Paul Howley's New Column!

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP By Paul Howley

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION:

My name is Paul Howley, owner of the Eisner Award winning pop culture collector’s store known as "That’s Entertainment" in Worcester, Massachusetts. My store has been around for over twenty years and it’s been a long and interesting combination of events and people that has brought my store to its current place. I am not a talented writer, so please try to overlook my lack of writing ability. It is not my intent to boast or brag about my store or my life I just want to tell you my story.

Part One

I was born in 1955 and my comic book life began in 1959 when an old friend of the family gave me my first comic book. It was a Batman comic! I don’t remember which issue it was, but it started my life long interest (some might say obsession) in comic books. I remember walking from my home in Belmont , Massachusetts to the local "spa" to plunk down my 10 cents for Felix The Cat, Hot Stuff The Little Devil, Casper, Little Lotta, Little Dot, Dick Tracy, and the occasional superhero comic. By 1961 I had amassed a collection of almost 500 comic books. In 1961, that was a huge collection! I only knew of one other kid that had a larger collection and he was nicknamed "The Comic King". (years later, I bought his comic book collection!) I would buy as many comic books as I could afford. Condition didn’t matter to me...at one local variety store they sold comics with the covers torn off for only 5 cents each so I bought a bagful of early Marvel comics and cool Batman and Superman related titles every chance I got. Each week on the way home from church I would buy a comic and a soda and a candy bar with the quarter my father would give and still have a nickel left over! You see, comics were still 10 cents and soda and candy bars were 5 cents each in 1961. In 1961, comic books were seemingly sold everywhere...supermarkets, drugstores, corner variety stores, and of course, at local newsstands. But in the early 1960’s my family moved from the big city of Newton, Massachusetts out to the country town of Bolton, Massachusetts. I went from finding comics everywhere to a town that had no comic books. This little town didn’t even have a store of any kind. The center of the town had a blinking yellow traffic light and that’s all. I had to be content with rereading my existing comic books for excitement. At some point in 1964 I was allowed to ride my bicycle about 2 miles away to a nearby town that had two stores that had small selections of comic books for sale, but now comics were 12 cents each and neither store sold comics without the covers for 5 cents! What was I going to do? I couldn’t afford to spend 12 cents each for my comic book "fix"! I decided to start asking my school friends to sell me their old comic books and most of them were thrilled to be able to get some cash for the comics that they were finished with. By 1965 my collection had doubled in size to over 1000 comics. But it wasn’t long before my friends were out of comics to sell to me. What was I going to do now?

I began writing and drawing my own comic books featuring a superhero known as "Insect Man" and I would pass them around to my classmates. A group of kids would play superheroes during recess and I was Insect Man. A buddy was "The Masked Mosquito" and some kids were content to be villains. I included them all in the Insect Man comic books. For my birthday, my Dad drove me all the way to the "big" city of Marlboro Massachusetts to an actual newsstand called "Delaney’s" and he gave me two dollars to buy any comic books I wanted! At 12 cents each, this was a dream come true! This newsstand was amazing to me as a young kid there was an entire magazine rack filled with comic books! Keep in mind, this was before comic book specialty shops today’s collectors are fortunate to be able to get every comic book they want in one location! I bought some of my favorite titles and some comics that I had never tried before. It was a super birthday gift, but soon I was looking for more comics to read.

Then I discovered something that profoundly changed my comic book life. I saw a classified advertisement in a comic book from a man who had "back issues" of comic books available for sale. I sent off my 25 cents for his catalog of comic books and was eagerly anticipating being able to buy lots of old issues for a penny or two each. Imagine my shock when I got the catalog and saw that this guy was charging higher than the original cover price for old comics! The cheapest comic book for sale in his catalog was 50 cents! Some of the old comic from the 1930’s and 1940’s were as high as $90.00 for a single comic book! My father thought the decimal points must have been in the wrong place...can you imagine Batman #1 from 1939 was almost $60.00? Marvel Comics #1 was $90.00, Action Comics #1 was $70.00, Spider-Man #1 was $6.00...Fantastic Four #1 was $10.00...This was outrageous! This catalog guy must be crazy to think that people would pay that kind of money for old worthless comic books. So I sent away for a catalog from a different comic book dealer. Hmmmmm...he’s charging big money too! Maybe there are other people in the world who want these comics and are willing to pay a premium to get them. It took a little convincing, but my father eventually allowed me to start buying older comics from these dealers. I bought lots of early Marvel comics including Daredevil #1, X-Men #1, Avengers #1, early Fantastic Four, early Spider-Man, etc, but my father "drew the line" when I wanted to send the $60.00 for Batman #1. "That was ridiculous" my Dad told me. (many years later I ended up paying $250.00 for a Batman #1)

In 1966 I went to the big city of Worcester, Massachusetts with a friend because we heard that there was a bookstore that also bought and sold old comic books. So I packed up some of my 1950’s DC comics and brought them to this bookstore. The owner gave me 5 cents each in trade towards Marvel comics from 1964-1966 at 50 cents each. Looking back, it wasn’t a very good deal, but it helped me fill in some of the issues I was missing in my collection of Marvel’s. When I was eleven years old I got an idea I wrote directly to Marvel Comics and asked them if they had any back issues available for sale. To my delight, they sent me a list of comic books available actually it was stranger than that the list was actually a list of the comic books that were NOT available. They said that any comic book that they published since 1961 that was not on this list could be purchased for 12 cents each plus a small postage fee. I sent them as much money as I could to fill in lots of missing issues in my Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense collections. Within a year or two, Marvel discontinued this service. I continued to ride my bike to the next town to buy my regular weekly comic books but I was frequently disappointed to find out that I missed the newest issue of Spider-Man or Fantastic Four...so I asked the store owner what I needed to do to be sure that I wouldn’t miss another issue. He told me that the new comic and magazine shipments were delivered every Tuesday morning. If I wanted to be sure to get the comics I wanted I would have to be at his store early Tuesday morning. Since I had to be in school, I suggested to him that if he left the wire-bound bundle of comic books and magazines behind his counter, I would come there on Tuesday after school and I would check his invoice and neatly display his comics and magazines on the rack for him. This would save him some time and it would let me have the first pick of the comic books I wanted. He thought it was a great idea. For the next 4 years I did this for him and quite a few times I was able to buy the one copy of a comic book that the store got. This store owner always treated me with respect and kindness even though I was just a young kid with only a few dollars to spend each week. This kindness and respect would influence my business decisions in later years.

Next column: My comic buying becomes an addiction.

Part Two

I was a lucky comic book collector. In 1966 I had found a store owner that allowed me to open the bundle of new comic books every Tuesday afternoon, pull out the comics I wanted to buy, and display the remaining comic books on his magazine rack. I had first shot at almost every comic book published...well, at least first shot of any comic book that the distributor decided to send this little store. In those days, the retailer couldn’t order individual titles. They would take whatever titles the distributor dictated. This meant that comic book readers and collectors would frequently miss issues of their favorite titles...but there was nothing we could do about it. There were no comic book specialty stores yet. I bought one copy of every Marvel and DC superhero comic. I also continued buying most of the Harvey comic books, with my favorites being Spooky, Hot Stuff, and Stumbo...and oh..those 25 cent Harvey Giants. Those were the best of the lot! I ignored the Charlton comics mostly because of the frequently ragged edged cutting process they used. It was odd that it bothered me though, because in those days, condition of our comic books was not an important factor. We just wanted to have every issue we could get our hands on!

Around this time I ran out of places to put my comic books so my father installed shelves along one wall in my bedroom. He even put a lock on my bedroom door so that my four little brothers and my one sister wouldn’t be tempted to touch my collection. I carefully sorted my comics and stacked them carefully on my new shelves. In those days, there were no price guides around to use as references, but a comic book dealer named Robert Bell would send you a "checklist" of Marvel Comics and a free plastic storage bag if you sent him 25 cents. This was a great way to know which comics we were still missing. In the 1960’s, many barber shops had comic books around to amuse the kids while we waited for our turn to get our haircut. I talked my barber into letting me trade him some comics I no longer wanted for his copy of The Fantastic Four Annual #3 featuring the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. Around this same time, a young neighbor needed treatment at a big hospital in Boston. One day while my little friend was waiting to see his doctor, he saw a large pile of early Marvel comics that someone had donated including Fantastic Four #8-12, some early Spider-Man, and lots more. Even though he was only about 6 years old, he knew that these were comic books that I’d want to have! He convinced the nurse to let him take the comics and bring double the amount of comic books back the next time he came in. The nurse figured that the hospital would end up with twice as many comic books for the kids to read so it was okay with her...and it was certainly fine with me! I supplied the comic books for my friend to trade and I turned a bunch of comic books that I had already read many times into comics I had never read. A "win-win" situation.

In 1968 I started high school. The small town we lived in could not support a high school on their own, so two other towns joined our small town to form a regional high school. This meant that the kids from our town would suddenly be in school with hundreds of "new" kids...which translated for me into new sources of comic books! I asked many of my new schoolmates if they had any old comic books. Many of them were thrilled to just give them to me! They figured they were now in high school...way too cool to be reading comic books. I gladly accepted their charity. Some of the other kids sold me their old comics...sometimes for 25-50 cents each. I didn’t get any really old comics in this way, but it helped to fill in missing issues on my "checklist". But it wasn’t too long before my new supply of comic books was exhausted. Now what? As luck would have it, one Tuesday afternoon while I was sorting the new comics at my favorite corner store, I introduced myself to a kid who was also looking through the comics. We talked for a while about our favorite comics and favorite storylines. When I finally asked his name, he gave me some long, almost unpronounceable, foreign sounding name, but he said "you can just call me Garber". We became good comic book friends. He introduced me to some other kids with interest in comic books and we’d occasionally get together to play spy games (we were all fascinated by James Bond and the TV show of The Man From UNCLE). By late 1968, I could tell that Garber was losing interest in comics, so I offered to buy some of his older comic books from him. He had sent away for a dealer’s list of comics for sale (it was Howard Rogofsky’s list...at that point in time...the highest priced dealer we had run across) and he decided he’d be willing to part with some of his older comic books for about half of what Rogofsky was asking. I was still only 13 years old and on a very limited budget, but I bought as much as I could afford. I bought a fair condition copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #1 for about $20.00...I bought Marvel Tales Annual #1 (a nice thick comic!) for about $4.00 and many more. But I ran out of money. That Christmas I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my Mom had found my "checklist" and had gone to visit Garber! She bought me a beautiful copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #8 for $8.00, a Strange Tales Annual #1 for $5.00 and a few others for a total of about $20.00...it may not seem like much now, but it was one of the best Christmas gifts I’d ever gotten. We were always treated to cool Christmas gifts as kids...I got lots of Man From Uncle items, Marx Playsets, Aurora monster model kits, GI Joes, and of course, Captain Action…but this gift of nice old comic books was the most personal gift of all. This took a lot of effort on my Mom’s part. You couldn’t just go to a department store and find old comic books!

Next column: Comic books versus GIRLS!

Part Three

As a freshman in high school in 1968, I loved reading and collecting comic books! But girls were interesting too…and as you know, both of these “interests” can be expensive. With my habit of buying almost every comic book published by Marvel, DC, and Harvey, there was very little, if any, money left to spend on dating. So, in my sophomore year, I got a part time job after school at a local plastic factory. I would work from 3:00PM to 10:00PM. I was paid the generous rate of about $1.00 per hour! My work consisted of the following I Love Lucy type scenario: I stood by a huge injection molding machine that shot molten plastic into a mold and every 10 seconds, 24 paint brush handles would drop from the mold into a vat of water below to cool down. I had a large wooden paddle to pull these 24 paint brush handles down a canal and then I’d grab them out of the water, dry them off with a towel, inspect them, and pack them in boxes. Think about that. Every 10 seconds I had to “process” 24 separate paint brush handles! It’s almost impossible to keep this pace…and in this factory, each employee was forced to take a 5 minute break once every hour. But the factory didn’t shut the machines off while we were on our break! When I’d get back to my machine, there would be 720 paint brush handles waiting for me to deal with! The paint brush handles would be piled up in the water vat about three feet deep! I’d have to increase my speed to near superhero levels just to try to catch up and then it was time for our forced break again! Even though I really needed the money from this job to pay for my comics and dating, I couldn’t take it…I quit after only three days.

I got a job cleaning out horse stalls for a local veterinarian for 80 cents an hour and did some summer work painting fences for our town recreation department. This enabled me to pursue both of my interests. Luckily, in my small town, a young couple, Paul and Barbara Weathebee, had converted their old barn into a “coffee shop” because they recognized the need for a safe place for teenagers to get together. They would hire local rock bands to play music on a small make-shift stage and they served coffee, soda, and donuts. There was no admission charge for us, so it became THE place for teens in many surrounding towns to hang out, an especially cheap date for those of us on a very limited budget. At times there would be hundreds of kids there on a Friday night. With that many teenagers there was the possibility of trouble …remember, this was the late1960’s…drugs, alcohol, rebellion, etc…and the police would frequently be there to head off anything serious. Why would any young couple open up their property and expose themselves to extraordinary risks and local townspeople’s scorn with no potential of personal gain? They did it because they really cared about the lives of the teenagers in the area. They knew it was important to let the anti-establishment generation know that there were adults who cared about young people…and most importantly, that it was possible to have a personal “relationship” with God, the Creator of the universe. They would mingle with the huge crowds of teenagers and try to get to know as many as they could. They would invite the teens to come back and visit with them on another day so that they could share with them the love of God. Many kids responded to this couple’s outreach because as human beings, most of us are searching for truth and meaning in this life. I was one of these kids. Now…I’m sure you’re thinking…”what does all of this have to do with comic books?! Hopefully, if you keep reading this column, it will become clear how all of these things come together to form the story of the history of my comic book store. I’m not trying to “preach” to anyone right now…I’m just telling you what happened.

Do you remember the young neighbor who worked out a trade of comic books at the Boston hospital? Well, it was around this time that he finally succumbed to leukemia. He was my first close friend or relative to die. This was an awfully confusing time for me. How could a loving God allow a beautiful young child to die? I grew up Catholic and thought it made sense to seek an explanation from our priest , but all he could offer was a vague “well, that’s a holy mystery”. I couldn’t accept that, so I went to talk to the couple with the barn. They spent time explaining the true nature of God. I realized that we are human beings whose “life in the flesh” is only part of our existence. Our spiritual life continues with the death of our body, just as God’s only Son was destined to die a physical death and be resurrected into a spiritual life. This all made sense to me. I continued visiting with the Weatherbee family and the dozens of other kids who would come for fun events and serious study of The Bible. It was here that I met my future wife, Mal. My life would be changed forever!

Next column: I meet my future partner and get started in the comic book business.

Part Four

In my last column I explained about some important developments in my “religious” faith and I told you that in this installment I’d be telling you about meeting my future wife. Before I get to that part of my story I need to digress for a moment. In 1969, my Aunt Joan won some money ($1140.00) on a California television show called “Dialing For Dollars”. With this money, she decided to drive across the country to visit her relatives on the east coast in 1970. She brought her three children with her. Bob and his twin sister Sylvia were my age and my cousin Steven was 11 years old. They stayed in the New England area for the whole summer and it was really the first chance I had to get to know my cousins. Even though he was much younger than I was, my cousin Steve was more like me than his siblings. He was skinny, had long hair, and was outgoing and he played chess. But he didn’t read comic books. I let him read some of my comics and it didn’t take long before he was hooked. I gave him a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #3 and a coverless copy of The Avengers #8 and his interest in comic books exploded from there. For some unknown reason (I must have been on someone’s mailing list) I started receiving “The Buyers Guide Of Comic Fandom” a monthly newspaper featuring dozens of ads of comic books for sale from all over the country. My cousin Steven and I would eagerly look forward to each issue of TBG. When his family returned to California, Steven spent lots of money buying old back issues at used bookstores and junk shops. Although California had some of the earliest comic book specialty stores in the country prices were not very consistent because there was no accurate price guide yet. Many comic dealers would just use the established prices of major mail order dealers like Howard Rogofsky and Robert Bell. Cousin Steven paid way too much for a lot of his comics! But it didn’t matter, because he just HAD to get his hands on as many comic books as possible.

In 1971, Steven and the rest of his family moved from California to Massachusetts to live here permanently. We spent a lot of time together playing chess, playing Smess (a strange game similar to chess), discussing comics and playing poker. My father had taught me how to play poker when I was quite young and I usually would beat Steven when we played. We didn’t play for money. We usually played for comic books. I remember once when I started the day by winning his copy of The Silver Surfer #1 (from the 1960’s) and continued winning until I won everything Steven owned! I mean everything! His entire comic book collection. All of his toys. All of his clothes (except the clothes he was wearing)….everything he owned! What a triumph. The next day he won it all back. I was never really going to take his stuff, but it was fun anyway. Playing cards was always fun for Steven and me. In a future column you’ll see how important it became.

In high school I dated a few girls. I really liked some of them. But in 1972 I took a bus ride with our Bible study group to a Jesus rally in Keene New Hampshire. It was during the peak of the Jesus Movement in the United States. I had been dating a nice girl for about a year and a half, but nothing prepared me for meeting Marilyn. I was sitting on the floor of the purple painted “Gospel Bus” and Marilyn (or Mal as she was called) was sitting in the seat near me with her 21 year old boyfriend Alan Jones. Even though she was sitting with her boyfriend, it didn’t stop her from talking with me. I was stunned. She was really pretty and kind of flirty. I was a nerdy hippie-looking guy with long hair.

I was traveling with my younger brother Jay. Jay was 18 months younger than I was. Even as young kids, Jay and I were quite different. Jay had childhood illnesses like asthma and he needed an eye operation to correct a crossed eye. Jay was more physical. Jay had muscles and I was a skinny guy. I enjoyed more cerebral things like movies, books and chess. Jay was more of a checkers playing guy. Although I was outgoing, Jay was musically inclined and was one of the lead guitar players at the Coffee Shop (now called Freedom Farm). Jay and I had an unusual competitive relationship. By the end of the bus ride, Mal convinced me to drive my younger brother over to her house. It didn’t take me long to realize that she actually was more interested in me than my brother Jay. I felt bad for my brother because I know he kind of liked Mal. But it took me about 15 minutes to get over it. I was attracted to Mal and it wasn’t long before we were “going steady”. Within 4 months we were “pre-engaged”. Five months after that, we were actually engaged to be married! Jay got over it and moved on to other girlfriends.

It was at this time that I realized that I couldn’t afford to pay for gas for my car (it was an outrageous 27 cents a gallon back then!), car insurance, dating, and comic books. Something had to go. I needed the car. I was in love with the girl. Comic books had to go. So for about a year I stopped buying comic books. Cold turkey. I had really enjoyed my comic books but like many teens, girls and cars become more important than our comic books. I thought I’d be finished with comic books forever.

In June of 1973 Mal and I got married. We rented a small apartment in Marlboro Massachusetts and I packed up all of my childhood toys and comic books and stored them in the attic. We had planned to honeymoon in Montreal Canada. I don’t have any idea why we chose Canada. I had never been there before. Maybe someone we knew suggested it to us. We packed up our 1970 Volkswagon Squareback station wagon and drove to Montreal. We were there for about 30 hours and both agreed that we didn’t like Montreal, so we turned around and drove the 1500 miles to Florida. We had very little money…just the money we got at our wedding. We had spent everything we had saved for the last year on furniture , our apartment deposits, utilities and our car. We were both raised to be conservative with money. If we couldn’t pay cash for something, we wouldn’t buy it. We didn’t have any credit cards because we were only 18 years old and in 1973 you had to be 21 years old to get a credit card. We headed to the recently opened Disney World with about $250.00. We had no hotel reservations because we had expected to be in Canada not Florida. Since it was peak tourist season, most of the hotels along the way were full. We ended up sleeping one night on the side of the highway in Virginia. One night we slept in the car in a hotel parking lot. We stopped and spent a full day swimming and playing on rafts at Daytona Beach and both got so sunburned that we were sick with sunstroke. We recovered in a couple of days and made it to Disney World. In 1973, all that Disney World had to offer was The Magic Kingdom. The theme park was only a few years old and we both were amazed at how clean and organized it was. We were impressed by the technology in the attractions and transportation system. We were hooked on Disney World. Over the next 29 years we would spend 27 separate vacations in Disney World! (but I’ll explain the effect Disney World had on our lives in a future column) After our two week honeymoon was over, we arrived home with an almost empty tank of gas and no money left. Our bank account was down to $8.00.

We knew we needed to replenish our savings account so I continued working at Data Terminal Systems making the first electronic cash registers in the United States. Mal got a job there too, which worked out great because we only had one car and we could ride together. We tried to do things together that didn’t cost money. Luckily for us, there was an independently owned movie theater that had movies for a dollar on Tuesday night. We spent a lot of time visiting friends and family.

One day when we had nothing to do, Mal said she was curious about my old comic books. I was happy that she seemed interested in my old hobby. When I brought the many boxes of comics down from the attic and spread them out on the apartment floor Mal said “gee, they’re not in very good condition….”

You see, in the 1960’s and very early 1970’s, most comic book collectors didn’t care about the condition of the comic books. We just wanted them to read and re-read. Some of my comic books were missing the front cover and some were missing interior pages. As long as it didn’t affect the story, a missing advertisement or superhero pin-up was okay. As a matter of fact, I remember cutting up some comic books myself when I was a young kid. Most of the comic books that I had bought new at the local variety stores in the mid-late 60’s were still in almost perfect condition. I was careful with my comics when I handled them. But the ones I had bought second hand or had traded for ranged from poor to fair condition. Mal looked disappointed. “These are the comic books you were so proud of?”, she asked. “Why didn’t you buy nice looking ones?” Hmmmm…she doesn’t think my comics are childish! It didn’t take much convincing for me to start buying comic books again. I had seen an advertisement in The Comics Buyers Guide for a comic book “convention” at The Statler Hotel in Boston. When Mal and I arrived at this convention we were stunned at the incredible selection of comic books available from the 1930’s to the 1970’s! The very first dealer we met was Donald Phelps. He had a complete run of Batman comics from #20-35 (from the 1940’s) in beautiful condition. I spent a whole weeks paycheck at the first booth!

Next column: Meet the early comic business dealers and Mal convinces me to sell some of my comics!

The included pictures are: The purple "gospell" bus from the Freedom Farm, My cousin Steven's family (he's the smallest boy in the picture!) My beautiful wife, Mal Our 1970 Volkswagon Squareback car

Part Five

In 1973 my wife, Mal, and I went to our first comic book “convention” at The Statler Hotel in Boston. The first comic book dealer I met was Donald Phelps. He had a nice group of comic books from the 1940’s including a straight run of Batman issues #20-35, all in very fine-near mint condition. I immediately spent my entire weeks paycheck at his booth. I had become interested in Batman in 1959 when a family friend gave me my very first comic book…a Batman comic. In 1966, the Batman TV show starring Adam West premiered. It was one of my favorite TV shows of the 1960’s. I remember watching it with my Dad and getting mad at him because he was laughing at how silly it was. But to me (at 11 years old) this was a serious TV show! Batman was really in danger. Oh, and what a great colorful cast of villains! The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, Catwoman…and eventually Batgirl! But, alas, the show only lasted three years. I had to be satisfied buying the new issues of Batman comics. Then, in 1971, my Mom bought me a copy of the hardcover book “ Batman from the 1930’s to the 70’s”. This thick book was a collection of many of Batman’s best adventures from (duh) the 1930’s to the 70’s. This cool book introduced me to a lot of the early appearances of characters from “the Batman Family” like Batwoman, Bat-Mite, Ace The Bat-hound and dozens more. I had never bought a really old Batman comic book before, and now, at my first comic book convention I’ve bought a bunch from the 1940’s! I’m sure it probably worried Mal a little bit. Usually we were very careful with our money. As a matter of fact, we were thinking about saving money for a house and here I was blowing my paycheck on comics! But she knew I was getting a thrill out of buying these comics. She quickly suggested that it might be a good idea if I thought about selling some of comic books that I no longer wanted in order to pay for these expensive new additions to my collection.

Also at this convention was a young man named Will Murray. Will Murray would go on to eventually be recognized as an expert on Doc Savage and The Shadow and many years later, he’d take over running the monthly Boston comic book conventions. Will was sharing a table with a friend of his to reduce his expenses. Both of these guys were so friendly and willing to spend time talking to us about comic books. They told us that there was a long waiting list to be able to rent a booth space at this small comic book convention, but if I really wanted to get involved in the buying and selling they would be willing to rent me 1/3 of their 8 foot long table for about $10.00. It seemed like a good idea to us, so we committed to setting up at the next show. The shows were usually once every three months, so I had plenty of time to sort through my comics to pull out the ones I’d be willing to part with. I really didn’t want to sell any…I liked them all…but if it would get Mal to be okay with me spending our hard earned money on old comics, then I’d do it.

