comic book magazine publisher from Georgia, who took over publishing the book.

It's been 16 years since the last new issue of the Southern Knights came out. The book never made us rich. Circulation topped out around 11,000 in the late 1980s. Working on the comic book could be frustrating, agonizing and irritating. But mostly it was more fun than I could have ever imagined. And it brought me something of true and lasting value. It brought me a life-long friend.

Thanks, David.