Sharing My Story

Comics Researcher Part 1

There is part of me that enjoys systematizing data. Perhaps it is
like other people who like figuring out crossword puzzles or putting
together jigsaw puzzles or solving murder mysteries. One place where
that came into being was in my fascination with comic books. One of
the currents that found expression in the newly emerging comics
fandom in the early 1960s was a thirst for compiling data on the
old comic books and their creators. Jerry Bails, the father of
comics fandom, was an incurable data buff. He coined the term
"panelologist" for people with a bent toward gathering information
about the Golden Age comics in particular and all comics in general.
Besides the many lengthy articles and indices were compiled,
Bails himself indexed his favorite, All Star Comics and somewhat
later the super hero DC Comics from the 1940s. Others put together
indices on the MLJ comics and others companies. Toward the end of
the decade Bails published his Collector's Guide: The First Heroic Age
(a comprehensive Guide to the appearances of costumed heroes
in the 1940s). I contributed a small amount of data to this Collector's
Guide. Seeing my name in the acknowledgement section nestled
among many professional editors, artists, writers as well as prominent
fans and collectors was for a 21 year-old kid was a heady experience.
Howard Keltner's Index to Golden Age Comic Books came out in
the early 1970s as did the Who's Who of American Comic Books
edited by Bails and Hames Ware. About that time the first Comic
Book Price Guides started making their appearance. How could I
make a unique contribution to this facet of the comics hobby?

When I began reading the Green Lantern comic in the early 1960s
I noticed the writers (and editor) constructing a complete world
(actual a universe) centered around the exploits of the characters
appearing in this comic book. Green Lantern is a super hero who
uses a "power ring" (a super weapon) to accomplish all matter of
weird and wonderful things by sheer will power. He is basically
a cosmic police man. I began writing down the names of the
characters (major and minor) and which issues they appeared in.
I also included the places (cities, towns, countries, planets, etc)
where the adventures took place and included objects like weapons,
artworks and so forth. While this may have been an exercise in
trivia generation it was also an enjoyable past time. As the 1960s
progressed I had little time for this type of project (with college studies),
however I picked this up again in the late 1970s and did more of it.
I continued working on it off and on during the 1980s. I had followed
the Green Lantern comics and had pretty much of a complete run of
the issues to work from.

My early involvement with Alpha-Omega provided a place to
publish this information that I had been compiling over the years.
Sections of my first 10 or so contributions for Alpha-Omega
(1985-1986) contained parts of this index/glossary. I doubt that
many of the original contributors to Alpha-Omega really cared
that much about all this Green Lantern data but it was heartening
to actually see the material printed somewhere after spending a
couple of decades collecting it. For several years this information
sat in those obscure early Alpha-Omega issues. When the producing
Valiant Efforts the Green Lantern Index was put on the back burner
in the early 1990s. Once Valiant Efforts had ran its course I decided
to dust of the Green Lantern Index glossary and through more
research I updated the material and self-published it as
Emerald Light: An Index and Glossary to Green Lantern 1959-1994.
This came out in 1995 and I sold copies of it through Bud Plant's
(a comic book speciality seller) mail order catalog and also another
small distributor. I basically sold out my small print run.
This was a another very gratifying experience.

This is a project that had been gestating for around 30 years and
there was a real sense of accomplishment in seeing it to completion.