I had no price guide (The Overstreet Comic Book Price was around, but I had not discovered it yet) so I used some of the prices I’d seen in other dealers advertisements to determine my selling price. I had no plastic bags to protect my comics, so I lightly wrote the price on the back cover of each book. This was fairly standard practice in the early days of comic book selling. Occasionally you’d run into the dumb comic seller who’d use a pen or a marker to write the price on the back. What idiots!

Our first show was amazing. It didn’t take long for some of the other dealers to realize that I was a beginner in the business. They swarmed around our tale and bought up many of the comics that we had under-priced. We didn’t care. It gave me the extra money I wanted to buy more comic books without draining our “house buying fund”. These early conventions were full of interesting people. The young guys who eventually became Newbury Comics were there. George Suarez of New England Comics got his start at the early Boston shows. Bill Cole was there. Ron Johnson (one of the true gentlemen of the comic business) was there. Joe Carroll…the ultimate friendly comic book fan was a regular. Gerard would sometimes show up dressed as Captain Marvel Junior, but he was really a great guy. Monte was always there selling all kinds of magazines and comics. There was a hippie-type guy named Desi selling collectable comics and toys who was gruff on the surface but who was really one of the kindest guys there. There were also two older men…two brothers…that for some reason were called “The Fruit Brothers”. Maybe their “real” job was selling fruit.They would yell and scream at each other at various times during each convention. They were colorful characters. Everyone who sold comics in those days had regular “normal” jobs also. Comic book selling was just a supplement to our incomes back then. It was much more fun to be selling comic books when you were not concerned about employees, payroll, rent, and other major expenses that can overwhelm you when you are depending on the income from comic book selling. I looked forward to selling at the Boston shows and Mal was always there to help, even though she didn’t really like comic books. She enjoyed it because I enjoyed it.

After we had been married for about 6 months, with a short term loan from my parents, Mal and I bought our first house in Northboro Massachusetts. It was a small 2 bedroom home on a cute ½ acre lot, with no basement. The extra bedroom immediately became the comic book room. We were only 19 years old and we looked like we were 13 years old. Neighbors would call us “the little people” and delivery men would ask us if our parents were home. We’d reply, “we don’t know…they don’t live here.” Wiseguys, huh?

When we had lived in this house for about 6 months, we noticed that the real estate market was getting pretty hot. We had paid $23,000.00 for our house and we guessed that we could probably sell it for about $30,000.00. We called a realtor we knew and listed it for sale for $32,000.00. The house was sold by the first week-end for full price. After the sales commission, we made almost $8,000.00 profit. Keep in mind, in 1974, that was about the annual pay for an unskilled worker like me. I was now making money selling real estate, working at the cash register company, and selling comic books. I was an amateur entrepreneur.

Next column: We build a house and then quit the rat race.

Pictures: Mal (she has an eye patch because of an eye surgery) and Paul Our first house in Northboro, Massachusetts

Part Six

After living in our first house for only 6 months, on a whim we put it up for sale and sold it for almost full price on the first weekend. Now we had to pack up all of our stuff again, including my growing comic book collection. We rented a three bedroom apartment in Marlboro Massachusetts. We needed the two extra bedrooms. One for my huge comic book collection and one for my buddy Harry Wilson to live in. Harry had been the best man at our wedding and he needed a place to live for a while.

We knew we didn’t want to stay in an apartment for very long because we felt that we would be just throwing our money away on rent so we decided that we’d try to build a house. We bought an acre of land in Berlin, Massachusetts that bordered 700 acres of conservation land that could not be built on. We paid $7500.00 for this lot and found a builder to put up a small three bedroom house for $19,000.00. Within three months we were moving in. Our friend Harry moved out and got married.

We continued to buy and sell comic books at the Boston comic book shows and we were actually making a decent profit while we were building up a good inventory. I quickly learned to be able to “spot” trends in the comic book market and capitalize on them by buying the comics from dealers who priced them too cheaply and reselling them to eager collectors. My wife, Mal, and I continued to work our normal daytime jobs. Mal worked as a secretary at a local computer company called Data General and I was still at Data Terminal Systems making electronic cash registers. Actually, since I am not mechanically inclined at all, I ran the shipping and receiving department. I loved my job. I started at this company when it was basically a “start-up”. Everyone involved in this company in the early days cared about the long term success of the business. We all pitched in to help each other when it was needed. The company always paid me well, and every quarter I would receive a very generous bonus. Inevitably, as the company grew, the sense of “family” vanished. The vice president of manufacturing hired a guy to serve as my boss and we didn’t get along very well. I wasn’t enjoying my job anymore. I also felt that I was thought of as the young kid of the company even though I was now twenty years old. It was time for me to make a change.

In the 1970’s, Massachusetts was not an easy place to live for young hard working Republicans. Taxes were out of control and rising. Liberals like Ted Kennedy were pushing for higher taxes all of the time and the voters in Massachusetts were voting these politicians back into office over and over again. Massachusetts was called Taxachusetts for good reason. My wife and I were discouraged and so we both quit our jobs. We had monthly mortgage payments to make on our new house. Without jobs it would be tough to make ends meet. We were not making enough money selling comic books to pay all of our living expenses. Our friends, Tim and Olivia Roberts had two children and one on the way and they agreed to rent our house for the amount of our mortgage and property taxes. Mal and I moved into the barn at The Freedom Farm. The owners, Paul and Barbara Weatherbee, didn’t charge us any rent. We were however, expected to help out around the farm. Mal helped by trying to keep the meeting rooms clean for the Bible study groups and weekly worship times. My job was to take care of the chickens. We kept the barn pretty cold that winter to help keep the heating costs down. The barn wasn’t insulated very well and on a cold winter night you could feel the wind blowing through the walls. There was always a lot of activity at The Freedom Farm. People would come and go at all times of the day and night. Although we knew and loved most of them, we longed for the quiet of our own place again. After about four months in the barn, we rented a small two bedroom apartment in Hudson , Massachusetts. I got a full time job in the shipping department of Prime Computer in Framingham, Massachusetts. Mal didn’t want to re-join “the Rat Race”. We had been fairly successful selling comic books at the (now monthly) comic book conventions, so after a short discussion, we decided to try to open our first comic book store. We figured that if we could make a profit at a once-a-month show, we’d make a fortune if we were selling comics 6 days a week! Even though we lived about 45 minutes away, we wanted to open the store near Boston because we knew we’d need a large population as a customer base. There was already a comic book store in Cambridge, right next to Boston, called The Million Year Picnic, so we looked in some of the nearby cities. We ended up renting a tiny storefront next to a magician supply store in Watertown, Massachusetts. I had a good feeling about this location because the first time I met with the landlord, he introduced me to the famous pulp author, Walter Gibson. Wow! If the author of The Shadow was wishing me good luck, how could we fail?! We called our store Comic Relief. I agreed to pay $100.00 per month for rent and it also included the heat. My only other expenses would be the electric bill and the phone bill. I called the electric company and they got me hooked up the next day. The phone company was a different story. Because I was new in the business world, the phone company insisted on a $100.00 deposit before they’d give me phone service. I refused to send them that much money for them to just hold. Consequently, I had no phone installed. This was my first big mistake.

We bought some used store fixtures from some stores that were going out of business.We handed out flyers advertising the store at the monthly comic book conventions. Now we needed the comic book inventory. We put all of our back issue inventory into the store but I knew that we’d need to find a source to get all of the weekly shipments of new comic books. The new comics buyers would be the customers who would come in to the store every week for the newest issues and then they’d hopefully buy some of our older comic books too. Back then, there was only one distributor servicing the “direct market” retailers like me. The distributor, Phil Seuling, had made a deal with Marvel Comics and DC Comics to buy comics directly from them at a big discount and then he’d resell the comics to the small retailers like me. The big comic companies liked the idea because these comics were being sold to Phil Seuling on a non-returnable basis. For over 30 years comic books had been sent to magazine and book distributors and whatever they couldn’t sell to the small retailers would be returned to the publishers for credit. In the early 1970’s, the comic book publishers would end up selling only one copy for every three or four that they printed. Now, through Phil Seuling, every copy ordered was a final sale. This was a much more profitable business for the publishers. Phil Seuling received 60% off of the cover price of the comic books and he would resell them to the small retailers like me for 40% off of the cover price. Although we were happy to be able to get the new comics, there were some problems with dealing with Phil. He required pre-payment three months in advance for all of the orders. He also required us to order the comics in 25 issue increments. This was okay on a major title like The Amazing Spider-Man, but we certainly couldn’t sell 25 copies of Sgt. Fury or The Rawhide Kid. In order to be considered a full service comic book store we wanted to carry all of the comics published, so we started an account with Atlas News Distribution near the big city of Worcester Massachusetts. They wouldn’t take advanced orders for comics but for some reason they liked us and allowed us to dig through the stacks of new comics when they arrived and pick out anything we wanted to buy. We only got a 25 % discount off of the cover price, but we were allowed to return any unsold copies.

I was still working at my full time job so I couldn’t go to the distributor to pick out the comics. My wife and her mother would handle that for the store. My wife agreed to run the comic store Monday through Friday and I’d run it on Saturday. That was my second big mistake.

Next: Trouble in paradise.

Part Seven

My wife agreed to run our new store on Monday through Friday and I’d run it on Saturday. Mal and her mother would go to Atlas News and Magazine Distributors and pick out the new weekly comic books for the store.

At this point, I need to tell you about Mal’s family. Mal’s mother, Madeline, was born in a very rural part of Howland, Maine in 1925. She was of Irish/Scottish/ English descent and she was one of 9 children. In 1946 she married Richard Daher, a truck driver who was 100% Lebanese. This was quite a mix in those days. They moved to the tough city of Lawrence, Massachusetts to begin to start their own family. They had 8 children: Virginia, Rose, Priscilla, Richard Jr, Marilyn (my Mal), Alan, Carol, and Madeline. Although Richard earned good money as a hard-working union truck driver, it’s expensive to raise 8 children and so it took almost 17 years for them to save enough money for a down payment on their first home in the quaint community of Hudson, Massachusetts. By the time they moved there, the two oldest girls were married and living in Lawrence. Priscilla had died of a type of Meningitis when she was 13 months old. I met Mal’s parents in 1972 when they were in their late forties. I’m sure I wasn’t the kind of guy they wanted their daughter to marry. Mal’s father was very conservative and I looked like a hippy with hair down past my shoulders. He was a union supporter and I believed that unions were destroying the productivity of the American worker. I would argue with him that the unions were corrupt and they didn’t really offer him any long-range protection. I believed that non-union companies would recognize valuable employees and that unions only rewarded the worst employees by eliminating merit based pay increases. Our biggest disagreements were usually about minorities. I believe that people should be given a chance to prove themselves, but he would lump people in groups based on their skin color. It was an odd thing, considering that he was born of immigrants. It was very much like the relationship of Archie Bunker and his son-in-law, Meathead from the TV show of “ All In The Family”. But even with all of our disagreements, there was never any yelling or screaming . He probably just considered me a stupid kid. But he never bad-mouthed me to my face. He was a really good father-in-law.

Mal’s mother was an interesting woman. She never bothered to get her drivers license. Except for a brief time, she didn’t work outside the home. She considered her job to be raising her children. She skimped and saved money as best as she could. The family didn’t go away on fancy vacations. A vacation for them would be a trip to visit a relative in Maine. Family was very important to her. Almost every Sunday, most of the family would gather together for a big family dinner. The family would also play card games and make jigsaw puzzles together. Very Norman Rockwell. One of Mal’s mother’s best character traits was that she never had a bad thing to say about her children or their spouses (even though some of us weren’t the greatest).

Mal and I lived close to her parents and we spent a lot of time with Mal’s mother. Mal would even pick her up to take her grocery shopping with us. She would follow Mal, pushing the shopping cart, and never complain about the boring grocery shopping. She just enjoyed being with one of her kids. We would frequently meet her and her husband for “coffee and…” at the local diner after supper. Other than their children, Mal’s parents had one major goal. They would sacrifice and save money so that when they could retire at age 62, they would sell their house in Massachusetts, buy a little house in Maine, get a dog and a Cadillac and finally get to relax.

Mal saw what the responsibility of having a big family was. Her parents gave up a lot to provide for their family. Mal decided that she wasn’t really interested in having kids of her own. She had babysat for her younger siblings for many years and was sick of it.

I also came from a large family. My parents had six kids: Me, Jay, Sharon, David, Jeffrey, and Rick. I was the oldest kid and I always felt special. I got to experience things first. I could read before my siblings. I could stay up later. I’d always be their first kid. My father frequently worked more than one job at a time to provide for us. They bought their first house in Newton Massachusetts and eventually moved us out into the “country” of Bolton, Massachusetts so that we wouldn’t be “ruined” by growing up in the big city. Even though it meant a much longer commute each day to work, my parents did what they thought would be best for us kids. My Dad was an electrical engineer. My mother stayed home to take care of us. She didn’t work outside the home until we were all in school. She always had “balanced” meals prepared for us (including desserts!) and we rarely (if ever) ate out. We just couldn’t afford it. My most vivid memory of my Mom is of her constant occupation of the kitchen. It seemed as if she was always stuck in there! Occasionally, we would gather in the kitchen to play “Tripoly” or some other family card game and mom would join in, but usually it would be Dad and all of the kids playing some outdoor game like soldiers at war, or building a stick fort, or having “acorn fights” that would usually end up with someone getting hurt. Dad would also make up games like “stock market” to teach us math skills while we were having fun. I never heard my parents talk about retirement.

Now, back to our store. While I worked at the computer company, Mal would drive about 45 minutes each way to run the comic book store. The commute was never easy for her because the traffic was horrible and it was always dark when she would be driving home. Mal is blind in one eye and it’s hard to drive in the dark. Although Mal had picked up some stuff while working at the comic book conventions with me, she really didn’t know too much about comic books. Comic book collectors usually like to talk about comic books. Some collectors are obsessive about talking about comic books. Mal really couldn’t discuss comics because she didn’t read any. It would annoy her when the customers kept rambling on and on as if the comic book characters were real. She began to feel trapped in this small store. Remember, we didn’t even have a telephone so that she could call a “normal” person. She began to hate comics and would actually hope that no one would come in to the store. Sales were slow during the week, but when I’d come in on Saturday, sales were great! I loved to talk about comics with collectors! I as one of them! I loved owning a comic store and we were making a profit. I thought everything was going great. But Mal just felt trapped. After about 6 months she couldn’t stand it anymore. Not only was she done with the store, but she was done with me! I was unaware that there was even any problem because I was so busy pursuing my own dream that I didn’t see (or I ignored ) her unhappiness. She went back to live with her parents and I closed the store.

Next chapter: AAARRRRGGGG! Let’s get out of here!

Part Eight

After six months of dealing with comic book collectors, working by herself (with no telephone), driving a lousy commute through heavy traffic each day, and not really knowing much about the product she was being forced to sell, my wife grew to feel trapped in our first comic book shop. She had enough. Because I was seemingly more interested in my business than her, she also had enough of me. She moved back into her parent’s house. I was shocked. Everything seemed fine to me. I enjoyed my full time job at the computer factory and I loved working at the store on Saturdays. I had continued selling at the monthly comic book conventions one Sunday each month. I made time for everything I enjoyed except my wife! After a few days of separation, I explained to Mal that my commitment to her was much more important to me than comic books. I told her we’d obviously get rid of the comic book store. I convinced her to come back to me. We decided that it was time to make some changes in our lives. We thought it would be good for us to get away from the “comfort” of our families and friends so that we would have to rely on each other more. I quit my job at the computer factory. I remember the “exit interview” given to me by my boss. He said (in a condescending tone) “You need to face the facts and grow up…you’ll never make any money selling comic books.”

Since we weren’t working, we thought we’d take advantage of the free time by going to Disney World. I convinced my whole family to go…My Mom, Dad, all six kids, and Mal. My brother Jay had married Annette and she came too. We drove down in three cars and camped in Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort. We all had a great time. In fact, it was so much fun that Mal and I decided that we would move to Florida so that we could work in Disney World. It seemed like such a happy place!

After we got home from this vacation, my brother Jay decided that he was moving to Chattanooga ,Tennessee. Mal and I had an old van and plenty of time (since we still weren’t working) so we loaded up the van with Jay’s stuff to help him move south. We figured we’d go from Tennessee to Disney World to apply for work. Jay and his wife Annette were headed to Tennessee to join a group of “believers” in a commune-type life. Mal and I ended up staying with them for almost a month. We enjoyed being around the members of this “group” of people who really seemed to care about each other.

One of the men living there had some old comic books from the early 1960’s that he wanted to sell so he could donate the money to the group. I had gone to a local flea market and heard about an upcoming comic book convention so I decided I’d sell the comics as a favor to these nice people we’d met. After a little investigation I contacted the organizer of the convention and rented some table space from him. I figured it would be a fun way to spend a Sunday. Little did I know how pivotal this day would be!
Next chapter: We meet the hardest working man in the comic business: Gary Walker!

Part Nine

I arrived at this small comic book convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee really early so that I could convince the organizer to let me have the best space in the room. I learned from my experiences in Boston that the tables closest to the entrance were the best because many collectors would spend their money on comic books as soon as they saw the issues they wanted. If you were set up far away from the door, the collectors were frequently out of spending money before they got to you. Unfortunately, this organizer had already assigned the tables to specific sellers and since I booked the show late, I had a table tucked into a corner. I set up my small display of early Spider-Man comics and covered the whole table with a thick clear plastic sheet so that the collectors could see the comics I had for sale but couldn’t steal them. This was a common practice in the mid 1970’s. I was the first comic dealer set up at this show. I watched with curiosity as the dealers from the southern states showed up to set up their displays. Many of them arrived late and seemed to move quite slowly. I was surprised because the show was opening within an hour and it didn’t look as if they would be ready. There was one dealer who stood out from the rest. He was an older man (in his late 40’s) with graying hair. He was a little heavy. And he was working so hard that he was actually sweating! I watched as he brought in load after load of “chicken boxes” full of comic books. Chicken boxes were thick cardboard boxes that were covered in wax that actual chicken companies like Weaver and Tyson would use to ship their product to the supermarkets. The southern comic dealers would get these boxes from the supermarkets and wash them out and use them to store comic books. You could fit two rows of about 150 comics in each box. This hard working comic book dealer carried far more boxes of comics than he’d ever be able to display in his small booth. He set up his display and put the extra comic books under his tables. He was the only dealer in the room smart enough to realize the value of using all of the available space to display merchandise and maintain some extra stock to replace comics that sell quickly and to keep some low demand comics under the tables just in case someone asked for them. I was impressed by his energy and his attention to detail. He worked hard to locate the comic book that each collector was looking for in his large assortment of comics. I was also impressed because other than me, he was the last dealer to pack up his comics at the end of the show. He was there to sell comic books and he’d stay until the last collector was finished spending. That was my intention also.

When the show was completely over, I approached him and introduced myself. His name was Gary Walker from Nashville, Tennessee. I told him that I was looking for a job in the area. We really liked Tennessee and figured we could work here for a while and eventually get around to work in Disney World. I explained that I’d like a job in “shipping and receiving” at a big company, since that was my past job experience. Gary politely said he didn’t know of any job openings in that field. Then, almost as an afterthought, I mentioned that I had owned a comic book store for a while. Gary was surprised. He had been seriously considering opening a comic book store of his own in Nashville. He invited Mal and I to come to Nashville to work for him. That sounded good to Mal and I.

Early that next week, we packed up our suitcases and drove to Nashville. We stayed in a motel for a short time while we began working with Gary. In a very brief time, we found that we were really welcomed into his family. Gary was married to Peggy and they had two children. Greg was in his late teens and Karen was about 14 years old. Mal enjoyed spending time with Karen while I worked with Gary, sorting comic books. It wasn’t long before we started sleeping and eating at the Walker’s home. It was a nice place to work.

After a couple of weeks, Gary made me an offer of full time employment. I think it was $125.00 a week. With no benefits. It wasn’t great money, but I really liked the environment. Comic books…friendly people…no snow. Best of all, I got to spend a lot of time with Mal. Gary ended up with a really good deal. He basically got the two of us for one small paycheck.

Mal and I went back to Massachusetts and packed up all of our belongings and rented a truck to move to Tennessee. Our relatives and friends were sad to see us move away, but they understood and most were very supportive. As we drove away from my parent’s home, Mal cried. This was really a big move for us to take. We probably wouldn’t see our relatives and friends again for quite a long time. I don’t remember being sad. I only remember the excitement of beginning a new adventure. Looking back, I wonder how my Dad felt. I was his oldest child and I was moving far away for the first time. Did he think I was crazy? All I remember is him having a positive attitude about my life’s plans. I’d tell him these crazy ideas and he’d ask me if I’d thought them through. He would then urge me to go after my dreams. He’d say “Do it now before you have kids.” So now we were headed to Nashville!

Before Gary Walker opened his store, his main source of comic book income came from setting up at big flea markets. Once each month he would set up in Nashville, Indianapolis, and Louisville. These required a lot of preparation. We would stock the chicken boxes full of comics, load his truck, drive to the flea market, set up, and then work hard to sell the right comic book to the eager collectors. Gary taught me a very important lesson. He would be sure to get the names and addresses of as many comic book customers as he could. About a week before each flea market we would send a postcard to everyone on our mailing list to remind them that we’d be coming to town. Collectors appreciated the “personal invitation” to see our new comic book stock and they would be sure to stop at our booth each month. It became very clear to me how important a mailing list is for small businesses.

Although the flea markets were Gary’s “bread and butter”, we were all looking forward to opening a comic book store. It didn’t take too long for Gary to find a small building for rent on the edge of “Music Row” in downtown Nashville. Now, many of you only think of Nashville as a town of barefoot country folk, corn-cob pipes, and yodeling. Well it wasn’t that way at all! In 1976, Nashville was a large city full of all types of music and culture. Gary’s first comic book store was located within walking distance of Vanderbilt University…a world-class university. I was amazed at the vast array of different college students who became customers. We had students from all around the world shopping at our store.

One of the first things we had to do was come up with a name for the store. Gary ran a contest at the flea markets and encouraged our customers to submit their ideas for our new name. During dinner at the Walker’s home one night, we all started suggesting possible names for the store. Mal just started saying all kinds of strange combinations of words until she hit on a name that we all agreed would be perfect. “The Great Escape!” That was what the comic book hobby really was…a great escape from the pressures and trials of real life. Gary and Peggy gave Mal a check for her creativity and “The Great Escape” opened for business.

Next Chapter: We settle in…but not for long.

Part Ten

When Mal and I moved to Nashville to work for Gary and Peggy Walker in 1977, we needed to find a place to live. We contacted a real estate agent and she showed us a few apartments to rent. We couldn’t afford anything expensive because we were only earning $125.00 per week working for Gary. We still owned our house in Massachusetts and we were not ready to sell it yet, so money was scarce. We found an apartment that was advertised quite cheaply and it sounded nice. The realtor explained “Oh no sir, you don’t want to live there…wink, wink.” Apparently it was an area of town where the majority of people were African American and this lady refused to let us even look at the apartment. This was very strange for us. We grew up in Massachusetts and to us there would be nothing unusual about living in primarily non-white neighborhood. This was our first encounter with racism. But as it turned out, we found a cheaper apartment somewhere else. I think we paid about $100.00 per month. It was an attic apartment with no air conditioning. There was a huge hole in one wall that we ended up putting a bureau in front of. The wallpaper was nailed onto the wall in places. We had sold most of our original furniture to our close friends, Debbie and Allan Traylor, so we borrowed a couch from our new downstairs neighbor. We lived in this apartment for about 8 months.

Things were going great at Gary Walker’s new comic book store “The Great Escape.” Business was growing almost every week. Gary basically let me run the comic book part of the store while he developed the record department. Gary had a background in the music business as a songwriter and producer and he still had a love for the music business. Gary would be in charge of all of the record buying and he allowed me to purchase most of the comic book collections. For some reason, Gary had faith in my ability to buy comic books at “the right price.” We always wanted to be fair to the owner of the comics, but we needed to be able to sell the comics at a reasonable profit. With this philosophy, we would usually buy 9 out of 10 collections that we bid on because people realized we were making a fair offer. This resulted in us building a great reputation as the honest dealers. Gary taught me that the customer is the most important factor in a successful business. If you treat them right, they’ll keep coming back and they’ll spread the word that your store is the only place to shop.

I learned another important lesson one day while working at The Great Escape. A man came in to the store with a list of old comic books that he wanted to sell to us. The list contained many of the early issues of The Hulk, Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man, but he had listed them as poor, fair, and good condition. Gary wasn’t interested in the comic books in “low grade”. If the comic books were in very good, fine, or near mint condition, these would have been very desirable. So Gary explained it to the man and the customer left. I contacted the guy later that day and expressed interest in examining his comic books and perhaps, I’d make him an offer. So after work, I went to his house to appraise his comics. I was surprised to find that the comic books that he graded as poor, fair, and good condition were actually beautiful condition issues! Most of them were in very-fine to near mint! I made the customer a generous offer. I paid for the comic books with my own money and excitedly called Gary to tell him about this great collection of comics that I had just bought for the store. I knew that once Gary saw these comic books, he’d want to have them for his store inventory. I was right. Gary reimbursed me for the money I spent on the collection. All I wanted was to be able to buy the gorgeous copy of Spider-Man #2 at the exact amount that we had paid for it. Gary explained to me that he really needed it to be available to sell to a customer for full price and if he sold it to me at “cost” it would deprive The Great Escape of potential profit. I wasn’t very pleased with this decision, even though he did give me a decent price on it. I thought I deserved it at exactly the same price that Gary paid for it. It was the only time Gary and I had an unpleasant discussion. Years later, I learned that Gary was right. Every item we buy has the potential to keep our business profitable. If we were to sell these hard to find collectables to our employees at cost, we wouldn’t make any money on them and we’d be depriving our customers of the opportunity to complete their collections at our store. They’d end up shopping elsewhere for the hard to find comic books and collectables. It’s one of the few negative things about hiring collectors to work in our store. They really desire the product that we sell as much as the customers do!

Mal and I continued setting up at the flea markets three week-ends each month and we ran the store 4 or 5 days a week and we still enjoyed it. Occasionally Gary would let us set up at comic book shows in Atlanta and Cleveland. I loved doing the shows. We would get set up quickly and while Mal watched our booth, I’d go from dealer to dealer buying up comics that I believed they had underpriced. This wasn’t a common thing for the southern comic dealers to do. They were mostly content to take their time and wait to make their sales to collectors when the show opened. I usually had the opportunity to profit in this way all to myself, but more and more frequently, I’d encounter a dealer from Ohio doing the same thing as me. His name was Jay Maybruck and he’d eventually become a major part of our lives.

Because of Gary’s solid inventory and my buying and selling ability, the comic book shows were very profitable for us. Being based in Tennessee however, made it difficult to attend most of the big comic book shows. Gary got his start with the flea markets so that’s where most of our energies were focused.

After living in our crummy apartment for about 8 months, we decided to buy a house. We offered our house in Massachusetts to our friends who were still renting it from us, but they decided not to buy it. They were upset at us when we told them that we had to sell it, but we had no choice…all of our money was tied up in this house. Reluctantly, they moved out and we sold the house in about a week. With the money, we bought a nice 3 bedroom, all brick house in Hendersonville, Tennessee for $26,000.00. It was about a 20 minute commute to The Great Escape by highway.

It was about two months later that I ran into Jay Maybruck again at a big comic book show. He told me he had been noticing that I was “pretty sharp” at buying and selling comics. He said that I was the only other dealer with a “gut instinct” to be able to cash in on upcoming trends in the comic book market. He told me that he wanted to hire me to work with him in Dayton, Ohio. I explained to him that I loved working for the Walker family, but thanks for the interest. The next time I saw Jay he made me an offer that was so good, that I had to seriously consider it. He offered me $17,000.00 per year as a base salary. He offered me 10% of all mail order sales. He told me that we would never have to set up at flea markets again because he only set up at comic book shows. I was thrilled about that because it was much more exciting at the big comic shows. But the biggest promise was that Mal and I would only have to work one week-end each month. Mal and I thought that this could be our big chance to make a lot of money. Even though this would eventually be an important stepping stone for our career in the comic book business, I must explain to you, the reader, that I learned a valuable lesson. Do not chase the money as your primary goal. Your happiness is much more important than money. We loved Tennessee and the whole Walker family and we were now leaving this comfortable situation for an unknown future.

When we finally told Gary and Peggy that we were moving away, I’m sure they weren’t too pleased with us. They had hired another guy to help out at the store and the flea markets, and although he was a good person, he didn’t have the same enthusiasm that I did. To their credit, Gary and Peggy expressed their support for us and gave us their blessing. If they were upset they concealed it well.

We called a real estate agent to come to our house to give us an appraisal. He explained that we had just recently bought the house for $26,000.00 and he didn’t think we could get any more for it than that. I told him we’d only list the house with him if he’d sell it for $31,000.00. He tried to point out that there were bigger and better homes in my neighborhood for less than that, but I stood firm. Reluctantly, he gave in. At 10:00 PM that night he put a “for sale” sign on our front lawn. It was sold for full price by the next morning!

Next Chapter: We’re off to Ohio.

Part Eleven

We accepted the offer of Jay Maybruck to work for him in Dayton, Ohio. We said good-bye to all of our friends in Nashville including Ray and Virginia Sawyer, Gary and Peggy Walker, Greg and Karen Walker, Cliff Furline, Bill Mullins, Lonnie Cummins, and dozens more. We sold our house and loaded up the rental truck and rented a townhouse apartment in Huber Heights, Ohio, just down the street from my new boss. Jay was a single guy about a year or two older than me. He was formerly a school teacher, but the prospect of making huge money drew him into the rapidly growing comic book business.

At the time that I accepted his employment offer, Jay had one of the best inventories of valuable old comics I had encountered. I was eager to be associated with such an impressive company.

Jay taught me how important "image" is for a business. He wanted to be perceived as the biggest comic book dealer in the country. He named his business "Sparkle City Comics" and was one of the first comic book dealers to develop a recognizable character logo that would be used in all of his advertising. For some reason, Jay used sheep and a Shepard named Hans The Herder as his company's pitchman. At comic book conventions, our large comic book display racks featured full color paintings of lots of cute sheep dancing and being silly. I know it probably sounds stupid, but this tactic really worked! We were recognized at every show we went to because of these sheep. We were also in a position at almost every major convention that made it impossible to miss us. Jay made a deal with the owners of America's biggest convention organizer, Creation Conventions, to buy 10 full table spaces at every show they put on! The normal cost of these table spaces was about $150.00 per table, but Jay agreed to pay for a full years worth of spaces in advance at a greatly reduced cost of $50.00 per table. This helped the convention owners to have up-front working capital and it gave Jay the best location at each convention and saved him a ton of money over the year in table fees. Because we had the best display locations at these shows, the collectors would spend most of their money with us. Just as importantly, many collectors would offer us any comic books that they wanted to sell. We could pay a fair price (usually higher then any other dealer) because we were confident that we could sell the comics to other collectors very quickly. Sometimes the comic books would re-sell within minutes of our purchasing them! At a convention in New York City, a collector sold us a complete run of Marvel Mystery Comics #1-10 (from 1939-1940) for $12,000.00. We sold the entire group to a collector from England for $19,000.00 about 20 minutes later. Our great locations, strong inventory, and available cash for purchasing comic books enabled us to dominate the national convention market. Our competition didn't like us but the comic book collectors loved us.

When I say "us", I really mean Sparkle City Comics. Jay was the owner and I was just an employee who was paid a weekly salary. Although Jay knew I was very good at "the comic business", he didn't follow through on his original promises. I did earn the base salary of $17,000.00 per year, but I never received the percentage of our growing mail order business. I was promised that I'd only have to work one weekend each month, but the schedule was actually much different. We would stock our comic book inventory on Wednesdays and load up Jay's van on Thursday. We would drive Thursday night and arrive at most shows by Friday afternoon. We would set up our huge display on Friday and usually work until midnight buying and selling with the other dealers. The show would open on Saturday morning and we'd sell to the collectors until the show closed at around 8:00pm. We would go back to our hotel room and "process" the comic books that we had bought during the show so they'd be ready to sell first thing in the morning on Sunday. We would sell comics all day Sunday and then take down our display at around 6:00pm. We would load the van and drive Sunday night through Monday night to get back to Ohio. Tuesday we would unload the van. Mal would do the laundry while Jay and I restocked the comics on Wednesday and then we'd start again on Thursday. We attended 42 comic book shows that year! Although it was hard work and very long hours, I enjoyed it for a few reasons. I got to be with my wife, Mal, almost all of the time because she always traveled with us. Jay always traveled in style. We ate at nice restaurants and stayed at decent hotels. This time in my life was also very fast paced and exciting. We became known all over the United States. We became comic book "celebrities" in a way. We also became trend-setters and market makers.

Next chapter: My knowledge and love of comic books creates hot trends in the market.

Part Twelve

I was a comic book reader and collector. My boss at Sparkle City Comics, Jay Maybruck, was not a comic book fan. He understood the business side of selling comic books. He also had access to a lot of cash to buy comic book collections. Together, we were quite a team. Jay was not the kind of boss who forced the boring tasks on his employees. Jay would bag, sort, and price the comic books right along side of my wife and I. Jay had a natural ability to price his comic books at just the right price to make them irresistible for the collectors. He didn’t really believe that the pricing information in the Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was accurate for most comic books. The common comics from the late 1960’s-1970’s were readily available and although the price guide listed them at $2.00-$3.00 each, Jay would price them at 75 cents. Because of this low price policy, we would sell thousands of common comics each month. Other comic book dealers would spend thousands of dollars on our inventory to fill in their stock.

The pricing inaccuracies were even more noticeable on what we called “key” issues. Collector demand was very strong for the first issue of a comic book series, or a first appearance of a major character, or issues drawn by popular comic artists of the day and because the demand was greater than the supply of these key issues, Jay believed that these comics should be priced higher than the official price guide. I remember Jay and I surprising other comic book dealers by paying 100% of the current price guide price on certain comic books. We would then price them at what we thought they should sell for and usually we’d be right.

One day, at a convention in Buffalo New York, I saw a copy of a comic book titled “An Earthman On Venus”. This comic was drawn by a talented artist named Wally Wood. I recognized that this comic book was very scarce (mostly based on my own experience) and so I bought it at the dealers full asking price of $18.00. We put it into a clean new plastic bag and priced it at $120.00 and sold it within a week.

At another show, after we closed up our booth on the first night, I was reading an old comic from 1954. It was World’s Finest #71 and it featured Superman and Batman together in an adventure. Earlier in this series, Superman and Batman had separate stories in each issue, but I realized that this was quite possibly the beginning of their “team-up” stories that would run for many years. We had paid about $8.00 for this issue. I put a large label on the plastic bag that read “first Superman-Batman team-up” and I sold it the next morning for about $180.00. If I had this same copy today, it would sell for $1250.00.

One other night, I was reading an old Batman comic book from the 1960’s that had a reprint of a 1950’s story called “The Riddle Of The Red Hood”. I remembered reading this story when I was a kid, but something struck me as odd. At the end of this story, it’s revealed that the criminal known as the Red Hood was actually The Joker (Batman’s most famous villain). I realized that it was in this story that the origin of how the Joker became a green haired, white faced criminal was explained for the first time! I did a little research and found out that this story originally appeared in Detective Comics #168 from the early 1950’s. When the convention opened the next morning, I searched the other dealers inventories until I found a copy in nice condition for under $20.00. Again, I re-bagged it and labeled it as the first origin of The Joker and sold it very quickly for about $300.00. Keep in mind that this comic book had been sitting, unsold, in another dealers booth for the entire first day of the comic book convention! (This comic book sells today for about $4000.00 ) We became so “respected” by comic collectors and other dealers (for our pricing intuition) that we decided to cash in on our newfound reputations as experts. So, in 1978, we started publishing “The Investors Newsletter”. This 8-12 page monthly newsletter featured our opinions about the comic book market. We would list the comics that we believed were underpriced and would explain why we thought this. We would list the comics as good long or short term investments. Most issues also had a front cover of our sheep mascots drawn by popular comic book artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s including Marshall Rogers, Howard Chaykin, Gil Kane, Walt Simonson, John Romita, and more.

These are some of the comic books that The Investors Newsletter recommended as good long term investments:

Brave and the Bold #28 (first appearance of The Justice League) was listed in the price guide at $27.00 while we were selling them for $125.00. They now sell for $7000.00

More Fun #101 (first appearance of Superboy) was listed in the price guide at $210.00 while we were selling it for $325.00. It now sells for $10,000.00

Showcase #22 (first appearance of the modern Green Lantern) was listed in the price guide for $60.00 while we were selling it for $90.00. It now sells for $6200.00

The Incredible Hulk #181 (the first appearance of Wolverine) listed in the price guide at $1.20 but we were selling them for $2.50 each! They now sell for about $1500.00 (we did goof, however, and suggested this comic book as a good short term investment!)

Amazing Fantasy #15 (the very first appearance of Spider-Man) was listed in the price guide at $360.00 while we were selling it for $500.00. It now sells for $42,000.00

Now I’m sure that many of you are thinking, “well, almost all comic books are more valuable now than they were in 1978!” The point is, we predicted many of the fastest rising comic book prices in the hobby. If a collector had followed our advice he could have made an average return of about 200% in a twelve month period. Our advice was so good that it wasn’t long before the popularity of our newsletter made it difficult for Sparkle City Comics to profit on these trends. Our newsletter subscribers were now buying up the recommended comics before we could buy them. After 13 issues, we discontinued publication of The Investors Newsletter.

Next chapter: My comic reading leads us to an important discovery!

Part Thirteen

In late 1978 I was working for Jay Maybruck's comic book company, "Sparkle City Comics". Jay was the business guy (although he wasn't very good at managing money) and I was the comic book collector/reader. I collected almost every new comic book published and I loved to read the older comics. On the average, I'd read about 200 comic books each month. Many of these were comics from the 1940's and 1950's that Sparkle City Comics would get in collections. One night, on our way home from a comic book convention, I was reading a comic book titled " Teen-age Dope Slaves". This was a 1952 comic book that reprinted the old newspaper strip of Rex Morgan M.D. It was an interesting anti-drug story. This comic book was worth about $150.00 . I happened to notice an interesting message on the back cover of the comic. It explained that additional copies of this comic book were available for your school or civic organization. Now I knew that most comic books were printed in Sparta, Illinois and then they'd be shipped out directly to the magazine and book distributors around the country. The publishers usually didn't get very many copies sent to their offices. But this advertisement indicated that they would have extra copies of this comic book available. Even though this offer was over 25 years old, when we got back to our Dayton, Ohio homes, Jay wrote a letter to the publisher of the comic requesting copies of Teen-age Dope Slaves. Imagine our surprise when we got a reply stating that the publisher was sure they had copies of Teen-age Dope Slaves in their warehouse and as soon as they found them they'd send them to us at a cost of 10 cents each plus postage! We quickly sent a money order to buy 100 copies.

About two weeks later we got a letter from the publisher explaining that they hadn't found the comic books we'd asked for but they'd keep searching the warehouse. They explained that there were thousands of comic books in the warehouse and it could take a few more weeks to locate the comic book we wanted. In the meantime, they'd found a different comic book about drugs titled "Trapped". This was a 1951 comic book "give-away" that was distributed to schools. It had a strong anti-drug message so the publisher thought we might be interested in them. This comic book was not listed in the comic book price guide so not too many collectors were even aware of its existence. They had sent us 25 copies of Trapped. We priced them at $6.95 each and put them into our inventory.

At the first New York convention that we attended after receiving these comics, a serious collector was astounded to find a copy of Trapped available at our booth. He had heard rumors of this comic but had never actually seen it. After he bought a copy he explained that this was one of the few comic books that was favorably mentioned in "Seduction Of The Innocent", the anti-comic book book that was written in the 1950's by Fredric Wertham. In 1978, any comic book that was mentioned in "Seduction Of The Innocent" was in high demand. By the end of the convention, we had sold all of the copies of Trapped that we had. We didn't tell anyone where these copies came from. When we got home we ordered 100 more copies. We priced these copies at $25.00 each and sold out very quickly. We ordered 200 more copies and started selling them for $100.00 each or we would trade them for about $200.00 worth of comic books we needed for our inventory. These books were just about the fastest selling comics in the business.

Even though we were making a huge profit on these comics, we were eager to get the comic books we were really waiting for.Teen-age Dope Slaves! When we called the publisher, they apologized for not finding them in their warehouse. We decided that we couldn't just sit by and wait because we were concerned that some other comic dealer would discover this treasure filled warehouse. We arranged a meeting with the owner of the comic book publisher. We drove to New York to discuss purchasing everything in the warehouse. The owner seemed very pleasant. He talked about his interest in The Boy Scouts and then started rambling about his cartoon characters ,community involvement, and some other things that didn't really make much sense to us. After about 30 minutes we brought up the subject of the potential fortune sitting in his warehouse somewhere in New York. We explained that old comic books were now quite valuable and we'd be willing to pay a reasonable price for everything. We were stunned at his response. He insisted that there was no warehouse! He denied that they had any copies of the old comic books they had published. When we pointed out that we had bought some old comic books directly from his company just recently, his secretary ended our meeting. We left the building feeling like we were part of an episode of The Twilight Zone. This ended our business dealings with this company. They stopped selling their old comic books. We later discovered that some unscrupulous warehouse employee stole most of the valuable comic books and artwork and sold them directly to other comic book dealers throughout the United States.

Next Chapter: The comic book business explodes and we become partners in the business.

Part Fourteen

In 1978, while I was working for Jay Maybruck at Sparkle City Comics, I learned quite a bit about business. I learned how important it is to be able to make quick decisions. If you are faster at making decisions than your competition, you’ll frequently be the winner of collections of old and valuable comic books. If you respond to your customer’s needs faster than your competition, you’ll also sell more old comic books. At Sparkle City Comics we did both.

I also learned that it was important to have a lot of available money to buy collections of old comic books because you never knew when a great collection would become available. There were many times that we ended up buying massive collections simply because we were the only dealers who had the cash necessary to complete the purchase.

I remember one day, while we were at our Ohio office, we received a phone call from a man in Kansas City. He explained that he had a huge collection of comic books from the 1950’s and early 1960’s that he wanted to sell. Jay and I immediately made arrangements to meet with this man at his home to evaluate his collection. We asked him to describe the condition of the comics and to give us a list of some of the more valuable books he had. We determined, based on his descriptions, that we were very interested in buying the entire collection. We jumped into Jay’s car and drove 12 hours to see this collection. It turned out that this man didn’t understand how to determine the accurate condition of his comic books. Many of them were in beat-up condition. Some had the covers missing. Jay was furious with this guy but he managed to stay composed until we got outside. Jay had quite a bad temper at times and he wanted to make this guy “pay” for wasting our time. It took a lot of effort for me to calm Jay down. We decided to stay in Kansas City overnight and we’d check out some of the local comic book stores in the area. We went to Clint’s Books and spent thousands of dollars buying up great old comics that we knew were underpriced. At least our long trip wasn’t completely wasted.

In our business relationship, I was the “good cop” and Jay was the “bad cop”. Jay was usually seen as the tough, all-business guy, while I enjoyed the role of the easy going guy. As a team, we were very successful. At almost every comic book convention, our sales would be at least $20,000.00. Our best show was the big Chicago Comic Convention. We arrived for the three day show with two vans and one station wagon full of comic books. We had a great first day of sales. At the end of the first day a dealer from Minneapolis offered to buy our whole display if we’d give him 65% off of the sticker price. For some reason, Jay decided to accept his offer. We ended up leaving the show with a briefcase filled with $33,000.00 in cash. Jay had sold all of the comic books that he had brought to the show but he still had a great inventory back in Ohio. Jay surprised me with an offer to become an equal partner with him from that day on. I would inherit half of his inventory in exchange for my abilities and knowledge. This arrangement wouldn’t last much longer.

Next chapter: We miss our friends and relatives.

Part Fifteen

My wife and I had moved away from our family and friends almost 2 ½ years ago. We had lived in Nashville, Tennessee and Dayton, Ohio. We worked with Gary Walker and learned how important it was to care about your customers. We worked with Jay Maybruck and learned a lot about marketing and pricing strategies. We traveled to dozens of places including Chicago, Atlanta, San Diego, New York, New Jersey, and met hundreds of interesting comic book creators and collectors. But we missed our family and friends.

While we lived in Tennessee, Mal’s Mom and Dad and her two youngest sisters came for a visit. This was something special because they had really never traveled outside of New England. Mal’s brother Richard and his wife Diane came to see us in Tennessee. Mal’s oldest sister, Ginny, and her husband Denis, and their three kids came to visit us when we lived in Tennessee and when we lived in Ohio. Two friends from Massachusetts, David Hathaway and Warren Weatherbee visited us in Tennessee. My young cousin Jud came for week in Tennessee. My childhood buddy, Allan Traylor and his wife Debbie also visited us in Tennessee. My Dad visited us one day while he was in Ohio on business. We enjoyed these visits but it wasn’t enough.

Mal and I had been married for five years now and we wanted to settle down. We wanted to move closer to family. Most importantly, we were considering having children. Unfortunately, the prices of homes in Massachusetts had risen sharply. An average three bedroom home now cost about $60,000.00.

Our friend, Warren Weatherbee, had been dabbling in real estate sales. He told us he knew of a house that could be bought really cheaply. While we were on a short trip to Massachusetts, we made an appointment to see the house but when we arrived we were told that we couldn’t see the inside. The outside of the house was a mess but the owners were only asking $16,000.00 for it. Warren assured us that the house could be fixed up so it would be livable.

When we got back to Ohio we made our decision. Without even seeing the inside of this small house, we made an offer of $15,000.00 cash for it. Since we knew the place was in rough condition, we didn’t need a home inspection. Since we would be paying cash for it and we wouldn’t be involved with the long process of obtaining a mortgage from a bank, we could complete the purchase very quickly. The owners accepted our offer. Warren took care of all of the details for us. Now we had to break the news to Jay!

When we told Jay that we wanted to move back to be with our family, I’m sure he wasn’t happy, but he supported our decision. Jay suggested that we’d remain partners if I could attend the 5 or 6 major comic book conventions each year. These shows were the most profitable part of our business and we both needed to be there. Jay would attend the smaller shows located near his home in Ohio and I’d either drive or fly to meet Jay at the big shows. This seemed like it would work for the both of us.

So, in December of 1978,we hired a moving company to bring most of our stuff up to Massachusetts, but we packed up our old van with my comic book collection, irreplaceable personal things like photographs, and our house plants. We made it almost all of the way to our new home. We had pulled off of the highway to get gasoline at my friend, Ray Frank’s station, when the transmission died.

Ray Frank was an interesting guy. He had married one of Mal’s best friends from high school and we had become good friends and got together quite frequently. Ray was a great mechanic and an honest one. But he wasn’t cheap. His hourly rates were probably the highest in the area. He enjoyed playing the part of a grouchy, unpredictable, cranky guy, but I knew him differently. When Ray realized that I didn’t have the money to pay him to fix my transmission, he let me work at his gas station to pay it off. At the time, minimum wage was about $3.00 an hour. Ray gave me $6.00 an hour even though I was pretty useless at a gas station since I’m the most unmechanically inclined person I know. He also gave me a full set of snow tires as a gift. Many people just didn’t get to know him like I did.

Before we got up to our “new” home in Sterling, Massachusetts, a group of our friends, including Suisei Goguen and Debbie Traylor, decided to surprise us by cleaning up the inside of our run-down house. We heard that it was so bad that Suisei cried at the prospect of us living there. By the time we arrived it was still in rough condition, but it was clean. This house was about 100 years old and at one time it had been a railroad station. The house had a living room, dining room and kitchen, and one bathroom that had the toilet installed in the middle of the floor. The house had two bedrooms upstairs with no heat. The living room had no ceiling or sheetrock on the walls. The outside of the house was covered in old, broken asphalt shingles. It looked like a shack but it was all paid for and we were happy to be back.

Since we were planning to try to have a child, we realized it would be a good idea to get health insurance. Mal and I had gone three years or so without any insurance, but now we would have to be more “grown-up”. I didn’t think I could afford to buy insurance on my own, so we decided that I should get a job at a normal business that provided insurance as a benefit. This would work out because I really only needed to be available for 5 or 6 weekends each year to work the conventions with Jay, so I had plenty of time available for a “real” job. I got a job in the production control department of a company called GenRad in my old hometown of Bolton, Massachusetts.

My job consisted of keeping a written record of the movement of materials in this large factory. The people who worked in the office with me were very pleasant and I enjoyed working with them. The problem was, that almost every number I saw reminded me of a specific comic book issue! #247 was the Adventure Comics with the first appearance of The Legion Of Superheroes. #83 was the Journey Into Mystery comic book with the first appearance of Thor. #4 was the Showcase Comics issue that introduced The Flash. I had to keep telling myself that this job was important to us because we needed the health insurance. I had to stay here because Mal and I were now expecting a child!

Next chapter: …And we thought we were prepared!

Part Sixteen

I was working full-time at Gen Rad Company in Bolton, Massachusetts, primarily for the health insurance they provided. I was paid a decent salary and I enjoyed the people I worked with. My boss, Diane, was a very pleasant woman in her late 50’s, but she lacked the vision to bring our production control department into the future. Everything was done by hand. There were no computers. We kept track of the movement of materials in the company by writing and then erasing the information on index cards. It seemed like an enormous waste of time to me.

My commitment to my comic book partner, Jay, was that I’d be available for the 5 or 6 big comic book conventions each year. Diane was accommodating enough to allow me to take the occasional Friday off so I could travel to these shows. I’d come back from these shows really exhausted but it was a necessary thing. After I worked there for six months, Diane called me into her office and told me that I was doing a great job. She explained that normally I’d have to be working there for a year before I would get a review and a raise, but she thought I was so good at my job that she’d make an exception. She gave me a 20% raise in pay. I thought about it for a few minutes and thanked her for her kindness but I explained that I made more money in a single weekend at the big comic book conventions than I earned in a whole year at Gen Rad. I gave her my two weeks notice.

I knew that my health insurance policy would cover most of the expenses for the upcoming birth of our child so I wasn’t concerned about that anymore. It’s a good thing we did have this coverage. In August of 1979, my wife Mal smashed head-on into a telephone pole when she was about 6 months pregnant. We rushed to the hospital to be sure that the baby was unharmed. Thankfully both Mal and the baby were okay.

When we were sure that Mal was okay to travel, we went on a business trip to Disney World with Jay Maybruck and one of our best customers. This customer was a serious collector who spent at least $20,000.00 each year on old comic books. We were his favorite comic dealers. We took very good care of him. We rented one of the nice three bedroom condos right on the golf course. The customer enjoyed the attention we gave him and we all had a fun trip. Good customer relations are important.

Our baby wasn’t due until late November so we thought we had plenty of time to fix up one of the bedrooms to be the nursery. Mal’s mother and her sisters, Carol and Madeline, were helping to put up wallpaper in the baby’s room one day when suddenly Mal’s water broke. This was way too early! The baby wasn’t due for almost seven more weeks!

Next chapter: Our baby comes…and stops breathing!

Part Seventeen

Our baby wasn’t actually due for another seven weeks but we were now on the way to the hospital. The hospital we chose was 45 minutes away from where we lived. Mal was in labor throughout the night and on October 10, 1979, our son Adam Dean Howley was born. The day he was born there was a huge snowstorm. There hadn’t been snow this early in Massachusetts for over forty years.

Being born so prematurely, Adam was very small. He only weighed a little more than four pounds. His tiny lungs were not fully developed and he was jaundiced , but other than that he seemed okay. On the third day Adam stopped breathing. The doctors kept him alive somehow and put him on a medication to keep him breathing. It was very difficult for us to leave Adam in the hospital when Mal was discharged but we had no choice. We had figured that Mal and the baby would be in and out of the hospital within three days or so, so the long distance wouldn’t be a problem. As it turned out, we were mistaken. We had to make the long trip to the hospital every day to feed Adam. At first, because Adam was so weak, the nurses had to feed him with a tube down his throat. After a couple of weeks he was strong enough to eat without the tube. We would stay in the hospital for hours each day for the chance to hold him when the nurses took him out of his incubator. It was sad for us to see him with all of the wires attached.

After two weeks in the intensive care unit of Framingham Union Hospital, Adam continued to lose weight. He just couldn’t keep his food down. He now weighed only three pounds, eight ounces. The medicine that the doctors were giving him to keep him breathing was causing him to reject his food. The hospital policy was to keep the infants until they weighed at least five pounds. The decision was made to take Adam off of the medicine. Luckily, his breathing improved and he began gaining some weight and after three weeks in the hospital, Adam was allowed to come home with us.

Even though Adam was still very weak and tiny, I was committed to working at the biggest comic book convention of the year…the Thanksgiving Creation Show in New York City. This show drew the largest crowds in the country and they were big spenders. I hated leaving Mal at home with Adam, but I had no choice. We had appointments with out largest customers including the president of The Superglue Company, two major retailers from England, and a president of a regional Pepsi Bottling Company. I called Mal from New York as often as I could.

Shortly after the Thanksgiving convention, Jay came up with an interesting idea. He would rent space in shopping malls around the country. He wasn’t interested in selling product at these malls…he only wanted to buy collectables there. He would put up a nice display of the types of collectables we were willing to buy. He spent thousands of dollars on advertisements in local newspapers and local radio spots to inform people that he would be in the mall for one week to pay cash for their unwanted collectables. People lined up with boxes and bags full of comic books, old toys, and baseball cards. Jay would buy almost every collection that he was shown. He would load the new purchases in his van and eventually ship everything up to Massachusetts where I’d get it all ready to sell. The baseball card market was just starting to catch on and we soon had one of the best inventories of old cards in the area. Jay was able to buy so many cards at reasonable prices that we eventually began to “wholesale” many of the 1950’s and 1960’s cards to other dealers. I set up a display at a few of the early baseball card conventions in New England and we did quite well. My youngest brother, Rick, was my best worker at these shows. He was only thirteen years old but he really learned quickly. He could assist the customers with their purchases and he was good with money. He would also basically run our booth while I was busy selling large groups of vintage cards to other dealers. He didn’t want to get paid money for his work. Instead, he took baseball and basketball cards. At the end of one show he decided he’d take a gorgeous 1957 Willie Mays card as part of his payment. As he was slipping it into the protective plastic sheet he pushed a little too hard and folded the card in half! We still laugh about that today. Unfortunately, Rick “outgrew” his interest in sports cards and traded his cards to someone. If he had kept them all they’d be worth thousands of dollars now.

Jay’s buying trips were so successful that I no longer had space in my small house to store them. I knew that soon I’d need to rent some extra storage space.

I had gone to the nearby city of Worcester, Massachusetts to see a comic book store called “Fabulous Fiction Bookstore”. When I was looking around in it one day, I overheard a customer say to the owner, “You’ve got a nice inventory here, but isn’t this comic book a little overpriced?” The owner of the store gruffly replied, “I’m the only store in town, so if you don’t like my prices you can get out!” I decided that if I was ever to open a retail comic book store, then this would be a good city to open in.

Next chapter: The traveling became too much to bear.

Part Eighteen

Since I was only supposed to work with my partner, Jay, at five or six of the major comic book shows, my wife and I had lots of time to spend with our new-born son Adam.

Jay was very busy traveling on his successful shopping mall buying trips. He would send all of the collectables up to my house so that I could “process” them and get them ready to sell. The comic books were easy to sell because we had a great customer base at the major comic book conventions in the United States. Our new inventory of baseball cards were a little more work. The baseball card conventions were usually small, one day shows that were within a couple of hours of driving so I began to set up at some of these. I knew nothing about baseball cards when we first started selling them, so I studied as many price guides and dealer’s catalogs as I could find. Our sales of vintage baseball cards were great. My wife, Mal, would usually stay at home with Adam while I was working at these local shows, but sometimes she’d surprise me by coming to the show to have lunch with me.

When I had to be out of town at the big comic conventions it was very difficult to be away from Mal and Adam. Even though Adam was getting stronger, it was hard for Mal to be alone while I was away. I missed them too!

Jay drove up from Ohio to pick me up to go to the big Albany, New York comic book convention organized by the comic book store, Fantaco. Although it was only about a three hour ride from my house to the convention, I began to realize that I wasn’t enjoying the traveling anymore. I decided that I needed to get out of the convention business. But first, I needed to focus my energy on this big show.

When we arrived at the Albany Convention Center, we were surprised at how organized this comic book show was. There were staff members hired to help all of the dealers unload their inventories. There was adequate security staff. The staff was also very friendly. As usual, we had the best location for our ten booth display of old comic books. When the doors opened to the public, hundreds of collectors poured into the huge display room. Our booth was crowded with eager buyers for the first few hours and sales were great.

It was at this convention that I learned two important lessons about the comic book business. A very young boy, perhaps 12 years old, came up to my display and pointed to a copy of Fantastic Four #1 from 1961, and asked “How much is that comic book”. I didn’t take his inquiry very seriously, and I replied “ Oh, that’s a lot of money”. The young boy then said “ Well, how much?” I said “It’s $695.00”. He replied “Oh. Do you have a cheaper copy?” I showed him a copy that was priced at $295.00. To my surprise, he said “I’ll take this one. Do you have issues #2 through #150?” Within 10 minutes this pre-teen spent over $1200.00 and paid in cash! After he had completed this transaction I learned that he had just sold his horse and his parents allowed him to spend the proceeds on his new hobby of collecting comic books. I learned at that moment to take every customer seriously, regardless of my first impression of them.

I also learned a valuable lesson about the media at this convention. The organizer did a great job of promoting this show through the local media. There were television news programs there to do stories about this show. When they came to our booth to interview us, we were in a goofy mood and decided to have some “fun” with them. The interviewer began asking the typical questions: “Why do people collect comic books? What is the most expensive comic book you have?” We reached into a box of comic books and pulled out an Iron Man comic book and we made up a story about how this issue featured the first appearance of Iron Man wearing a yellow belt. We explained that it was very rare and it was worth over $1700.00. We figured that the news reporter would investigate to determine how accurate our information was and they’d find out that we were kidding them. Later that night we watched, along with thousands of citizens in Albany, as they ran this television interview with our completely made up nonsense! I’m sure lots of collectors got a laugh out of that story. This taught me not to believe much of what I read in the newspaper or see on television.

We had a very successful convention but I knew I didn’t want to continue to travel away from my wife and son. Jay and I discussed my options on the drive home from Albany. I decided that it was time to look into opening a comic book store. While Jay enjoyed the fast pace of the convention business, I was more interested in establishing relationships with “steady” customers. It was more fun for me to nurture long-term, repeat business with other collectors. I believed that the big comic book conventions would eventually be negatively affected by the opening of comic book stores all around the country. In the early days, collectors would save up money to spend at the big shows, but now stores were springing up and offering the collectors a place to spend their hobby money every day. I wanted to be a part of the more stable business of owning a comic book store. Jay and I decided that he would continue to set up at the shopping malls to buy new inventory and he would also sell at the big conventions without me. My job would be to open and run a comic book store. I remembered my experience at a “grouchy” comic shop in Worcester so I started looking for a retail store location there. I figured that I could offer better customer service than that!

Next chapter: We get robbed!

Part Nineteen

In 1980 I began searching for a location to open my new comic book store. I lived in a small town and I was smart enough to know that I’d need a large customer base to make my store profitable so I started my search in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester is the second largest city in all of New England and more importantly, there are 10 colleges located there. There was already a comic book store in Worcester but I knew I could offer better customer service than he could.

I contacted a real estate agent and explained what I wanted. I would need at least 1000 square feet of retail space on a major road and it had to be cheap! He showed me around Worcester and the only location that I was interested in was at the edge of a “tough” neighborhood. The rent was only $350.00 a month but the realtor warned me not to rent this building. I liked the location. The store was on the third busiest road in the city and it was on a corner next to a traffic light. Every day, thousands of cars would be traveling past my store and many of them would be stopped at the traffic light looking into the side window of the store. The store didn’t have a parking lot nearby but it did have some parking spaces in the front on the side of the street. At the time, I didn’t know how important adequate parking would be. I offered to rent this storefront on a month to month basis. I didn’t want to sign a lease because I really wasn’t sure that this comic book store could be profitable. I knew that I had run out of space for our inventory in my small house. I could have rented some warehouse space to store the collectables in but this storefront was actually cheaper and I was hoping to recover most of the monthly expenses with some retail sales. The owner of the building agreed with my request and rented the storefront to me at the end of March of 1980.

Now that I was paying rent, I rushed to get the store ready to open. Many people would have moved slowly…planning carefully to do things right. Not me. I obtained the proper business licenses the day after I signed my rental agreement. I quickly put in an order for a huge shipment of new comic books and comic related books from Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distributors. I asked them to send me one copy of everything they had in stock. I knew it would be important to look as though the store was well stocked. I really didn’t need to have multiple copies of books…just lots of different books. I had the electricity, gas heat, and telephone turned on within two days. I made signs out of poster board. I bought a bunch of used banquet tables to put most of my inventory on. I bought two used comic book “spinner” racks from an old drugstore. No fancy displays. No cash register. We decided to call the store “That’s Entertainment”. I ran a small classified advertisement in a local “penny saver”magazine that cost me one dollar. I was open for business on April 15th, 1980.

Because I still planned to set up at local baseball card shows, and they were usually held on Sundays, I decided to be open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00AM to 6:00PM. This would allow me to have time to sell our baseball cards on Sundays and have every Monday off.

I spent most of the first day moving stock from place to place trying to make this store look organized. My first customer came in around 2:00PM. He was on his way to my competitor’s store and he was surprised to stumble across my new store. He told me how much he disliked shopping at the other store, but until today, he had no choice. He spent about an hour looking around my store and spent a little bit of money. He promised to help spread the word about “That’s Entertainment”. By the end of our second day we had made enough money to pay all of our first months expenses!

I knew it would be important to quickly establish “repeat” customers so I offered a subscription service. I printed a list of every comic book that was being published and asked each new customer to check off the comic books they’d like me to save for them each month. We got new shipments of comic books each week and by using this free service of mine the customers would be certain to get every comic book they enjoyed. It also helped me because I knew in advance how many copies of each comic book to order so that I wouldn’t get stuck with unwanted inventory. My customers were assured that they wouldn’t miss an issue of their favorite comics.

Word of mouth spread throughout the small comic book collector “world” that my store was more pleasant to shop in. Each day, new customers would find us. Sales rose almost every week.

My partner, Jay, convinced me that I was needed at the big summer Creation Comic Book Convention in New York City. I decided to combine this trip with a big family camping trip. I closed the store for five days. My parents and siblings, Mal, me, and Adam went to a campground in Rhode Island for a few days before the comic book show. I met Jay in New York and Mal and Adam drove home without me. When Mal arrived at home she discovered that our house had been broken into. The thief stole money, jewelry, our stereo, and more. Mal quickly called our good friend, Allan Traylor, to come over to be with her until I could get there from New York. When I got the phone call from Mal about the break-in, she didn’t know what had been stolen yet. She just needed me to be there with her, so I jumped on a bus and rode for five hours to get home. During this long ride, I’d imagined that the thief could have stolen the thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards that I had stored in my home office. The crook could have still been in the area and may come back. Even though my friend was there with them, I was concerned about the safety of my family. This was many years before there were cell phones and I really just wanted to be able to talk with my wife to assure her that things would be okay. But I couldn’t. This was the last comic book show that I’d ever go to without my family!

Next chapter: I catch the crook.

Part Twenty

When I got the phone call from my wife, telling me that our house had been robbed, I quickly got on the first bus from New York to our home in Sterling, Massachusetts. After I got home and checked on my wife and son, I went to the town center where there was always a bunch of teenagers hanging around. I convinced them that I was not someone to “mess with” and that I’d be back in fifteen minutes to find out who robbed my house. They were apparently convinced that I was serious because they gave me the name of a local creep. I went to the police station the next morning with the information and they brought him in for questioning. The thief denied that he did it, so the police let him go.

About a week later I saw the criminal in a local store. I introduced myself and gave him a good scare. He whimpered,” I’m sorry man, I didn’t know it was your house. Please don’t have me killed!” Of course I had no intention of hurting him, but I made it clear that if he ever even looked at my house again, he’d regret it. He lived up the street from us and for the next two years he would actually walk on the other side of the street being very careful to not even look at our house. We never got back any of the items he stole because he had already sold them. Eventually, he was stabbed to death by his girlfriend.

Being robbed changed the way we lived in many ways. I was fortunate that the thief didn’t steal our huge baseball card inventory that I kept in my home, but now I was always worried that he’d come back again or that he’d tell some other thieves about what he saw when he was inside my house. I had an alarm system installed in my home and in our new store. Whenever we’d return to our house after being away, even for a short time, we’d have the uneasy sense that we were going to come home to find the house broken into again. The alarm system we had installed in our store was very different than most home systems. This system had a central station that actually listened to sounds in my store after we closed each day through several microphones strategically located throughout the building. If someone broke a window or a door the company would hear the sound of glass breaking. If anyone was inside the store and made even a small sound, the company would call the police. The best part was that because there were no false alarms with this kind of set-up, the police took every alarm call seriously and they’d arrive at the store within minutes of a break-in.

It was around this time that I almost lost my enormous personal collection of comic books. I had installed shelves in the basement of my house and carefully stacked my comic book collection on them. The bottom shelf was about four inches off of the floor. When we first moved into this house I had noticed an old, burned-out, sump pump in the corner of the basement. I asked the original owner if there was a problem with water in the basement and they assured me that there was no problem, but the sump pump was installed “just in case”. Apparently they were not telling the truth. During a very heavy rain, I just happened to go into the basement to get something and I noticed that there was about three inches of water covering the entire basement floor! I screamed for my wife to help me get my comic books out of the basement. We carried the 30,000 comics up the stairs and within an hour the water had risen to six inches. Once the comic books were safely upstairs we tried, unsuccessfully, to rescue the dozens of other boxes of personal items. I now saw my old elementary school report cards and old photographs floating in two feet of water. We called the fire department and they came and pumped out our basement until the torrential rains stopped. Even though I’m still a collector, that day changed the way I feel about material possessions. While I still take care of the things I buy, I’m no longer obsessed about the condition of my collectables. I try to keep in mind that these collectables are just “things”. The collectables are not the center of my life. They are sort of all around my life, but no longer are they the center. Relationships with family and friends are much more valuable to me now.

Next chapter: My business partner, Jay, and I split up.

Part Twenty One

When we opened our store, That’s Entertainment, in April of 1980, we were using Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distribution to buy most of the new comic books we sold each week. We supplemented this with product from Capital City Distribution of Wisconsin. Soon, Capital City began offering better terms than Seagate. Seagate required payment two months in advance but Capital was now offering me 30 days credit. This was important in the beginning of the store because it allowed me to increase the amount of new product I stocked without draining my cash reserve. The only drawback to switching to Capital City was that everything was shipped from Wisconsin so it would take longer to get the new comics each week. My competition would get his shipment of new comic books two days before me. This may seem insignificant to many of you, but the comic book collectors wanted their comics as soon as they were printed. If the competition had the comic books first, the collectors would buy them there instead of at my store. I knew that my back issue prices were lower than my competitor, but I also knew that the steady stream of sales of the weekly new comic books had the best growth potential. I began to aggressively promote my new comics reservation service in the hope that my good customer service skills would eventually lead to loyalty as far as the new comic books went. After a few months in business I had about 60 regular weekly customers signed up for my subscription service.

My partnership with Jay wasn’t going so well. I believed that the comic book shows and conventions were a part of our business that had no future. I was the partner who watched out for “the bottom line” profits and I didn’t like the direction the comic book shows were heading. The show organizers were raising the booth fees too high. There were a lot of smaller conventions now competing with the big guys. Comic book stores were opening up all around the country and they were selling comic books every day so the average collector didn’t need to go to the comic book conventions anymore. I knew that I didn’t want to travel or do any more comic book conventions. I believed that running a store would be a more stable business. Jay disagreed.

When it became clear that we had such different opinions of the future for our business, I suggested that we split up the business. Jay and I divided up our large inventory. Jay took most of the expensive vintage comic books to sell at the comic book conventions. I figured that the comics that were priced from 50 cents to ten dollars would sell the best through our store. We worked long into the night to divide the stock in an equitable fashion. When we couldn’t agree on who would get a particular item or a group of items, we’d just play a hand of poker for ownership. We were determined to make this break-up as pleasant as possible. For the most part, it went okay.

My wife, Mal, stayed at home every day to take care of our son, Adam. She had put Walt Disney characters that were displaying alphabet letters on his wall near the crib. She would point to each letter and explain to Adam the sounds the letters made. I’d get home from working at the comic book store at around 7:00PM and I’d spend as much time as possible with Adam. We would take turns reading books to Adam almost every night. We believed it would begin a life-long interest in reading and it became a very special time for us together. We also found that it made bed-time something that Adam looked forward to.

Mal didn’t like my work schedule. The store was now open Monday through Saturday from 10:00AM to 6:00PM and I was there, by myself, all of these hours. Mal wanted us to be able to get together with our friends on the weekends like a “normal” family. Saturday was the busiest sales day of the week so I knew I had to be there but I decided to begin looking for an employee to allow me to take other days off to be with my family.

Mal holding Adam at our house in Sterling, Massachusetts after we fixed
it up. Do you remember how bad it used to be?

Next chapter: We meet the local Mafia.

Part Twenty Two

Our comic book store was open Monday through Saturday, from 10AM to 6PM and since I was the only worker, I was working a lot of hours. My typical work week was at least sixty hours, sometimes as much as one hundred hours. My wife, Mal, wanted us to be able to get together with our friends like “normal” people. I was not willing to give up working on Saturdays because it was the busiest sales day of the week, but I knew I could probably give up working on Monday or Tuesday. These were the slowest days of the week because most people would have spent all of their “extra” spending money during the weekend. Many customers got paid on Thursday and they would buy all of their comic books and other collectables on Friday because that’s the day the new comic books arrived. If they couldn’t take time off of work to get to our store on Friday (because we closed at 6:00PM) they’d be at our store first thing on Saturday morning. I had decided to close the store each day by 6:00PM because the store was located at the edge of a potentially dangerous neighborhood. It was okay during the day but at night it could be pretty scary. I didn’t want to risk the safety of any of my customers by being open for business after dark.

I hired my first part time employee. Tim Shea wasn’t very fast at putting the comic books into plastic bags or arranging them into alphabetical order but he was very dependable and he was always on time. He lived directly across the street from the store.

I had hoped that Tim could be trained to run the store so I could occasionally take some time off to be with Mal and our son, Adam, but I realized that Tim didn’t have the knowledge of comic books or the skill needed to be able to buy collections from customers. I knew that I wanted my store to have a “buyer” on hand at all times so that we’d never miss out on a great collection. Luckily, it didn’t take long for me to find Steve Wentzell . Steve came into the store one day to look for old records. Steve was a large guy with a long beard. He looked threatening to some people at first, but he was actually a really nice, friendly, laid-back guy. He knew a lot about comic books and baseball cards but his passion was records. He had experience buying and selling because he set up at a local flea market on weekends. He wasn’t really looking for a regular job but I offered him a “whopping” $100.00 a week to help out and for some reason he accepted!

I bought a small collection of about 200 record albums from the 1960’s from a customer and with Steve’s help; we priced them and just placed them on a table in the store. Within a few days we sold about a dozen of them. One day the owner of a local used record store, Al Bums, came in and bought over 100 of the remaining record albums. I knew, at that point, that used record albums would be an ongoing part of our store’s inventory. We placed a few cheap advertisements in the local newspaper to let the city know that we were now buying used records. Within a few weeks we had thousands of records in stock. We now devoted almost one quarter of our store’s space to used and collectable vinyl records.

Steve had a good friend, Jim Stoll, who had some skills as a carpenter. Jim worked really cheap so I had him design and build a bunch of custom display racks for the new comic books. This allowed us to fully display 280 different comic book issues. In 1980, there were only a few significant comic book publishers. The biggest publisher, Marvel Comics, published only about 30 comics each month, so we had plenty of space to display the full covers of each new issue. This made it easier for our customers to choose the new comic books that caught their interest.

One day, before Steve arrived for work, two burly men came into the store. They “suggested” that it would be smart for me to allow them to put coin operated video games in the store. They would get 70% of the money and I’d get the remaining 30%. They explained how I should rearrange my inventory to give the best space in the store for their machines. I guessed that these guys were part of the local “Mob” and I didn’t think they’d take “No” for an answer. Steve walked in while I was figuring out what to say. I told them I would discuss it with my “partner” Steve, but I didn’t think he’d like the idea. As I mentioned earlier, Steve looked intimidating. The thugs left and never came back.

After a short period of training, I knew Steve was able to run the store for some short times without me. Steve quickly learned many aspects of the comic book business. Most importantly, I learned to trust him. I started to either come in a little later in the mornings or leave a little early in the evenings so I could be home with Mal and Adam more. It wasn’t long before I felt comfortable leaving Steve by himself for whole days.

While I was working, Mal still spent a lot of time with her mother. Because her mother didn’t drive, Mal would drive thirty minutes each way, just so they could grocery shop together. “Grammy” loved to be with Mal and Adam. Family was very important to Grammy. Many weekends were spent playing cards, eating dinner, and visiting her children. When we had our small comic book store in the mid-70’s she used to help Mal pick out the new comic books each week at the big city magazine distributor. But now that we had all of the new comic books shipped directly to us from Wisconsin, there was no need for her to help us with the business.

Now that I had occasional days off, Mal wanted us to be together so she had a little less time to spend with her mother. Mal and I would take Adam almost everywhere we went. We knew that kids are very adaptable and Adam loved the attention he got when we went to our weekly Bible study and the Sunday night meeting at The Freedom Farm. When it was time for him to sleep, we’d just spread out a blanket and he’d curl up and fall asleep, even at concerts!

We began to form a much closer relationship with my friend, Allan Traylor, and his wife Debbie. Allan had been a friend since fifth grade and Debbie was very easy to get along with. We all got along so well that we began vacationing together. We’d rent a cottage in Martha’s Vineyard or go to Disney World or stay at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and there was never any problem. Allan had a great sense of humor and Debbie loved doing fun things. It’s difficult to find two couples that fit together, but this friendship really worked. Debbie became one of Mal’s best friends.

Next chapter: Our store is “scammed” by a professional thief.

Part Twenty Three

One day, in 1981, a customer came into my store. He was friendly and very outgoing. He looked through our stock of vintage baseball cards and he spent about $200.00 on cards from the late 1960’s. We showed him our inventory of baseball “star” cards: Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, etc. He told us that he liked some of them but he didn’t want to spend anymore money that day. He stayed in the store for about an hour chatting with Steve and I about his 13 years as a teacher and his love of collectables and then he left. I put the most valuable cards behind our counter for safekeeping. The next morning I came in about an hour after Steve had opened the store and I noticed that a large pile of the valuable baseball cards was missing. Steve told me that we had only had one customer so far that day…the teacher from the day before. He had asked about some inventory that we had in the back room of the store and while Steve went to get it we figured out that the thief must have grabbed a handful of the most valuable baseball cards. I called dozens of other collectable stores to make them aware of this thief. A store in Boston recognized my description of the guy and told me that they had caught him stealing old comic books earlier in the year and they believed that he was a professional thief. The guy would spend some money and pretend to be very friendly to gain the store clerk’s confidence. He would later wait for an opportunity to steal. The Boston store owner gave me the thief’s name but they didn’t know his address. I didn’t need it. He came back into the store the very next week and acted as if nothing had happened!

Steve and I didn’t let the thief know that we were “on” to him. I told Steve that I was going down to the local convenience store for a soda and I asked if he or the “customer” wanted anything. While I was out of the store I called the police and gave them the background story. The customer was still chatting with Steve when the police arrived. The police read him his rights and handcuffed him right in the store! He was arrested and brought to jail. I heard that he later lost his job as a teacher because of his life of crime.

Massachusetts had some out-dated laws known as “The Blue Laws” that attempted to control people’s lives and businesses through legislation. One of the laws prohibited stores from doing business on Sunday. There were some loopholes though. If the business was a restaurant or a store that sold newspapers or pharmaceuticals they could be open. I knew that Sunday could be a great shopping day once we could let our customers know that we’d be open for business. I decided to open our store on Sundays, so we would buy a couple of newspapers from a local store and have them available for sale at my store just to comply with the law. I wasn’t able to work on Sunday because I wanted to be with my wife, Mal, and my son on at least one weekend day each week. Steve couldn’t work either because he still set up at a local flea market on Sundays. I began to look for another employee to mostly help out on Sundays. That’s when I hired David M. Lynch. There will be more to be said about David in later chapters of this story.

At home, even though our son , Adam, was only one year old, Mal began to think about his future. My father had been involved in a local town government as a school board member and because of his “inside” knowledge of the workings of public education he strongly urged us to consider private school for Adam. Although Mal embraced the idea, I did not. I had been “educated” in the public school system and I didn’t detect any major problems with the system. I also didn’t like the idea of tiny class sizes and limited opportunities for sports programs and the arts. I wanted my child to be able to experience all that life had to offer. I also didn’t want to incur the additional expense of a private school education. I was already paying for his education through the outrageous tax structure in Massachusetts! We began to pray for wisdom and guidance.

Next chapter: My customers become friends.

Part Twenty Four

In 1981 I was contacted by Richard Howell and Carol Kalish. They were working for a new comic book distributor near Boston, Massachusetts named Solar Spice. They guaranteed that I would be able to get the big shipment of new comic books on Friday morning each week. This would help me to compete with the other comic book store in town. Carol also offered me generous credit terms. I accepted their offer and stopped ordering the comic books from Capital City Distribution of Wisconsin. I would go to their small office in Cambridge, Massachusetts at about 6:00AM each Friday morning to pick up my shipment. I would then drive about an hour to get to my store in Worcester, Massachusetts by about 8:00AM. I’d unload my car, sort the comic books, and fill the customer’s “subscription list”. Each customer had filled out a list of the comic books that they wanted me to reserve for them and I saved the comic books for them on shelves behind the counter. By the time I opened the store at 10:00AM , the new comic subscriptions were all done and the remaining comic books were displayed on the racks. Most Fridays, there were customers waiting outside at 10:00AM to get into the store to have the first pick of the comics on the racks.

My customers were very loyal and they seemed to enjoy shopping at my store. They would come into the store, pick out the new comic books, look through the large selection of back issues, and many would hang around the store to talk about comic books with me and other customers. The store had a festive, party atmosphere on Fridays. Stanley Hosmer, David Grilla, Stan Moniak, Charlie St.Pierre, Paul Dinsdale, Bob Forte, Andy Fish and many more would form the core comic book customer base and would eventually become friends of mine, not just customers.

Michael Warshaw came into the store looking mostly for old model kits. I had recently bought a collection of old toys from the 1960’s and I sold him an Aurora model kit of Spider-Man, unmade in the original 1967 box, for $27.00. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now!

Kevin Simpson was on the way to my competitor’s store when he came discovered my store. He came into my store looking for the current issue of Starlog Magazine. While we were talking he told me that he also collected old trading cards. He mostly collected cards that were based on old TV shows like Lost In Space, Batman, and The Green Hornet. It quickly became apparent that Kevin and I had a lot in common. We both collected bubble-gum cards, loved to play Monopoly, and we both watched too much television. We even videotaped lots of TV shows and we both had the exact same video tape machine. In the early 1980’s, video tape recorders cost about $1400.00 and a blank video tape cost around $20.00 so I was shocked when Kevin asked me to lend him my video tape recorder! He explained that he needed another VCR to hook up to his so he could make a copy of a tape and he didn’t want to pay the high fee to rent another one. Since I had just met him that day I politely declined. After Kevin had been shopping at my store for about a month it became clear that he was becoming a great friend. He was kind and had a good sense of humor. He didn’t seem to mind that I almost always beat him at Monopoly. He was always willing to help out his friends. It didn’t take long before I was happy to lend him my VCR.

Brian Paquette was looking for old toys from the 1960’s TV show of The Man From Uncle. The Man From Uncle was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid. I used to pretend that I was a spy from the Uncle organization when I was ten years old. My parents bought me quite a few of the toys that were sold in the mid-60’s based on the show including the Napoleon Solo gun set and the Foto-Fantastiks coloring sets so Brian and I shared a common interest. Mostly because of Mike Warshaw and Brian Paquette, I became interested in collecting old toys. My parents really spoiled me at Christmas time and now I decided to try to collect many of the toys I had as a kid. I put up signs in my store to let the customers know that I now wanted to buy old toys. I began going to local toy shows to try to find some of the cool toys I wanted. My first “find” was a Steve Canyon Jet Helmet, mint condition, still in the original box. ( I still have a photo of my brother Jay and I wearing our helmets on Christmas morning!) I was now a serious collector of comic books, movie and TV-related bubblegum cards, records, old model kits, and toys! I was fortunate that the income from the store was growing so I could afford to buy a rare collectable every so often.

David Lynch was the employee who ran the store on Sunday, but he wanted to be able to set up at a local flea market to earn some extra money since I wasn’t able to pay him a decent salary. Luckily, my new friend, Michael Warshaw was willing to help out until I could find a permanent replacement.

Through a strange series of events, I’d discover my best friend in the comic book business…my cousin Steven.

My brother Jay and I wearing our Steve Canyon Jet Helmets, Christmas
1959

Next chapter: I beat Steven again at cards and he becomes my Sunday employee.

Part Twenty Five

Business at our comic book store was growing quite rapidly and in late 1981 we decided to buy some land and build a house in the town of Bolton, Massachusetts. I grew up in the town and I knew that the public school system was better than many of the other local towns. My wife, Mal, was still hoping that a private school would open up so that our son, Adam, could be offered a more serious education. We bought a three-acre lot for $37,500.00 and began to build a nice four-bedroom home. We hired a general contractor who was recommended by a friend. After a few weeks we discovered that many local carpenters refused to work with this contractor because he didn’t have a good reputation for prompt payment. He had also filed bankruptcy; so many suppliers were requiring us to pay for the materials in advance or immediately upon delivery. We began to do more and more of the contractor’s job. We had built a home back in the 1970’s but with my heavy work schedule I knew I couldn’t devote much time to this house. Mal took control of this project. She would bring Adam to the construction site each day to be sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible. She made most of the decisions by herself. My job was to pay for the project!

We listed our house in Sterling with a local realtor and we had an offer of $32,000.00 within the first week. We accepted the offer but ran into trouble when our buyers applied for a mortgage. When their bank ordered a survey of the property, it was discovered that one side of the house was on town property and a corner of the house was on our neighbor’s property. Since we had paid cash for this house, we never thought about getting the property surveyed. We assumed that the house would fit on the land! Our neighbor offered to sell us a few feet of his land for a few dollars, but he suggested that we work on acquiring the other land from the town first. The town would have to hold a special town meeting to decide whether they would sell us the required amount of land and that could take a few months. Luckily for us, the town agreed to sell us the land for one dollar. When we went to our neighbor to buy the few feet of land from him we found out why he really wanted us to go to the town first. He had already entered into a deal to sell his property and he knew that the boundary problem could hurt the sale of his house. We now had to deal with the new owners. They agreed to sell us the land, but they now wanted $200.00 plus the cost of the new surveying and the attorney’s fees. We thought this was reasonable so we agreed. We waited about a week for them to write up the agreement but it didn’t come. We called them and they said that they now wanted $500.00 and all of the other fees. We agreed to the new terms. A few days later they demanded $1000.00 plus all of the fees. I argued that the nonsense had to stop. We made our final offer of $750.00 plus all of the legal fees and surveying costs. They accepted our final offer and we finally completed the deal. We used the proceeds from the sale to continue the building of our new house. Our buyers were happy to get into their new home. Two years later the buyers sold the house for $125,000.00!

We knew that we didn’t want to end up with a huge mortgage payment each month so we tried to convince the suppliers and carpenters that we would pay them every Friday for the work they had done that week. I’d get home from work at about 7:00PM each Friday and hand the carpenters their paychecks. We were able to pay everyone in the early stages of the building but we were quickly running out of available cash. We had spent most of our savings to buy the land. Sales from our comic book store were really good, but I still needed to keep some cash for the business. I decided that I needed to sell some of my personal collectables to help finance my new home. I evaluated my collectables and thought that I could get a good price for my extensive trading card collection. I had most of the “non-sports” trading cards that were made from 1957 to 1977, all in excellent to mint condition and had many of the original display boxes and the wax wrappers that the cards came in! I even owned an original painting that was used to produce the rare “Mars Attacks” set. I called a few local dealers and was disappointed at the low offers I was getting from them. I sent a list of what I had to a dealer in Maryland and he offered me 35% of the retail value of the collection. My friend, Jim Stoll, and I drove to Maryland to sell my trading cards. The dealer paid me $4500.00. (about one year later, the trading card business “exploded” and my cards would have sold for at least $15,000.00 to this same dealer!) This money got us through another week, but we knew we’d have to come up with a better solution. After a short search, a local bank offered to loan us $50,000.00 to finish the project. This loan was a great comfort to us but we still worked hard to not spend it all. By the time we completed the new house we had only used $25,000.00 of the bank’s money. In September of 1982, we moved into our new home.

We decided to have my family’s big Christmas party at our house that year. It was at this party that the lives of two families were changed forever. After we ate and had all exchanged gifts, a bunch of us decided to play cards. We played poker and blackjack for dimes and quarters. While we were playing, my cousin, Steven Higgins, explained to me that he and his wife Donna, were saving money to buy a house. They had saved about $5000.00 and were actively searching for a house. When Steven and I were much younger, I would usually beat him when we played cards. Today was no exception. Even though we were only playing for dimes and quarters, Steven now owed me $35.00. I felt bad that I was taking away money that he would need to buy his house. Steven offered to work at my store for two Sundays to pay off his loss. I was thrilled because it was very difficult for me to get employees to work on Sundays.

Steven was perfect for my store. He had loved comic books since that summer of 1970 when he lived with my family for the whole summer. He had a really funny sense of humor and enjoyed “goofing around” with customers. After he worked for the two Sundays to pay his “gambling” debt he asked if I would pay him to continue to work at the store. He would save the extra money to eventually buy his house. It didn’t take long for Steven to learn the comic book business. He had a natural ability as a retailer. He learned how to buy collections of old comic books and toys. He enjoyed himself so much at my store that he wanted to become my permanent Sunday employee.

Next chapter: Cousin Steven leaves the nest!

Part Twenty Six

One of the most important character traits for a good employee is honesty and loyalty. I’ve been blessed over the years with some of the best friends and employees possible. But in 1981 I wasn’t so fortunate.

When the baseball card collectable market was growing so rapidly, I decided I would organize a baseball card convention of my own. I rented a function room in a hotel in Framingham, Massachusetts, about fifteen miles outside of Boston. The function room would hold forty “dealers tables”. I had been to hundreds of comic book and collectable shows over the past seven or eight years so I thought I knew what was necessary to organize a good show. I decided to run the show and donate all of the proceeds to “The Jimmy Fund”. The Jimmy Fund was a charity that I had seen in action, when my young neighbor was struggling with Leukemia and it was also the official charity of the Boston Red Sox. I sent out dozens of press releases to the local newspapers and radio stations. I knew that the local media would probably pick up on the story because of the charity connection. All I needed now was to somehow sell the forty dealer spaces. I knew lots of people in the comic book business but I didn’t know very many baseball card dealers. I had a friend who sold baseball cards at a local flea market each weekend so I offered him a fifty percent partnership in my newly established card show business in exchange for his knowledge of baseball cards. I figured that with his expertise, he’d be able to sell the dealer spaces. I’d put up all of the money for the hotel and advertising. I sent out a press release to a large sports publication for a free listing in the national card show calendar directory. Within two or three days after that listing came out we were completely sold out of every dealer space. I could have sold out the entire function room without giving up fifty percent of my new business venture to my friend. About two weeks before the show a few local radio stations started running free commercials about the show. The day of the show one of the radio station was urging all their listeners to attend. When we were ready to open the doors to the public we had a huge line of people eager to pay the one dollar admission to shop for sports cards. Our future shows were not going to benefit a charity so we made sure to collect every attendee’s name and address for our mailing list. We would now have an active and valuable list to use to notify them of the place and time of future shows.

This first show was extremely successful. We had about eight hundred people attend and most of them spent money. The dealers were so happy with their sales that most of them paid us that same day for tables at our future shows even though we had no firm date for the next show!

My new partner was pretty happy with our deal. I had misjudged my own ability. I easily could have done this without his help, but I stood by our initial agreement. We would equally share the profits of all of our future baseball card shows. We ran a highly profitable show each month for the next six months.

I saw that the Framingham area was loaded with serious collectors so I decided to consider opening a collectable comic book and card store there. I found a great location in downtown Framingham but the owner was asking too much for the monthly rent. I showed it to my partner. I explained that it had been vacant for a couple of months and that I was going to wait another two months and then I’d offer the owner considerably less with the hope that he’d be more eager to rent it. My partner agreed that that was a good plan. Two days later, my partner betrayed me. He rented the store that I had showed him! He reasoned “ This isn’t personal, it’s business.”

I was very angry at what I considered a personal betrayal. I knew that I could no longer trust him. I didn’t want to continue our baseball card show partnership so I GAVE the business to him. But I couldn’t forgive him for his actions. I rented a different store in Framingham and I was determined to offer him some serious competition. I hired a friend, Jimmy Talbot, to manage this new store. Jimmy was a friendly, talented retailer and with my strong inventory and reputation for reasonable prices, it only took about a year before my former partner closed his store. I’m not particularly proud of this, but after he closed his store, I no longer felt the need to continue operating the Framingham store. I originally wanted a store there but when I felt I was betrayed by my partner, I was more concerned with a kind of revenge rather than building a long running business. I had developed a good customer base in Framingham that I didn’t want to disappoint by closing the store, so I decided to GIVE the store to my buddy Jim Talbot. I allowed him to use my inventory and store name and he would earn a portion of whatever he sold until he could build up his own inventory. This deal wasn’t very smart of me. Jim had a different retail philosophy. He began to raise prices and it began to affect my reputation even though Framingham was about twenty miles away from my store in Worcester. After a year I insisted that Jimmy change the name of his store so that we could both have separate identities and I could rebuild my image as a low priced collectable dealer. Jimmy changed the name of his store to Bop City Comics and did a great job of developing into an important retail store in his area. In 1986, for reasons I still don’t understand, Jimmy opened up a store in Worcester and competed directly with me for a few years. He also tried to explain to me that this was business, not personal. This didn’t make sense to me because I believed that personal relationships were more important than business. I had now been betrayed by two friends and I was becoming cynical. I was learning to not trust people. I’d have to be more careful in the future.

My cousin, Steve Higgins, had worked at my store on Sundays for about six months and he was a great addition to the store. Customers enjoyed him and sales were increasing. Steve enjoyed the business so much that he decided he’d like to open his own store. He explained his idea to his wife and she supported him completely. They agreed to use the money they had been saving to buy their first home as start-up capital for their store. Steve found a location about fifteen miles from Boston, in Waltham, Massachusetts and he asked me my opinion of it. I liked Waltham, but I didn’t like the store location because it was on a road that wasn’t heavily traveled. I knew a man who specialized in Japanese science fiction model kits who was renting a building on the busiest street in Waltham but he was actually only using the basement of the store as his warehouse. He had no interest in selling the model kits directly to consumers through a retail storefront. He was willing to rent the retail storefront to Steve at a reasonable monthly rate. Steve liked the location better than the one he had previously picked. I loaned Steve a beginning inventory of back issue comic books and helped him contact suppliers for new comics and toys. Steve bought a large collection of old movie posters at a convention and with a lot of fast work he was open for business in October of 1983 as The Outer Limits. Steven’s skill at retailing made his store an instant success. It didn’t take too long before he had earned enough money to buy his first house.

With Steven being actively involved in the same business, I now had access to him as both a friend and as someone to “talk business” with. We would call each other at least five times a day to discuss ideas or the latest funny incident at our stores. Life in the comic book business wouldn’t be as much fun without my Cousin Steve!

Next chapter: Diamond Comic Distributors buys out our distributor.

Part Twenty Seven

In 1982, my main competitor was a man who appeared to dislike dealing with the public. He was grumpy to many of his customers and he could frequently be heard saying, “This isn’t a library!” (This wasn’t my philosophy. I assumed that if you encourage the customers to look through the comic books then they’ll probably be interested in buying them.) Oddly enough, this competitor was courteous to me when I would go into his store.

One day that I went into his store he told me that my employee, Steve Wentzell, was no longer allowed to come into his shop. Steve used to play Dungeons and Dragons at this guy’s store on a regular basis but he was now banned because he worked at my store. This certainly didn’t make sense to me. I could understand it if he banned me from his store, but not a paying customer like Steve. When I informed Steve, he convinced me to start to sell role-playing games and war games so that consumers would have another place to buy the games. I called a gaming distributor and within a week I was carrying a large assortment of games and accessories. We decided to offer the local customers a discount as an incentive to begin to shop at my store for all of their gaming needs. We also began to offer a 10% discount on all new comic books purchased by our regular “subscribers”. My competitor responded by offering a 15% discount. I countered with a 25% discount. He went to 30% off. Within three months I was selling our comic books at 60% off of the retail price! I was actually losing money on every comic book I sold. I was determined to get as much of the comic book and game business as possible away from my competitor. By the summer of 1982 my store was selling more new comic books than my competition. I had over 350 regular weekly customers who were actually paying less for their new comic books than I paid. My competition only offered the huge discount to his small group of about fifty customers so it didn’t affect him as much financially as it did me. I was losing money on my new comics every week. Luckily, my store inventory was not just new comic books. I was still selling a lot of sports cards, record albums, and toys, so I could afford to pay for our expenses, but I knew that this big discount on new comics couldn’t continue. I wrote a letter to my customers and I explained that although the “price war” on new comics was over, I would continue to offer the lowest priced back issue inventory in Massachusetts. I also explained that this would enable me to have sufficient funds available to buy large collections of comic books and collectables from my loyal customer base. Most of my customers understood. Many of them thanked me for offering the discount for as long as I had. Within a week my competitor stopped discounting his new comic books as well.

In 1982, an old friend, Steve Geppi, began distributing new comic books under the name of Diamond Comic Distributors. He bought the distributor that I was using in Boston and suddenly he became my comic book source. Steve Geppi’s belief in superior customer service was evident immediately. Our weekly shipments of new comic books were more accurate and they were more carefully packed. The monthly order forms became very professional. The employees in the Boston warehouse were both professional and friendly and they seemed to really care about making it as easy as possible for us. Carol Kalish, the manager of my old distributor, went to work for Marvel Comics as the manager of the direct sales market. Her knowledge of the business and her love of comic books quickly propelled her to a position as a vice president of the company.

Business had been growing at a rate of over 25% per year for the last two years but like many small business owners, I tried to “save” money by cutting back on things like employee salaries and business insurance. Late at night on December 28, 1982 I got a call from my old employee, Tim Shea, who still lived across the street from my store. He said that the store was on fire and the fire department was on their way. I asked him to go over to the store to try to limit the amount of damage that the firemen would do with their water hoses. I jumped into my car and drove the thirty miles to my store. All of the way there I was thinking that I would be ruined financially. I had drastically under-insured my inventory just to save a few hundred dollars each year. If everything were destroyed I’d only be paid a small fraction of the actual value of my inventory. I wouldn’t be able to pay my employees. This was a horrible ride into Worcester.

When I got to the store, the fire was extinguished. The fire had mostly been contained in the store next to mine. Although I sustained no real fire or water damage, my store did fill up with smoke. The smell of the smoke made it difficult to breathe inside my store. By the time the fire department left it was 8:00 in the morning. I was determined to be open for business by 10:00AM so I called a company that specialized in fire clean up. The company sent a man with a tank of cherry smelling fog that they would spray into the store while my customers waited outside. He would spray this stuff into the store every hour and we’d have to ask all of the customers to go outside until it was safe to come back inside to continue their shopping. Surprisingly, I still had a great day of sales. I used this opportunity to call the local newspaper so they’d run another story about us. Any good free publicity was a boost to our business.

Next chapter: I open another store.

Part Twenty Eight

In the early 1980’s I went to a local comic book store in Auburn, Massachusetts. As I was looking around this store, I overheard the owner telling a customer to “make an offer” on anything he was interested in buying. The owner casually mentioned that he was thinking of getting out of the business. I waited until the customer made his purchase and then I made an offer on everything that was in this shop. For a couple of thousand dollars, I bought his entire inventory and all of his store fixtures! It was the first of many store buyouts.

One of the customers of the store that I bought out found out that I now owned the whole inventory and he began shopping at my store. Paul Dinsdale was only fifteen years old when he first found my store. He quickly became a store “regular”. Paul would come in almost every week to shop for comic books. We would talk about comics and we’d frequently play chess or the board game of Risk on slow days. Paul was such a serious comic book collector that he was one of the first customers to sign up for our comic book convention bus tour to Boston. My friend, Paul Weatherbee, let us use the old Gospel Bus to bring a group of our customers into Boston for a big comic book convention. It was on this bus trip that Paul Dinsdale became a family friend. He talked with my wife and young son Adam during the bus ride and took the time to get to know us. Years later, “Dins” would vacation with us to Washington and Florida. He would eventually meet and marry his wife because of our store. I’ll tell that story in a future chapter.

1983 was a busy year for us, personally, as well as business. Store sales were up significantly and there were quite a few “events” that made it an important year. Marvel Comics had been publishing a GI Joe comic book for about a year and it was one of the hottest selling comics in the business. The first issue was selling briskly at seven to ten dollars even though it was only a year old. One of my part-time employees, Elliot Weininger, happened to find a few copies of GI Joe #1 at a local department store and they were being sold for only 29 cents each. I sent him back to the department store to buy as many as he could find. Luckily, Elliot was a smart guy. He wasn’t satisfied with the few dozen copies that the store had in stock. He asked to see the manager and then he convinced him to order one thousand more copies for us. The manager made a quick phone call and within a week we had the extra one thousand copies. We were shocked that these were available through a subsidiary of Marvel Comics called Marvel Books. It showed how bad the communication could be in large companies like Marvel. Marvel could have sold hundreds of thousands of these to the comic book stores at a minimum of a dollar each, but I was able to get them for only 29 cents each! I made a few phone calls and sold most of them to a dealer in California for $2.75 each. I used all of the money to have my home driveway installed. Unfortunately, for some reason, we weren’t able to get any more copies.

My father was going to Hong Kong on a business trip in mid-1983. We figured, that if he was going to be that close, he should go to Japan to buy some inventory for my store. Japanese model kits of robots and spaceships were a popular collectable at conventions but not too many comic shops were selling them because they were not available through our distributors. I told my father to look for model kits based on the TV show of Starblazers but I really didn’t know very much about other Japanese properties. My father located an exporter and ordered thousands of model kits. We became partners that day and spent over $20,000.00 on model kits! Three months later, when the kits arrived in the United States, we couldn’t fit them in my store so we had the forty foot long tractor trailer load delivered to my home in Bolton, Massachusetts. The kits filled my entire basement and my garage. We wholesaled these model kits to eager comic book retailers all around the United States. It took us many years to sell out of these model kits but it was still a profitable venture. If we still had these model kits today we could sell them all on Ebay for twenty times the amount we sold them for in the 1980’s!

In April of 1983 we went to Disney World for the first time with our son, Adam. We also wanted to take my wife’s teen-aged sisters, Carol and Madeline, but there wasn’t enough room in my old car to comfortably make such a long trip. I called my old friend, Jay Maybruck, and he offered to let us use his station wagon. We drove the 1400 miles from Massachusetts to Florida and had a great time. Even though Adam was only three years old, he enjoyed riding in cars and was almost always well behaved.

Next chapter: I open our store in Maynard, Massachusetts and end up with one of the most exciting comic book collections of my life.

Part Twenty Nine

In 1983 my store had a decent staff of employees and I thought it would be a good time to expand our business by opening another store. I chose the small town of Maynard, Massachusetts. I lived about fifteen minutes away in Bolton. I knew that I’d be working there for at least a few months so the commute would be easy. Maynard was the corporate home of Digital Equipment Company, one of the leading manufacturers of computers. Their workforce was primarily made up of professional, well paid, technical people and I hoped that many of the male employees would be interested in comic books, sports cards, and adventure and war games. I rented a small storefront on one of the busiest streets in the town, very close to the main factory building.

My carpenter friend, Jim Stoll, quickly made all of our custom display racks and shelves and we were open for business within a couple of weeks after the decision was made to open the store. Many of my business choices have been impulsive. I tend to make quick decisions but most of them have worked out. This particular business decision worked out, although it was not as I had expected.

Each weekday in the town of Maynard, the downtown was crowded with employees from Digital Equipment during the lunch break. I could see hundreds of potential customers walking up the street towards my new store but they would stop at the corner before they got to my shop. In my rush to open this store, I hadn’t investigated the traffic patterns of Maynard. It just wasn’t customary for people to walk that far. My store was really the last retail building on this street and the people would have to cross the street to visit my shop so I would watch as they turned around and walked away. It was frustrating to me. My other store locations were successful as soon as we opened. This store was going to require more work.

After I had been open for a few months a man came into the store and I recognized him from the Boston comic book conventions in the 1970’s. He apparently didn’t remember me and I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I didn’t mention that I knew him. He told me that he had a large amount of old comic books that he might be interested in selling. I remembered that in the 1970’s he always had a great stock of comic books from the 1940’s and 1950’s but he didn’t sell very many because his prices were too high. He usually charged twice as much as the other dealers. I told him I was very interested in buying all of his comics so we made an appointment for me to appraise his collection. Two days later I found myself in the basement of a local music store, searching through thousands of comics. I spent a few hours digging through the piles but I was disappointed to find that they were all from the 1970’s. I figured that he must have sold all of the great old comics from the 1940’s-1960’s and I told him that I couldn’t offer him very much money for these. I told him that his best alternative would be to take all of these comic books to the monthly Boston comic book conventions and he should price them at fifty cents each. I knew that he’d sell a lot of them at that price. I gave him my business card and offered to help him with this project if he needed me.

Three weeks later this man was tragically killed in a car accident. His mother found my business card in her son’s wallet and called to see if I would be interested in buying her son’s comic book collection. I told her that I had already looked at the comic book collection in the basement of the music store and I really couldn’t make a good offer on it because I didn’t need many comic books from the 1970’s. She said, “Oh, not those. I mean his private collection in his apartment.”

She gave me directions to his apartment and I drove there right away.

Next chapter: I buy one of the most memorable comic book collections of my career!

Part Thirty

I had given my business card to a man who had some comic books that he wanted to sell and a few weeks later he was killed in a car accident. His mother found my card in his wallet and called me to see if I wanted to buy the comic books. I explained that I had already seen the comics that he stored in the basement of the music store and I really wasn’t interested in buying them. She said, “Oh, not those. I mean his private collection in his apartment.”

She gave me directions and I drove over there as soon as I could. Her son had been a comic book dealer in the 1970’s and I remembered the great selection of comics he always had at the Boston conventions. I hoped that these would be at his apartment. When I entered his apartment his mother introduced me to her son’s girlfriend and a family friend who was there to help clean out the apartment. She led me to the bedroom and I was surprised to see thousands of comic books on shelves that went almost completely around the room. The comics were carefully stacked in piles on the shelves and they were all “double-bagged” for protection. As I sorted through them I realized that there was at least one copy of every Marvel comic book from 1960-1970 including Fantastic Four #1, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Hulk #1, The X-Men #1 and Daredevil #1! There were duplicates of many of these valuable key issues too! It took me over an hour to sort through just the Marvel comics. Then I started on the DC comics.

When this collector had sold comics at the old Boston conventions in the 1970’s, there was very little demand for the DC comics of the late 1950’s and 1960’s. Judging by the enormous quantities of these comics he had at his apartment he wasn’t very successful selling these at the shows. In 1983, however, these comic books were in high demand. DC Comics published Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and those always sold well, but they also published lesser-known titles including Rip Hunter, Sea Devils, Metal Men, The Brave and the Bold, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, The Flash, Green Lantern, The Justice League of America, Mystery In Space, Strange Adventures and dozens more. This collection had as many as twenty copies of almost every issue! This was going to be an expensive collection!

As I was calculating my offer for this important collection, I could overhear the mother and the girlfriend begin to argue about the comic books. The girlfriend claimed that since she might have eventually married the collector, the comic books would have belonged to her. The mother disagreed and continued arguing. Every so often the mother would say, “Have you come across a Batman #1? I know he had a copy of it.” This made the girlfriend even greedier because she knew that would be a valuable comic book. I was also hoping to find this rare comic book! The girlfriend began to cry. The other friend who was helping to clean out the apartment ignored them and continued working.

I was almost finished with my calculations when I began to worry about leaving the girlfriend around the comics. If, out of greed, she grabbed even a small handful of the comics, it could cost me thousands of dollars. I called my cousin, Steven, quietly explained my problem, and asked him to come over to help me. By the time he arrived, the mother had accepted my offer. This was the most expensive collection I had purchased since I split up with my partner from Sparkle City Comics.

We began to load our cars with the thousands of comics, being careful to always have one of us in the apartment with the remaining collection. When we were finally done with the loading, I went back upstairs to get my price guide and calculator. I assured the mother that if I discovered a copy of Batman #1 mixed in with the rest of the comics, I’d call her to give her more money. As my cousin and I were walking out, the guy who was helping to clean out the apartment reached into a closet and pulled out a huge trash bag and said, “Hey, what’s this?!” The bag was filled with golden-age comic books from the 1940’s!

Next chapter: I renegotiate the deal.

Part Thirty One

I had loaded my car with the huge collection of comic books from the 1950’s and 1960’s that I had just bought when a man who was helping to clean out the deceased collector’s apartment pulled a large trash bag out of a closet. This bag was filled with comic books from the 1940’s! Included were Superman #2-40, Wonder Woman #1, All Star Comics #1-4, Superboy #1, World’s Fair 1939-1940, Batman #1-30, and hundreds more! I spent another couple of hours calculating the value of these comic books and made an offer that was much more than the price I had made on the rest of the huge collection. The mother accepted my offer.

My cousin, Steven, helped me bring the collection to my house in Bolton and we spent some time examining the vintage comic books. There was only one copy of each of the comic books from the 1940’s in this collection, but the collection contained as many as twenty copies each of many of the important comics from the 1950’s and 1960’s including Justice League Of America #1-25, Flash #123, The Atom #1-15, Hawkman #1-15, Fantastic Four #1-50, Spider-Man #1-100, X-Men #1-66, Daredevil #1-20 and many more. These ranged from fair condition to near mint condition. This would fill in many “holes” in my store inventory and it would help to establish my store as one of the most complete comic collector’s stores in New England. The only problem was that it would take me months to get this collection ready to sell if I didn’t get some extra help. Each comic book was inside of two protective plastic bags that were taped shut. The tape had deteriorated over the many years that the comics were stored and it was sticking to other plastic bags making it difficult to separate. I knew I would need to find some people to help me who would be very careful handling these valuable comic books. I invited two of my customers, Paul Dinsdale and Paul Silver, over to my house to help me “process” these comic books. As part of their reward for helping me, I gave them the first pick of the comic books that they wanted for their own collection. With their help, (and lots of help from my wife, Mal) I had the comics ready to sell in my store within a few weeks.

In the meantime, lots of things were happening in my personal life. Mal had found a school for our son, Adam. We signed him up for “Power Prep Preschool”. Adam was only four years old but he was already reading simple books. He seemed to be a very bright kid and his vocabulary seemed quite advanced. We knew he’d do great in school.

We had been attempting to have another child for the past year or so and we were surprised that it was taking so long to conceive. When we had decided to have our first child it seemed so easy and Mal was pregnant within a few weeks. Now that it was taking so long, we realized that we weren’t in complete control of everything. We were thrilled when Mal learned that she was expecting our second child.

Next chapter: We learn to be debt-free.

Part Thirty Two

In 1983 the comic book business was great. Sports cards and records were also selling in huge quantities. My business was becoming very profitable. I was making enough money to live comfortably. (I wasn’t rich, just comfortable) My wife and I were still driving old cars but our house in Bolton was a nice home and we didn’t have huge monthly mortgage payments so we decided that we could probably afford a new car. Mal was now pregnant with our second child so we bought a brand new Dodge Aires station wagon, just to be practical. It wasn’t a very nice car but it was cheap. Since we didn’t want to pay monthly payments, we paid about $9000.00 cash for it. It depleted most of our savings account but we had set a goal of living as close to debt-free as possible. Our next goal was to pay off the balance of our home mortgage. We started paying an extra $50.00 each month directly on the principal loan amount and it was exciting to see how fast the mortgage amount dropped. We were getting closer to actually owning our house instead of letting the bank own it. I began to use any “extra” money I had at the end of each week to “pay down” the mortgage and within two years we paid off the entire loan. We were free from debt.

“Free from debt” is not what most financial advisors would recommend to their clients back in the 1980’s. My accountant, Jerry Solomon, would try to encourage me to use as little of my own money as possible. He told me to leverage my earning potential by using other people’s money. Borrow money to make investments and to buy inventory. The advice seemed to make sense but it was against what I had learned in a financial seminar I had been to in the early 1970’s called “Design for Successful Living”. The seminar explained that we could easily become “slaves” to the institutions and people we borrow money from. If you owe someone money, your first responsibility is to repay that loan as you’ve promised to do. Also, when you borrow money there is always a “cost”. Sometimes it’s a high interest rate and sometimes it’s the stress of the commitment to repay the loan. I didn’t take Jerry’s advice.

Jerry was a very good accountant and he did give me some guidance in the early years of my store. He told me to always be honest in reporting sales and paying the full taxes that I owed because it would eventually all make my business a more valuable and legitimate business. He assured me that even with the outrageous tax rates in the United States, I would still keep the majority of the money I earned. This was advice that I took to heart.

I received a request for additional information from the Internal Revenue Service and I called Jerry’s office in a panic. I had never dealt with the IRS before and they intimidated me even though I always kept accurate records and paid my taxes. When I couldn’t get through to Jerry at his office I called his home. His wife informed me that Jerry had a heart attack and he was in intensive care. She recommended that I get another accountant to straighten out the IRS problem while Jerry was recovering. One of my customers, Cindi Dow, was an accountant and she offered to help. Cindi has been my tax accountant for nearly twenty years. Jerry remained a good friend until he died of cancer in the 1990’s.

Next chapter: I learn a lesson: appearances can be deceiving.

Part Thirty Three

When my son, Adam, was four years old he was able to read books on his own. Adam learned new things very quickly. He had a very advanced vocabulary and he was almost always well behaved. My wife, Mal, and I spent as much time as possible with him trying to teach him new things and playing games together. We’d play “Go Fish” and “Candyland” quite often. One of my favorite games to play with Adam came to be called “Hey Buddy”. We would set up small roads on a rug in our family room and use Adam’s toy cars and pretend to drive around “the town”. As we would pass each other Adam and I would say, “Hey Buddy”. We would also build small houses using Lincoln Logs so we’d have actual destinations to drive to. Adam loved this little game.

One of my many character flaws is my lack of patience. I saw how one of my friends interacted with his children and I was actually envious of his relationship with his kids. When he was home, he spent most of his time with his wife and children. It seemed as if he actually enjoyed including his kids in almost every activity and his love and patience was most evident when he was doing yard work. He would frequently be cutting the grass with one or more kids sitting with him on his lawn tractor. He never seemed to be irritated or lose his patience with his children. I was amazed at his devotion and dedication to his family. I wished that I could be like him. I later learned another important life lesson. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t make assumptions based on outward appearances. I found out that the man I held in such high esteem wasn’t perfect, after all. I had been unaware that he was having trouble in his marriage. He was still a man who possessed a lot of great qualities but I learned that things are not always as they appear to be.

It was around this time that my main employee, Steve Wentzell, decided that it was time to leave. I wasn’t paying him as much as I should have been and he could make enough money to live on by selling records at a local flea market. Thankfully, I had enough part time employees to keep the store running smoothly and David Lynch was willing to work for me full time.

David Lynch had a great knowledge of comic book history. He also loved movies, music, and old television shows. He was a talented writer. We also got along really well. He was willing to adapt to my way of doing business and he was a good steady worker. When I would leave instructions and projects for him to work on when I wasn’t there, he always worked hard to complete these tasks. In our business, it’s important to make the shopping experience pleasant for our customers and a good personality makes this much easier. Most of our customers liked David.

A customer, David Hartwell, had been recently laid off from his full time job and when I offered him some temporary work, he accepted. David Hartwell was one of the most laid-back, easy-going guys I’d ever met. He wasn’t the fastest worker I had, but he was diligent and he always finished every task he started. He did quality work, not quantity. He would frustrate me at times, but I eventually learned that it was better to get the job done right, as David Hartwell would do, than rush through it. Although David Hartwell only worked as a temporary, part-time employee during 1983, he would eventually come back a few years later as a valuable full time employee.

In 1965 I had created a comic book super-hero called “Insect Man” and I had written and drawn quite a few small comic books that featured his adventures. One of my customers, Peter Fries, asked if I’d be interested in resuming publication of the comic book series. He had created a new super-hero team called “The Defensors” and he wanted to feature them in the new Insect Man comic books. Peter wrote and drew a three-issue storyline and we began publishing Insect Man again after a five-year hiatus. We had these offset printed in black and white and we sold about one hundred copies of each issue in my store. Some of my other customers began to write stories too. Dan Courtney and Chris Coleman wrote a few issues about a new super-hero named Silverlion. I enjoyed publishing these stories but these issues didn’t feature my character of Insect Man. Another customer, Larry Young, wrote and drew a story that would feature the exciting return of Insect Man. He designed a new costume and this issue was an instant hit. We sold out of every issue we had printed. Larry didn’t have time to do any more issues because he was a hard working college student but David Lynch stepped up and began writing the new Insect Man comic books. The local newspapers wrote articles about “Worcester’s own super-hero” and the sales increased on our little Insect Man comic books. Larry Young eventually worked at my store for a couple of years and he now makes his living writing, drawing, and publishing real comic books!

Next chapter: Atlantic City!

Part Thirty Four

When legalized gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was started in the late 1970’s, my partner Jay and my wife Mal, and I went for an evening of entertainment. The Resorts Hotel was the only hotel with a casino at that time. As we walked in I was told that I couldn’t get in without a dress jacket and when I told them that I didn’t have one, they had to lend me a jacket. Casino gambling was much more elegant in those days. We played blackjack for almost eight hours and we lost about $30.00. That was a fun and somewhat inexpensive night of entertainment. Over the next six years I learned to play blackjack “by the book” and I’d frequently have winning sessions. Of course, I’d have times where I’d lose some money too. Mal didn’t really enjoy gambling because she hated to lose. If she lost twenty dollars she’d realize that she could have bought a pair of shoes for that same amount of money. She would frequently go to the casino with me but she’d just stand and watch me play. She didn’t seem to mind if I lost money gambling and she’d cheer for me if I won. Occasionally, my father would come with me to Atlantic City. We would play blackjack together for hours and I always had a great time with him. By the mid 1980’s my father was treated to free airfare to Atlantic City as well as free hotel rooms and food because he had become a frequent “player”. Luckily, my father was usually careful with his money so the gambling trips didn’t become a problem for him. He just enjoyed these trips as fun entertainment and I’d enjoy spending time with him.

On May 8th of 1984, Mal’s doctor told her that she was in the beginning stages of labor and urged her to go to the hospital. Since her labor pains weren’t too horrible yet, we stopped at Jimmy Talbot’s comic book store, Bop City Comics, so I could buy some comic books to read while we were at the hospital. Jimmy and I chatted about comics while Mal’s labor pains increased. When we finally arrived at the hospital they were waiting for us and they told us that they were wondering what took us so long. I’m sure they must have thought I was crazy. Mal was in labor all night but it became evident that she wasn’t actually ready to have the baby so we returned home. This was fine for me because the lady in the room next to us was screaming in pain throughout the whole night! The next day Mal played cards and Scrabble with our neighbor, Louise Ruth, until the labor pains became so painful that it was apparent that this was the real thing! She called me at the comic store and I quickly drove home and we went to the hospital again. Mal was in labor all night.

On May 10th of 1984 my wife gave birth to our second child, Cassandra. We had been hoping for a baby girl so we’d have one of each. So now, with our son, Adam, we were satisfied that this was our family. Adam wouldn’t be an only child. I’d have a son to goof around with and Mal had a girl to enjoy. Our life was going according to our plan.

When we had finally brought Adam home from the hospital after his health problems were resolved, he began to sleep straight through the night after about a month. Cassandra was not so accommodating. She would cry each day from 5:00PM to 11:00PM. Actually it was more like screaming than crying. It didn’t matter what we tried to do. We’d walk with her, rock her, sing to her, and we even tried driving her around in our car, but nothing worked. Our doctor said she was just “colicky” and that she’d eventually stop but because of my lack of patience (one of my bad traits) I would stay at my comic book store as long as I could just to avoid Cassy’s screaming. I got a lot of work done at the store but I wasn’t much help for Mal. This continued for almost three months before Cassy finally became a pleasant baby.

Adam was excited about having a baby sister. He didn’t seem to be jealous of all of the attention Cassy was getting. He was enjoying his time at The Power Prep pre-school. Adam loved learning and he loved interacting with the other kids in his school. Mal had always helped organize “play groups” so that Adam could get together with local kids his age. Each week the playgroup would be held at a different house in our neighborhood so that the kids would learn to socialize in different settings. By the time Adam was in pre-school he was very comfortable playing with boys and girls. It was during this year in pre-school that Adam experienced his very first starring role in a theater production of “Caps For Sale”. My mother and father sat in the front row with Mal and I as we proudly watched him act. As usual, my viewing of this event was seen through the viewfinder of a video camera. (Many of the most important events in my children’s lives would be seen that way.)

Next chapter: We consolidate our two stores into one.

Part Thirty Five

In 1984 I owned two comic book and collectables stores, one in Worcester, and one in Maynard, Massachusetts. Although the Maynard store was profitable, it wasn’t making enough money to keep me excited about the extra work necessary to keep it going. One store is a lot of work and most people think it would be twice as much work to have two stores. I believe it’s much more than that. With more than one store, there’s more effort spent moving merchandise from store to store. There are more employees to hire, train and schedule. Although I had purchased one of my most memorable comic book collections because of the Maynard store, I just wasn’t interested in expending the time and effort to build the store into a high profit location. After running it for a little over a year, I decided to close the Maynard store. I wrote a letter explaining the situation to all of my customers and I offered a short-term incentive for them to begin shopping at our Worcester store. I knew that some customers would be intimidated by the big city of Worcester so I encouraged them to shop at the comic book store owned by my cousin Steven Higgins in Waltham, Massachusetts. Many of them still shop there almost twenty years later!

My Worcester store was becoming well known for the great inventory of old comic books that we had in stock and the local newspapers would run stories when we located rare and expensive comics like the first Superman or Batman comic book. The extra publicity in these large circulation newspapers would encourage other people in the area to sell us their collections of old comics, toys, records, and trading cards. With a very limited budget for advertising, we were thrilled to get this kind of free publicity. It would have cost us hundreds of dollars for an advertisement and many people would pass right by it, but most people would be interested in reading an article about us, especially if there was a photograph included. The local newspapers were very cooperative in the mid-1980’s. Comic books and baseball cards were the subject of many large articles and the editors were happy to be able to include us as local interest subjects. We bought new collections almost every day. Not all of them were rare or old collectables, but I’d buy them anyway. I had planned to be in business for many years so I knew that I’d eventually need even these more recent items. Although our sales were very good, I decided to plan an “event” to have some fun with my customers. I sent out flyers to everyone on my mailing list inviting them to an auction at my store. I selected a bunch of comic books and toys specifically for the auction. There was an empty lot behind my store so I decided to have the auction there. There were about 150 people at the store for this auction. I did the auctioning myself and had a fun time joking around with my customers. The customers seemed to enjoy it because we decided to start each item with no minimum bid. Many of the items went cheap, but some items sold for more than we expected. It was a bright sunny day and it was strange to watch my customers getting more sunburned with each passing hour. When the auction was over most of the customers came into the store and spent whatever money they had left on our regular store inventory. This was so successful that we were now determined to plan other special events for our customers. We didn’t want our store to be just a place for people to spend money, we wanted our store to be remembered as a fun place to come to and hang out in.

Next Chapter: Howley's Folly.

Part Thirty Six

By 1984, my store was bursting at the seams with comic books, records, toys and trading cards. I was only paying $350.00 per month for rent, but I needed more space. The store retail space and back room, combined, was only 1500 square feet. In the mid-1980’s, rents in Worcester had skyrocketed. Real estate investors from Boston had bought up lots of the commercial property with the hopes of transforming Worcester into a new Boston. The average retail space was now renting at an annual rate of $12.00 per square foot. I was only paying about $2.80 per square foot because my landlord lived in another state and he was unaware that Worcester had become a “hot” location. I had offered to buy the building a few times, but each time he told me his “asking price” it was slightly higher than I thought the building was worth. Luckily for me, the landlord was content with the rent he was receiving from me. I had been in this building for four years, with no lease, and he had not raised the rent at all. He must have appreciated that I always paid on time and didn’t bother him with minor problems with the building. The tenant who rented the store next to me wasn’t as easy. He was frequently late with his rent and when he decided to move out, my landlord asked if I wanted to rent that store also. There was only one problem. There was no door joining the two stores. The landlord said that if I wanted to create a doorway, I’d have to do it myself.

The wall between the two stores was made up of two layers of solid brick and I knew I wasn’t up to the challenge of creating the new opening. I contacted my friend, Jim Stoll, and he began smashing the wall down with a sledgehammer. I rented a dumpster that had wheels on the bottom and had it delivered and placed on the sidewalk as close to the store as possible. The dumpster was quite large and it took up most of the space on the sidewalk. While Jim pounded away at the walls, his son and I loaded the bricks into the dumpster. Within a few hours the majority of the bricks were removed from the wall and they were in the dumpster. Unfortunately, this made the dumpster so heavy that we couldn’t move it. I called the trash company to come and get the dumpster, but I had forgotten that it was the beginning of a holiday weekend. They told me they couldn’t come to remove the dumpster for four days. I explained to them that the dumpster location made it dangerous to pass by on the sidewalk. When I explained that it was full of bricks and it was now too heavy to move they laughed. They told me that construction materials like bricks were extremely expensive to dispose of and it would probably cost about $1500.00 to get rid of these. They also insisted that they couldn’t get the dumpster for another four days. I had to get rid of these bricks and get the dumpster off of the sidewalk. There was only one solution. I had Jim cut a hole in the floor of the store and we unloaded all of those bricks from the dumpster and just dumped them into the basement of the store! The basement was completely empty and there was no other way to get down there, so putting a few tons of bricks wouldn’t hurt anything. Employees and customers would refer this to as “Howley’s Folly” for many years. As usual, I just didn’t think this expansion plan through.

Next chapter: We obtain a complete Marvel Comics collection in gorgeous condition and learn about turning it into an event.

Part Thirty Seven

In the mid-80’s I acquired a huge collection of Marvel Comics comic books that included almost every comic they had published from 1960-1984, and most of them were in near mint-mint condition. This collection included every issue of Spider-Man, Avengers, Daredevil, X-Men, Thor, Hulk, Sgt.Fury, Strange Tales, The Silver Surfer, and Iron Man. It also had The Defenders, Werewolf By Night, Tomb of Dracula, Warlock, Marvel Team-Up, Iron Fist, and Marvel Tales. The collection included every issue of The Fantastic Four except for issue #5. This collection was most exciting because it also had all of the less popular but very hard to find comics like Millie The Model, Patsy Walker, Night Nurse, Peter The Little Pest, Our Love Story, and many more. Every western, monster, and war comic that Marvel had published was included, even most of the ones published in the 1950’s. All of the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, Two Gun Kid, Tales of Suspense, Tales To Astonish, Journey Into Mystery, and more, were there. No kidding, this was a complete Marvel collection, and believe me; these comics were really in beautiful condition!

I realized that I probably would have no problem selling many of these comic books. I could process them all, price them, and sort them, and put them into my stock and they’d eventually sell. But I wanted to make this an exciting event for my customers (and for me). I decided to wait until the entire collection was put in order and priced before I would begin selling any of it. Comic books in “high grade” condition are quite rare and I couldn’t afford to price these cheaply. In general, I priced these comic books at about 150% of the current comic book price guide prices. I was concerned that my customers would resist paying these prices because they were usually accustomed to my lower than guide pricing policy. I began telling my customers to get ready for the opportunity to complete their Marvel collection. I also sent out a flyer to everyone on my mailing list to make them aware of this huge collection. Even though I planned this “event” a full month in advance, I wasn’t finished pricing the collection until the night before the collection was to be unveiled. I had to work long into the night rearranging the store so I’d have the space to display this collection all in one area. Eventually, I was so tired that I decided to go home and finish all of the details the next morning. I didn’t have to have it all ready for sale until 10:00AM so if I got back to the store by 6:00AM I should have been able to get everything done before we opened for business. I have a bad habit of underestimating the amount of time needed to complete major projects.

Next chapter: Okay. The collection is unveiled…but does anybody care?

Part Thirty Eight

I spent a month getting the complete Marvel Comics collection ready for sale and I sent out flyers to the customers on my mailing list alerting them to the “unveiling”. I worked late the night before the collection was to go on sale but I was too tired to finish, so I went home. I planned to come in early the next morning to finish all of the details before the customers came showed up. I got to the store at 6:30AM and worked as fast as I could to finish setting up the displays. I arranged the hundred boxes of this collection in order on tables in a separate section of the store and put up signs indicating that these were part of this special collection. I put up an interesting assortment of the most valuable comics on the wall display including Amazing Spider-Man #1-14, Journey Into Mystery #83, The Hulk #1, The Fantastic Four #1-12, X-Men #1, Daredevil #1, The Avengers #1, The Silver Surfer #1 and #4, Conan #1, and more. At 8:00 AM the customers began lining up outside of the store. My wife, Mal, and my son Adam, came to help out just in case we had a larger than expected crowd show up to shop. It was a good thing they came. By the time we opened the store at 10:00AM, there were almost one hundred people waiting in line!

While the customers were waiting in line many were talking about which books they were interested in purchasing and the excitement was building by the time we finally opened. I was getting excited because I could now anticipate a great day of sales. The first customer rushed directly to the big display of the more valuable comics and bought the entire eighteen issue collection of The Silver Surfer and as I was ringing up the sale he casually said, “Oh, and I’ll also take the Tales To Astonish #27.” This issue was the first appearance of Ant Man and it was priced at $400.00. My store had been open for about three minutes and this customer spent almost one thousand dollars!

The day was filled with exciting purchases. Many customers took this opportunity to fill in large runs of inexpensive back issue comics that they had been looking for, while some other customers bought the very expensive comics. By the end of the day I had sold almost ten thousand dollars worth of comics from this great collection.

I learned that the marketing of a collection was a very important part of the process of selling my inventory. The customers were happy because they had the chance to complete their collections with very high quality merchandise and I was happy because we sold so much of this collection on the very first day it went “on sale.”

Next Chapter: Adam goes to kindergarten.

Part Thirty Nine

In September of 1985 I had one of those exciting experiences that only a parent could understand. My son, Adam, was going off to school. Actually, it was only kindergarten, but he would be riding on the school bus (without me!) and we were allowing strangers to take care of him. He would be taught by teachers that we didn’t know and that worried us a little bit. My wife, Mal, and I had always taught Adam. This was also a beginning of our child’s path to independence. As a parent, I was both excited for him and sad because he was growing up so fast. For Mal it was an emotional time.

I was fortunate that I had a good staff of employees at my comic book store. Their competence allowed me to take time off to see Adam get on the school bus in the morning and be there when he got home on that first day of kindergarten. When that big yellow school bus came to pick Adam up, his family was there to see him off. Of course, his sister Cassandra was only sixteen months old but she knew that something exciting was happening today. As usual, I was busy video taping this important milestone in Adam’s life.

Four hours later, the school bus returned my son to the top of our driveway. Adam was busily saying good-bye to many of his newfound friends as he got off the bus. As the videotape rolled, he gave us the details of his first day of school. He was supplied with a nametag so the teacher could learn who he was and the students were placed at desks, seemingly at random. Adam already knew some of the kids from the playgroups that Mal had arranged and he enjoyed meeting new kids. Adam was never shy around kids or adults. He was a little disappointed that they didn’t do much work that first day. He wanted to learn new things and use the skills he had already developed, but on the first day of school they just colored some pictures. We assured him that he’d do more as the year went by. When we asked Adam what his favorite part of school was, he thought for a moment and replied, “The bus ride.”

After a few months of school had gone by, Adam’s disappointment grew. He once explained to us how frustrating it was that most of the other kids in kindergarten didn’t know how to read. In fact, most of the kids didn’t even know their colors! He felt that he wasn’t learning much new. Although Mal was concerned about this, I wasn’t. I had gone through the public school system and I was doing just fine. Mal had been praying that we would find an alternative school for when Adam went to first grade. She began searching for the surrounding area for a private Christian school and found a relatively new school called The Imago School. Two women, Joodi and Linnie, who had a desire to offer a “classical” education for children, established this school. When we went for our “informational interview.” I wasn’t really going in with an open mind. I wanted “the best” for my boy. I wanted sports. I wanted large classes filled with different kinds of kids so that Adam would be exposed to lots of what life had to offer. I wanted the large assortment of resources that only a government school could offer, because of their tax filled coffers. The Imago School offered none of these important features. They focused on a serious learning experience for the students. There were no sports or extra-curricular activities. Classes were very small. Some had as few as six students. And to make it worse, they charged about $1800.00 per year for this education! I was already paying thousands of dollars per year for the local school system and I thought it would be okay to send Adam to these public schools. I was against this private school idea but I agreed to pray for guidance before I made my decision.

Now, for some of you, the idea of prayer (and the answer to prayer) is a foreign concept. In my life I’ve prayed for many things and I’ve had many prayers answered. I believe that my relationship with God is personal and real. I know some of you will think I’m nuts. I know some people who have actually “heard” the voice of God, but I haven’t. I do however believe that I have “sensed” His will for my life. In this situation it became clear to me in many ways that I needed to give the Imago School a try. It was important for Mal and I to be in agreement on these serious issues regarding our children. As it turned out, this school would become one of the most important parts of my children’s lives.

Next chapter: Back at the comic book store we meet our “Norm”…Darryl Hunt.

Part Forty

By the mid 1980’s my comic book and collectable store in Worcester, Massachusetts had developed a large and loyal customer base. It was primarily male, mostly between the ages of eight and thirty. We had lots of teenagers. We did have some customers who were as old as sixty-five to seventy, but there weren’t too many. Our store was located in a “tough” section of the city so most women were afraid to come to shop there. Mothers with young children would also be concerned for the safety of the kids. It always bothered me that I was unable to attract fifty percent of the area population (the females) because of the store location but I thought I couldn’t afford the higher rent in a safer neighborhood. I wanted my store to be a place for whole families to shop in. We attempted to keep the atmosphere in my store as pleasant and “family-friendly” as possible.

In the theme song from the TV show “Cheers” it says that everyone needs a place where someone knows their name. I wanted my store to be that kind of place. I wanted my customers to know that I cared about them as people, not just as customers.

I enjoyed almost all of my customers for a variety of reasons. I certainly appreciated the money that they spent! I knew that they had other places to spend their hobby money and I was honored that they would choose my store. I also enjoyed getting to know my customers on a personal level. There were a lot of interesting “characters”. Many of them were “gamers”. Gamers are people who usually play role-playing adventure games or war games. Most of them are nice, normal folks, but there are some who are unusual. One such customer was Conrad. (I’ve changed his name so he won’t be too embarrassed)

Conrad collected comic books and he was a very vocal fan. He had strong opinions about every comic book he would read and he even had opinions about the comic books he didn’t read! We would spend hours discussing comic books. (I always encouraged my customers to discuss comics and collectables with me. The only stipulation was that they had to let me continue to work at the same time. Most of my customers understood.) Conrad also had an annoying habit of paying for every purchase with two-dollar bills. He did it because he knew that it drove retailers crazy because there is no place to put a two-dollar bill in a standard cash register drawer. He loved to be irritating and odd and he really loved to be contrary. But for some reason I enjoyed his wackiness. One day Conrad was more agitated than usual and he asked if he could talk to me in private. I brought him into the backroom of the store. He quietly asked if I could somehow find him a gun. I laughed at him. He suddenly looked very serious so I knew that something was wrong. He was actually trembling as he explained that one of the guys that he plays Dungeons and Dragons with had just “killed” his favorite character. Conrad had been role-playing as this character for many years and he had developed him over time into a powerful character. Now this favorite character could no longer be part of the game and Conrad was angry. Conrad now wanted to get revenge on his fellow gamer by actually buying a gun and killing his friend! I tried explaining to him that this was only a game and not real life, but he wasn’t accepting this information. I finally had to grab him by his shirt and shake him to “snap” him out this delusion. We talked for about an hour until he realized that he needed to get professional help from a doctor. A few weeks later he thanked me for bringing him back to reality and preventing him from making the biggest mistake of his life.

On “Cheers” there was a regular customer named Norm. As he entered the bar each day, the other regulars would greet him by cheering out his name, “Norm!” He was known and loved by the other regular customers. In my store we had our own “Norm”. He was actually Darryl Hunt.

Darryl was a young man in his early twenties. He collected comic books and was a serious gamer. Darryl knew a lot about all of the major sports and he was quite knowledgeable about popular music. He had strong opinions about almost everything, but he was usually right. Darryl also had a great, sarcastic sense of humor that usually cracked me up. He was also one of the kinds of guys who would be willing to help out whenever he was needed. He came into my store almost every weekday from two-thirty until near closing, just to hang-out with us. Over the years he has become a true friend.

Next Chapter: The “Talking Toilet Guy”.

Part Forty One

My store was located across the street from City Hospital and the Worcester Area Mental Health Center. We would often get people wandering into the store from the Mental Health Center after they had their doctor appointment. We realized that many of these people had serious problems so we tried very hard to be kind and patient to them. One such man came to be known to us as “The Talking Toilet Guy”. He would come into the store twice each week and politely ask us if we had any half-dollar coins. We didn’t get them in normal change but we knew that he’d like it if we had some for him. We made a special effort to get some for him each week when we went to the bank. He’d come in and ask, and we’d exchange his dollar bill for two half-dollar coins. He would get quite excited, he’d giggle, he’d thank us and he’d leave. It seemed like a simple way to give this guy a little happiness in his life. Unfortunately, this only encouraged him to stop in more often. He began visiting the store four days each week. He continued asking for the half-dollars coins but now he added a new request. He would say (with slurred speech), “ Sir, do you have the 1974 Good Housekeeping magazine with the Talking Toilet on the back cover, sir?” We tried to explain to him that we didn’t have any Good Housekeeping magazines in stock but we’d watch for one for him. As the weeks went by he got more and more frantic in his desire for this magazine. He would ask us multiple times on each visit. After a few months of this it became annoying to all of us.

We all thought it would be harmless fun to play a joke on my competition in town. We told “The Talking Toilet Guy” that we had just opened a new store across town. We gave him directions to my competitor’s store. We explained that the Good Housekeeping magazines were in the very back of the store and we told him that the “manager” of this new store would probably claim that he didn’t have any of these magazines in stock. We encouraged him to insist that he wanted to see these magazines. We all had visions of my grumpy competitor trying to convince the Talking Toilet Guy that he really didn’t have the 1974 Good Housekeeping magazine with the talking toilet on the back cover. We thought it was really funny. A few days later, the Talking Toilet Guy came into my store and explained that our “new store” manager was very rude and he wouldn’t let him see the Good Housekeeping magazines. We thought about sending him back again but we didn’t want to upset him again.

He continued coming into my store four or five days a week asking the same question for a couple more months until we couldn’t take it anymore. One day when he came in, I said, “We just got in a collection of Good Housekeeping magazines. Let me see if the issue with the talking toilet is in it.” I bent down in front of him and pretended I was looking through a box of magazines. Keep in mind that there was NOTHING in front of me! He watched intently as I pretended to flip through these non-existent magazines. I finally said, “Sorry, but there are no magazines here from 1974.” The Talking Toilet Guy looked disappointed and asked if he could look through them! He wanted to look through a box of magazines that didn’t exist! I finally had to tell him to leave the store and I asked him not to come back. We never saw him again.

Next chapter: The “Smelly Lady” and the “Candy Man Guy”.

Part Forty Two

Running a comic book and collectable store can be a lot of fun. Most of the customers are nice people and they’re usually in a good mood because they are treating themselves to something special. Thankfully, almost all of my customers are quite pleasant. But occasionally we run into shoppers that just irritate us. This chapter is about two such people.

There was a woman in her twenties who would come into my store about once each week to look around. She never bought anything. She just wandered around touching as much merchandise as she could. She did this for about a year. Normally I wouldn’t mind because we encourage browsing, but this woman had a serious problem. She smelled disgusting! She smelled so bad that my regular customers would actually gag and choke when she came into the store. Many customers couldn’t stand her smell, so they’d quickly leave the store. I had a stronger tolerance but it was still a horrible smell. When she would finally leave I’d have to spray an air-freshener to try to cover up her lingering odor. On one of her visits, when she smelled exceptionally bad, I tried to explain to her that she was upsetting many of my customers and that I didn’t want her to come back into my store unless she got cleaned up. She seemed confused by my request and she refused to leave. I asked her to leave again, but she wouldn’t move. I reached behind my counter and pointed the air-freshener in her direction and gave it a short spray. She jumped back but still refused to leave. I sprayed the air-freshener again and she backed up a little more. As I walked towards her and sprayed she got closer to the door. All of the time I was spraying she remained confused and silent. Finally, with one slightly larger spray, she backed out of the store and she never returned.

There was a young man in his twenties who we believe worked at the local hospital. He would come into my store every weekday at about 4:30 PM and he would stay until about 5:45 PM. We assumed he was just passing the time until someone come to pick him up to bring him home. He would start browsing through our huge stock of record albums beginning with the first box. He would pick out a record and ask us if we would play it for him. We had a policy that we would play any selection that our customers wanted to hear. Every day at 5:45 PM he would suddenly stop looking through the records and he’d leave without saying anything. He never bought anything from us. Ever. The worst thing about this guy is that he had the worst musical taste I’ve ever heard. I know that musical taste is a personal thing but he’d pick out records that just drove us all crazy. One day he handed me a copy of a horrible record compilation by K-Tel Records that started off with Olivia Newton John singing “Have You Ever Been Mellow”. My patience was wearing thin. The next song was Sammy Davis Jr. singing “The Candy Man”. That was more than I could stand. I grabbed the record off of the turntable. I shrieked and snapped the record into tiny pieces that shot all over the store. The guy looked at me but didn’t say anything. He just calmly walked out of the store and he never came back.

I want to explain that I usually try to be a nice guy, especially to my customers. These people just pushed me over the edge.

Next Chapter: Hey, Hey, They’re The Monkees!

Part Forty Three

As a twelve year old, my favorite rock and roll bands were The Beatles and The Monkees. I know that seems strange since these two bands were very different. The Beatles were very creative and wrote their own music. The Monkees were really only actors pretending to be musicians. But there was something special about The Monkees. Perhaps it was just the television show hyping them each and every week or maybe it was the fantastic songs written by many of the most successful songwriters of the 1960’s including Neil Diamond, Carol King, Neil Sedaka, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Whatever it was, they were really my favorite band. I had all of their albums and many of the toys and trading cards made with their pictures on them. I bought lots of the teen magazines that featured articles and photos about The Monkees. I didn’t have a chance to see them in concert because we lived so far from any of the cities that they played in from 1966-1967. The Monkees broke up around 1969 so I figured I’d never get to see my favorite band perform live. That all changed in 1986.

A customer from my comic book store told me that three of the original members of The Monkees were reforming to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the television show. Mike Nesmith didn’t need to tour with them because he was still living off of the huge inheritance from his Mom’s creation of “Liquid Paper” but Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork were going to be at The Hampton Beach Casino club about an hour away from Worcester. So my wife, Mal, and my good friend and fellow Monkee fan, Kevin Simpson, joined me to see the concert. The concert also featured other bands from the sixties including Herman’s Hermits, Gary Puckett and The Union Gap, and The Grass Roots. We had great seats, dead center, about fifteen feet from the stage. When The Monkees began their set of songs it was obvious that they were enjoying this new chance of regaining their stardom. They seemed like they were having a fun time and the audience loved them. I was so thrilled to finally get to see the band that gave me so much pleasure when I was a kid.

When the show was over I was disappointed that we didn’t have tickets for the late show that evening. My friend Kevin also wished we could see them again. We went outside and we saw hundreds of people waiting in line for the next show. It didn’t take long for us to buy some tickets from a “scalper”. We didn’t have good seats but it was certainly worth the extra money to see them again.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with my life with comic books and the history of my comic book store. You’ll have to trust me for a little while longer…it really is all connected!

Next Chapter: Serious illness strikes!

Part Forty Four

My wife, Mal, and I are both from very large families and we had been fortunate that most of us were quite healthy. Mal had tumors in her left eye that eventually left her blind in that eye but other than that every one seemed healthy. Mal’s father, Richard, had a major heart attack when he was only forty-eight years old but he had recovered and he seemed to be doing okay. Most of our close friends were young and healthy too. That all changed in the mid-1980’s.

Our close friends, Allan and Debbie Traylor, were told that Debbie had cancer. We were all shocked because Debbie seemed to be in such great physical condition. She took good care of herself. She exercised and ate the “right” foods. The way Allan and I ate you’d have assumed that if someone were going to get sick, it would be one of us. But not Debbie. Debbie went in for surgery to remove the cancer tumor in 1986.

Mal’s mother, Madeline, had to find a new doctor because her regular doctor was retiring. So on a Friday she found a new doctor because she needed to refill her blood pressure medication. This new doctor found that Madeline was retaining fluids and her blood work came back abnormal. He wanted to admit her to the hospital on the following Monday for additional testing. The day before she was to go to the hospital Richard suddenly had another heart attack and was admitted to the intensive care unit of Marlboro Hospital. His condition was serious but he was stable. The next day we brought Madeline in for her tests and it was discovered that she was actually quite ill. She began bleeding from her esophagus. The doctors considered her condition very serious. We were all told that she probably wouldn’t live for more than a week. We were advised to not tell Richard that his wife was in serious condition because the doctors were afraid that it could trigger another heart attack. We all felt bad that Richard wasn’t aware of Madeline’s condition. Eventually the doctors decided to tell him. Richard had more heart attacks. Almost miraculously, Madeline responded to some medication and survived. She was released but she was still very sick.

Richard was finally released from the hospital and he came home to begin the long process of taking care of his wife. He still had to work so it was up to his children to care for Madeline as their schedules allowed. Most of their children were grown up with families of their own and they either lived far away or had the responsibility of full time jobs. Madeline’s two youngest children, Carol and Maddy, were still living at home so they were able to take care of her at night but they both worked full time jobs during the day. Madeline’s oldest son, Dick, lived nearby with his wife Diane. Diane and Mal were “stay at home Moms” so they worked together to take care of Madeline.

Madeline’s condition worsened and in January of 1987 her doctor recommended that she should go into a rehabilitation center to regain her strength. He thought that she’d only be in the nursing home for a couple of weeks. We all looked forward to her coming home. We visited her almost every day during her first two weeks. She was very alert and talkative but she was in a lot of pain. Then we got the phone call. She had slipped into a coma. The doctors didn’t know why. She remained in the coma for almost three weeks until one day, when the whole family was at her bedside, she woke up! Even though she was in pain, she spoke with everyone and told all her children that she loved them. A week later she went back into a coma. She died on February 18, 1987.

For the entire fifteen years I had known my in-laws they had been looking forward to retirement together. They had lived a very simple life. All they wanted was to buy a small home in Maine, buy a new Cadillac, and get a dog. Richard had retired from his union truck-driving job three months before Madeline died. This profoundly affected me. Mal and I decided that we wouldn’t “put-off” enjoying life for some future time that may never come. I began to develop a long-range plan at my comic book store so that I could stop working by the age of forty. I loved working at my store but I knew that I wanted to spend more time with my wife and children if it could be arranged.

Next chapter: Our dear friend Debbie has a relapse.

Part Forty Five

It was beginning to be a tradition that once each year I would plan a major auction at my comic book store. These were extremely popular with my customers but I was desperately out of space in my small store so I needed to find someplace else to hold the auction. I found The Yankee Drummer Inn, a local hotel that had a large function room that was available for about $250.00. I booked it for a Friday night and sent out flyers to everyone on my ever-expanding mailing list and I passed out flyers in the store to every customer who came in for a month before the event. I began selecting individual collectables and runs of back issue comics to be auctioned. I had a few very valuable comics left from the complete Marvel Comics collection that I had acquired earlier in the year including an almost perfect copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that I decided to offer at auction. I invited my cousin Steven to bring some of his store inventory to sell at the auction. As I would finish auctioning off an item, Steven would start auctioning off one of his lots. This kept the auction moving quickly. My wife, Mal, came to take care of recording the results of each auction and to handle the cash-out procedure. My son, Adam, worked as a “runner” to deliver each item to the high bidder. My daughter Cassandra came but she was only two years old so she was just an observer. To complete the “family affair”, my mother and father came to help.

My mother asked if I would auction a group of collectable stamped first day covers that she had bought at a yard sale. I decided that I’d play a joke on dear ol’ Mom. When she left the room for a moment I quickly explained the joke to the audience of over 200 people. I told them to bid like crazy on the stamp lot and I wouldn’t really make them pay for the lot. When Mom came back into the room I started the auction of the stamps. “Do I have any offers on this lot of first day stamp covers?” The audience played their part perfectly. The opening bid was 25 cents. Another customer bid $1.00. Then it went to $2.00. Then it was $10.00. My Mom was perking up. “Do I have $20.00 anywhere?” There was a hesitation. “Yes, I have $20.00.” Suddenly the audience started bidding faster. Within a minute the bidding was up to $200.00! My Mom was giddy with excitement. Then I stopped the bidding and revealed the joke to poor Mom. The audience thought it was pretty funny but I’m sure Mom didn’t. She was already mentally spending all of her proceeds. We did eventually auction the lot off for around $25.00. She was happy with that but not as happy as she would have been if the lot really went for $200.00.

My auction policy was that it would be a real auction. I hate it when auction companies have minimum bids in their auctions. To me, that’s like saying, “I’m willing to sell this item for $10.00 but if you want to pay me more for it, I’ll take it.” All of my items were sold with no minimum bid! Sometimes this would be scary for me but it always made it more fun for my customers. At this auction I would be offering the gorgeous copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that was worth about $700.00 at the time. The opening bidder offered one dollar. The bidding slowed down around one hundred dollars and seemed like it would end when it finally reached one hundred and fifty dollars. I was saying, “Going…going…gone” when someone new jumped into the bidding and bid two hundred dollars. Within a couple of moments the comic book sold for six hundred and ten dollars to a man I had never met. He certainly got a great deal on that comic book. It’s no worth over $15,000.00.

By not having the auction at my store location I lost the potential of my customers spending any unused money on other product but because everyone had fun, I still considered it a success.

After the death of Mal’s mother, we had decided to begin to seriously plan for a very early retirement from the day-to-day involvement in the comic book and collectable business. It was my intention to make as much money as possible over the next eight years before I turned forty years old. I needed to somehow increase our store’s business very quickly. My employee, David M. Lynch came up with a great idea one day while we were shooting the breeze. (I’ll tell you about his idea soon.)

In 1986, my sister Sharon and her family decided to move to New Hampshire because her husband Greg had a new job opportunity there. Sharon and Mal were very close so it was difficult to think of Sharon not being nearby anymore. Her kids and our kids loved to play together so we were all sad to see them move over one hundred miles away.

Around that time our good friend Debbie was also told that her cancer was back.

Next chapter: The Man From Uncle returns.

Part Forty Six

In 1986 the comic book industry was in the middle of an explosion of “black and white” comic book publishing. After the immediate success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, many people wanted to release their own comic book. It seemed as if anyone who could scrape up a couple of thousand dollars was drawing and publishing their own black and white comic book. Some of these were good but most were not.

My employee, David M. Lynch, was a talented writer. He was the “regular” writer of our amateur comic book of “Insect Man”. Insect Man was officially recognized in 1986 as “America’s longest running amateur comic book” with over 100 issues published from 1965-1986. For a brief time we considered publishing Insect Man in a full sized professional comic book but we decided that there were already enough superhero comics in the market. One day, as we were talking about our favorite television shows from the 1960’s we discovered that we both enjoyed the “The Man From Uncle”. We both used to pretend we were secret agents when we were kids. David said, “I wonder why no one is publishing a comic book about The Man From Uncle. That show must still have a lot of fans that would get a kick out of new adventures.” David knew he’d have some fun writing the stories and he had a good friend, Skip Simpson, who could draw the comic books. We agreed on the amount of money that I would pay for him to write each issue. After we discussed the possibilities of storylines and some of the difficulties of publishing a professional comic book I told David that I’d put up the money if he could get the rights to publish a comic book about The Man From Uncle. After a week or so, David had made contact with MGM-Turner, the owner of the Man From Uncle. MGM-Turner was willing to sell us a two-year license to publish the comic book series for an initial up-front payment of five thousand dollars plus eight percent of the cover price of every issue we sold. They would also have complete script approval and final art approval for all of the issues. I agreed to all of their terms.

While David began writing the first two-part story his friend Skip Simpson drew a sample page of art to show me what he could do. Although it was very clean and professional, I decided it was a little too “cartoony” for the Man From Uncle comic book series I had envisioned. David and I were disappointed because Skip was a very reliable artist and we didn’t know of any other competent artists.

When we started asking our customers if they knew any artists we were surprised when a man named Ken Penders offered his services. Ken brought in his portfolio and we were impressed by his layouts and use of perspective. He even was a talented inker and letterer. Most importantly, he was willing to work for the lower than professional rates that we were offering.

Next chapter: My son, Adam, goes to the hospital.

Part Forty Seven

I now “owned” the publishing rights for The Man From Uncle comic book for the next two years and it was my intention to publish as many issues as possible during that time. We decided that it would be smart to make the first issue part of a continued story so that the readers would be likely to buy the second issue of the series. One of my employees, David M. Lynch, was writing the stories for the first two issues as fast as he could and Ken Penders began penciling, inking, and lettering the first issue. He was also drawing the front cover. Skip Simpson, one of David’s friends, offered to color the cover for the first issue.

We wanted to have these comic books sold all over the United States and Canada so we contacted as many of the comic book distributors as we could. We contacted Diamond Comic Distributors, Capital City Distribution, Alternate Realities, Heroes World, and about a half-dozen smaller distributors. All of them expressed interest in helping to sell our new comic book series. We had decided to establish the suggested retail (cover price) at $1.50 per issue. The distributor would buy each issue for sixty cents (sixty percent off of the cover price) and they would sell them to the retailers for seventy-five cents. We were able to have the comics printed and shipped for about thirty-five cents each. This would leave me with a gross profit of about twenty-five cents each. We would use a lot of that money to pay the artist and writer and I’d keep whatever was left. Based on our projections of selling 15,000 copies of each issue this would give me a net profit of about two thousand dollars each issue.

Each distributor needed a three month lead-time before each issue was released so they could publish their ordering catalog with a description of our comic book and allow enough time for the individual retailers to decide how many copies they wanted to order. The distributor would then total all of the retailer orders and submit a purchase order for as many copies as they needed. This project was really meant to be mostly fun for me personally so I had a chance to add certain “personal” touches to the series. For example, I wanted to release the first issue on my birthday in January. We’d need to work fast.

Ken drew the cover of the first issue right away so I could send a copy to all of the distributors. As soon as the cover was done he worked hard to finish the twenty-four pages of interior art. He finished it all within the thirty days that he had promised me. Ken was a man of his word and a nice guy. We sent it to MGM-Turner and they gave us their approval. Ken started on the art for the second issue. Ken was also working on a new comic book idea that he wanted to develop with Stan Timmons, a writer, titled “Shadow Blade”. Ken and Stan wanted me to publish this new comic book series for them. Meanwhile, Skip Simpson finished coloring the front cover of The Man From Uncle #1. This was done in the early days of laser scanning and Skip didn’t really understand the process. We thought it would look okay but we would be very disappointed when we saw the final printed product.

We found a company in New York that promised to print the comics and do all of the shipping for us. One of the managers of the company was a fairly famous comic book artist so the promises seemed credible. As we got closer to the actual release date we began to worry that we chose the wrong company to print the comics. Their terms suddenly changed. They wanted more money in advance of the shipping date. Then they decided that they didn’t want to ship the comics to all of the different distributors. I decided to drive to New York and pick up the comic books myself. I had ordered 16,000 copies of this first issue but when I arrived in New York they had printed 21,000 copies and demanded the money for them. I reluctantly paid them and loaded them in my car. I’d certainly never do business with them again!

My son, Adam, had many episodes of Strep throat when he was growing up. His doctor recommended surgery, so while I was trying to coordinate all of the various writers and artists for our Man From Uncle series, my wife and I decided that we should have Adam’s tonsils and adenoids removed. We knew he’d probably be afraid to be left in the hospital overnight, since he was only seven years old, so Mal and I decided that I should sleep in his hospital room in the chair next to his bed. It was scary for me to see him being wheeled into the operating room even though it was a simple operation but everything turned out fine.

Things were not fine for our friend Debbie. Her cancer had returned and it was in multiple parts of her body. Her son, Peter, was only three years old, and Debbie was determined to beat this disease. She began a program of a new chemotherapy and responded well. The tumors seemed to be under control.

Part Forty Eight

In early January of 1987, the first issue of my new comic book series of The Man From Uncle was released to retailers in the United States and Canada. I was hoping to sell 15,000 copies but we sold 12,000. Unfortunately the printer had surprised me by printing 21,000 copies so I was now stuck with an extra 9,000 comic books. I planned to be more careful for future issues.

In the first issue of The Man From Uncle, David M. Lynch wrote a column to explain to our readers what we were trying to do with this new series. He wrote:

“How many of you watched the recent A-Team episode, The Say Uncle Affair, just to see the reunion of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, remembering perhaps, 1983’s “real” reunion of their characters from the 1960’s, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin? Okay now, how many of you younger readers don’t know what I’m talking about?

Listed as a “spy spoof” by TV Guide, who usually knew what they were talking about, The Man From Uncle premiered in 1964. Inspired primarily by the popularity of the James Bond films, Uncle was designed as a dramatic series about the exciting, glamorous, and often dangerous life of the secret agent. James Bond creator Ian Fleming was peripherally involved in the series’ beginnings, although ultimately, his only contributions were the names Napoleon Solo and April Dancer. Solo pretty much became the “man” in The Man From Uncle (at least at first) and as for April Dancer, lead character in the eventual spin-off, The Girl From Uncle, well…the less said about her, the better. (and I know I’ll get letters about that!)

Uncle ran four seasons on NBC-TV, dying a slow death after being poisoned in its third season by the “camp” craze (inspired by the success of the Batman TV show). It made many of the manufacturers of licensed Uncle toys, books, models, and other products wealthy, or wealthier, anyway. It made a somewhat obscure Scottish actor named David McCallum become firmly entrenched in the public mind-perhaps too firmly, as McCallum himself has lamented-as Illya. It made it much easier for what seemed like dozens of imitative spy shows, some quite fine in their own right, to make their TV debuts. Shows like “I Spy” and “The Wild Wild West” hit the American airwaves even as we received British imports such as “The Avengers” and “Secret Agent”, and that list is far from exhaustive.

It also made me, as a young boy, very happy. When I was eight years old or so, I thought Illya Kuryakin was really cool! (Nowadays, watching old Uncle episodes, I identify more with womanizer Napoleon Solo, but that’s not important right now.) I wore turtleneck sweaters, like Illya did. I even had my hair cut like his, for cryin’ out loud! I was, I’m sure, the biggest Uncle fan in my hometown. And my mother, in her infinite wisdom, bought me all of the James Bond toys she could find. Even as an eight year old, I wondered about that. I still do.

Anyway, it was this nostalgic element that convinced me (as well as my co-writer, Skip Simpson) to write some stories for Entertainment Publishing’s new Man From Uncle comic book. And I can safely say that Paul Howley, the new book’s publisher, is doing it primarily for the same reason. And as for our approach to the book, we’ve decided to “first season” it all the way. We’ve placed the 1964 show in our editorial time machine and moved it to 1987, bypassing (among other things) the aging process real actors go through, indefinitely postponing the 1983 TV reunion movie “The Fifteen Years Later Affair” and avoiding , in a sense, the unfortunate death of Mr. Waverly, actor Leo G. Carroll.

This project is as important to all of us as it is to you, if not more so, because we really care about the material, and we hope that caring comes through in the finished product. I’ve read some issues from the late 60’s Gold Key Man From Uncle series, when they first came out as well as recently, but even as a child, I felt cheated somehow. These comic characters were different; they weren’t my “friends” from the TV show. I, for one, don’t want you to feel the same way now as I did then, as corny as that sounds, so hopefully, whether you read this issue as an old Uncle fan, a new convert (thanks to syndicated television) or even somebody who is unfamiliar with Solo, Waverly, and that “other guy”, you won’t.”

By the time we released the second issue in early February of 1987 we had already received quite a few letters from fans of the Man From Uncle TV show. Some loved the new comic book series but some people complained that the characters in our comics didn’t look like the actors who played them in the television series. Ken Penders agreed to work harder to make the characters look more like the original actors from the television show. Every letter we received commented on how well written the stories were. But for some reason that I couldn’t remember, David M. Lynch only wrote the first two issues and he later wrote issue #10. I recently contacted David to find out what had happened. What follows is David’s reply.

“Okay, I'll try to just keep this to the bare facts (or how I perceived them), and not try to impress or entertain you with my wonderful writing skills.

As I saw it, the publication of the U.N.C.L.E. series presented a problem for you. Not exactly a moral issue, but close. Paul Howley the eternal kid and funny book fan suddenly butted heads with Paul Howley the businessman. According to everything you'd told me while I was writing the amateur comic book, Insect Man, you really liked my stuff. (You'd even told customers that the story titled "Mummy Dearest," in Insect Man #98, was one of the best six comics you'd read that month.) But U.N.C.L.E. wasn't Insect Man. U.N.C.L.E. was going to be an investment, and there was a lot of money -- licensing, printing, advertising, etc. -- involved.

I think you felt awkward. And my feeling was (and I realize I may be wrong) that you were forced to think along the lines of, "Gee, I like David's Insect Man stories, but I'm just one fan. Maybe my judgment is clouded by the fact that he's a friend & employee, and it's kinda cool that someone else cares about Insect Man. But U.N.C.L.E. is a professional assignment. What if the rest of the world doesn't like his stuff?"

Anyway, by then Ken Penders was the chosen artist, and he'd also submitted Shadow Blade to you. The writer of Shadow Blade, Stan Timmons, had a two-part U.N.C.L.E. script under his belt, and my feeling was that you accepted it primarily because you feared that I might submit a script that wasn't good enough to publish. (Skip's co-authorship doesn't count, except possibly in a negative way, because you'd never seen anything written by him!) Quite honestly, I understood that decision from a purely business standpoint. Skip's attitude wasn't so charitable, but then again, he was still smarting from being told his artwork was too cartoony for a serious superhero or adventure comic. (And from a purely marketing standpoint, you were right, of course. You had learned something about what would and wouldn't sell!) Besides, once you'd seen the first few pages of script, you seemed to relax and trust me (and Skip) a bit more.

However, as Skip and I moved from the plotting stage for #s 1 & 2 (both of which we co-plotted pretty much 50% each) to the scripting stage (which technically, I typed 100% of, meaning the script itself -- along with any 11th hour changes -- was more "mine"), I re-learned something I'd forgotten since high school. The closer I get to a deadline, the closer I get to meeting it. (I used to do term papers the night before they were due... but I'd get a B!) This is a nice way of saying that I generally get things accomplished at the very last minute. This drives publishers and editors nuts, understandably. (I also recall that a couple of weeks or so before the deadline, the computer at That’s Entertainment literally ate the floppy disk, destroying my work up until then. At the time, I felt that you didn't believe me, and that you thought that I was stalling. But it really happened.)

Anyway, you may have been worried that I -- or Skip and I -- would miss future deadlines. Coincidentally, everybody in U.N.C.L.E. fandom seemed to want to be part of the legend, and script or art submissions were coming from all over. I remember that one fan in particular wanted my help in re-writing a treatment, and I finally told her she should do it alone. Skip and I each wanted to do an issue on our own. Kevin Burns had submitted an idea. And there were more...

Again, this was business. And you were smart to build up a backlog of submissions. Also, since the pressure was off of me to churn out U.N.C.L.E. ideas, I felt free to work on other projects with Skip, like what ended up as The Bird.

Guess that's it for now. Hope it meshes with your own memories. I also hope you give me credit for the endless phone calls with Lois Sloane at MGM/Turner. As I recall, I handled all the negotiations UNTIL the time came to talk money. Then you took over!”

I’m glad David could help me fill in those memories because I couldn’t for the life of me remember why he didn’t write ALL of the issues we published.

Issue #3 of our Man From Uncle series was written by Stan Timmons and it was drawn by Ken Penders. This was released in April of 1987. At the same time, my sister-in-law, Madeline got married to Armand Paladino and they went on a cruise for their honeymoon. They were the first young couple I knew that went on a cruise. In the 1970’s my wife, Mal, and I were asked to “house-sit” for the parents of Steve Ruth, one of my boyhood friends. His parents were considered to be quite wealthy and cruising was mostly for the rich in those days. When they returned from their trip they told us about the elegance and exciting adventures of their cruise. I never dreamed that we’d ever be able to afford to go on a cruise but after my young sister-in-law went on one and told us how much fun it was, we called our local AAA Travel Agency to see if we could afford to go. The agent was very courteous and “helpful” and she booked us on a Caribbean cruise. (when we got on the cruise ship we felt pretty silly because we paid full “brochure” price for our trip. That’s really stupid. Discounts are easily available) This was our first real vacation without our kids. My parents offered to take the kid for the week. We were really looking forward to spending a week without Adam and Cassandra.

Next chapter: We miss the kids! (Crazy right?)

Part Forty Nine

In 1987 my wife, Mal, and I went on our first real vacation without our two kids. We were on a seven-day Carnival cruise to the Caribbean and we both thought that we'd have a great time without Adam and Cassandra. We were surprised to find that we couldn't stop thinking about them. We kept thinking about how much fun they'd have in the swimming pool and on the water slide. We knew they would love the great food because they both enjoyed trying different things. We watched young kids playing and actually wished that our children were with us! When we got home we immediately booked a cruise for the whole family to go on and six weeks later we were cruising to San Juan, St. Thomas, and Bahamas. We didn't book this trip through AAA because we were unhappy that they charged us "full brochure price" for our first cruise. We found a travel agent who got us a price for all four of us that was cheaper than the first cruise was for just Mal and I. Our kids loved this vacation. They got involved with the supervised kids program that Carnival offers and each morning they were excited to get together with all of their new "friends." They would play all day and we would all get together as a family for lunch and dinner. When the ship would dock at an island we'd tour old forts and historic sites, swim in the ocean, and go shopping together. Cruising is a great family vacation. For years, even though we all loved to go to Disney World, when we'd ask the kids what they'd like to do for a vacation, they'd chose a cruise. (Usually we'd go to Disney World each year too!)

In the last chapter I told about the beginning of my comic book publishing of The Man From Uncle. What I neglected to mention were the other comic books I published. Two customers from my store approached me with an idea for a three issue "mini-series" titled "Forever Now". Chris Coleman and Dan Courtney had previously written and drawn some issues of our "in-store" amateur comic book of "Insect Man" and I liked their style so I agreed to publish this new series.

David M. Lynch and Skip Simpson had an idea for a comedy super-hero series called "The Bird". I loved David's writing and I knew that Skip was a very talented cartoonist so I agreed to publish this comic book.

My cousin, Steven, introduced me to Mark Marderosian. Mark was a writer and artist who had come up with an idea for a new comic book series that would feature a strong female character named "Delta Tenn". She was a big city policewoman whose adventures were set ten years in the future. Mark was very talented and professional and he offered to present me with a new issue all ready to be printed once every two months. It required almost no work on my part so I agreed to be his publisher.

My agreement with each of these creators was a fifty-fifty split on all profits. I would handle all of the marketing, printing, shipping, and billing. They needed to deliver their work on time and they all did. Especially Mark Marderosian. Mark also helped me with my "main" comic book series, "The Man From Uncle" by doing the mechanical layout of many of our front covers. Beginning with issue number seven of The Man From Uncle we started using photographs from the old television series and Mark hand-colored old black and white photos for us. This was before computers made this an easy task! He was a great guy to work with.

We worked with a lot of writers and artists on our Man From Uncle series and most of them were able to meet their deadlines. We would always ask them to set their own schedule. Some artists could draw an entire issue in thirty days but other artists worked a little slower or were doing this while they worked a "real" full-time job so they would agree to finish their issue within sixty days. I was agreeable to the artist's time schedule because I had several writers and artists working on issues all at the same time so I could wait and publish their work when it was finished. Things were going fine until I hired a good friend of mine to draw issue number five.

Kevin Burns was a customer of my comic book store and he was a lot of fun to be around. We'd spend hours laughing together when he'd stop by the store. He was a serious toy collector and had a love of old classic television shows including The Munsters and Lost In Space. He worked full time at Twentieth Century Fox and he was a very busy man but he assured me that he could draw the entire issue within sixty days. He drew the cover first and I was "blown away" by it! It was (and still is) my favorite cover for the entire series. He perfectly captured the look and style of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin that we wanted for our series. They looked like the original actors but with a slightly updated sense of style. I now knew that Kevin was capable of turning in our best issue yet. With his repeated assurance of completing the project on time I paid Kevin in advance and eagerly waited for the finished artwork. I sent in the information and a picture of Kevin's gorgeous cover artwork to all of the distributors so they could begin the two-month process of getting the orders from the retailers. When the order came in it was for only 10,000 copies but I knew that when the retailers saw the finished comic book they would be encouraged to order more of our future issues because the quality had improved so much. I also knew that the Man From Uncle fans would love Kevin's work. But for some reason, Kevin was unable to deliver the artwork on time. Months went by. Finally the comic book was so late that the distributors required me to cancel their original orders and resolicit new orders. When the new order came in it was for only 8000 copies. After about five months I received the artwork from Kevin and it was great. I was proud to publish this and I thought it was our best-looking issue to date. It was our lowest selling issue so far but the fans loved it and we got quite a few complimentary letters. I learned a lesson with this experience. I would no longer assume that artists could reasonably predict how long it would take them to complete the project so I'd just wait until it was completely done before I would solicit orders from the retailers.

I decided to go to "Spy-Con", the biggest television and movie spy-related convention in the United States. I flew to Chicago and spent three days mingling with friendly Man From Uncle fans and spent some time promoting our comic book series. I wanted this publishing venture to be successful. I even ran advertisements in the major comic book retailing publication offering hundreds of free copies of our publications to try to stir up interest. I hoped that if the retailers gave these free copies to their customers, a portion of the readers would enjoy the series enough to buy the new issues. This publishing idea was part of my plan to accumulate enough money so that I could retire before I was forty years old. Despite my efforts, sales did not increase enough.

Over the two-year period that I published The Man From Uncle comic book series I worked with several writers and artists. Issues #1-2 were written by David M. Lynch and Skip Simpson and drawn by Ken Penders. Issues #3-4 were written by Stan Timmons and drawn by Ken Penders, Larry Juliano, and Tom Cuda. Issue #5 was written by Glenn A. Magee and drawn by Kevin Burns. Issue #6 was written by Glenn A. Magee and drawn by Ronn Sutton. Issue #7 was written by Stan Timmons and drawn by Paul Daly. Issue #8 was written by Skip Simpson and drawn by David and Dan Day. Issue #9 was written by Paula Smith and drawn by Wayne Reid. Issue #10 was written by David M. Lynch and drawn by Ken Penders, Bruce Meservey, and Edwin Brady. Issue #11 was written by Paula Smith and drawn by David and Dan Day. Every issue was profitable but when it came time to renew our contract with MGM- Turner, they wanted to double the fees so we sadly made the decision to stop publishing the series. It was fun for a while but the profits from the sales of the comic books were now too small and it wasn't "worth" the time, energy, and stress to continue.

Next chapter: Hollywood buys the option to produce a movie based on our comic book series, "Delta Tenn!"

Part Fifty

In 1987, I was publishing a comic book series created by Mark Marderosian titled "Delta Tenn" when we received an inquiry from Gene Simmons, the lead singer of the rock band KISS. He was interested in buying an "option" to produce a feature film or television movie about Delta Tenn. Gene's girlfriend was actress-model Shannon Tweed and he thought this would be a perfect role for her to play. An "option" is purchased to acquire the exclusive right to use the character and ideas in a movie or television show for a specific period of time. The amount of money is negotiated between the owner of the property and the interested buyer. In the case of Delta Tenn I was merely the publisher. Mark was the creator and our agreement was that he would own the film rights and merchandising rights to his character. Mark negotiated a reasonable six-month option fee with Gene Simmons and had an attorney draw up the legal documents. Through some smart negotiating, Mark was able to keep the merchandising rights for himself so that if this Delta Tenn project ever got made he'd be able to market trading cards, t-shirts, posters, toys and action figures and keep the money for himself. Initially, Gene wasn't too happy with this but he finally agreed. I was eager to continue publishing the comic book series because I knew that sales would jump if there was a movie or television show of Delta Tenn.

Gene approached some of the networks with the Delta Tenn concept and although there was some interest, none of them seemed eager to offer the substantial amount of money necessary to produce a film or TV show. Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed continued to search for an interested network and when their option on Delta Tenn expired they paid to renew it for another six months. Shannon had recently been a guest star on "L.A. Law", "Hooperman", and "Cagney and Lacey", and was a more recognizable actress. She believed that they would eventually find someone to produce this film. She even made an appearance on "The Late Show" starring Ross Schaeffer to promote the idea.

During this second option period, Mark was approached by Sybill Danning's "people" expressing an interest in Delta Tenn. Sybill Danning was a beautiful actress who worked in numerous science fiction films in the 1970's and 1980's including one of the Conan The Barbarian movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Her agent was sure that Delta Tenn would be a great movie for Sybill to star in. Mark explained that the option was now owned by Gene Simmons. Sybill's people contacted Gene to see if the option could be bought out, but Gene declined their offer.

Mark also received a call from the management of Brigitte Neilson, the wife of Sylvester Stallone. They had written a short "treatment" for their version of a Delta Tenn movie and it was typical Hollywood! Mark's version of Delta Tenn was set ten years in the future in New York City. Delta was a tough, leather-clad policewoman. Hollywood's version changed the whole character. They wanted it to be set in current time and she'd be a jeep-driving, bikini-wearing Malibu beach cop! All they really wanted to keep was the name, "Delta Tenn!" They were willing to pay thousands of dollars to buy out Gene Simmons option and then spend millions of dollars on the feature film but they wanted to change almost everything about the character. They claimed that they could be ready to begin filming within a few months if Gene would accept their offer. Before a deal could be arranged, Brigitte was diagnosed with cancer and the project was off.

Gene paid for a third option period. He assured us that a deal was being considered by a major network. It wasn't long before we got the good news. The project was going to be a joint production of Touchstone Pictures and NBC-TV. Touchstone was a highly respected film company and NBC-TV was the number one network at the time. The script was being written as a two hour TV movie by the author of the hit movie, "Two Men and a Baby". If the TV movie did well in the ratings it would become a weekly television series. Mark would be a wealthy man when this project was finished.

NBC-TV was preparing to send a production crew to Canada to begin scouting for a filming location. Filming could begin within a few weeks.

Next chapter: More Hollywood craziness!

Part Fifty One

We got the word from Gene Simmons (of the rock band KISS) that NBC-TV was sending a pre-production crew to Canada to scout for locations to begin filming the two-hour TV movie based on the "Delta Tenn" comic book series that we were publishing. Filming would begin within a few weeks. If this TV movie got good ratings it could possibly become a weekly television series and the creator of "Delta Tenn" would make a fortune in option fees and merchandising. The creator, Mark Marderosian, was one of the nicest guys I'd ever worked with and he deserved all of this success. I was happy to be publishing the comic book series because I knew that we'd sell more comic books once the TV show was broadcast. Then we heard the bad news. A few days before the pre-production crew was scheduled to leave, NBC-TV had a visitor to their offices. Steven Bochco, creator, writer, and producer of popular TV shows including "Hill Street Blues", "Doogie Howser MD", and "L.A.Law" pitched a strange idea for a new television show to the network called "Cop Rock". The idea for the show was that it would be a serious police drama that had many of the characters spontaneously break into song! It sure was a different idea for a show! The network certainly didn't want to upset Steven Bochco so they agreed to do his show. They dropped "Delta Tenn" and produced "Cop Rock". "Cop Rock" turned out to be the biggest flop of the season.

Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed decided not to renew their option on "Delta Tenn". Sales of the comic book series weren't high enough for me to justify continuation, so Mark Marderosian "self-published" a few issues. The "Delta Tenn" series ended with issue #11.

With my comic book publishing ended, I knew I'd need to come up with some other way to earn extra money so that my goal of early retirement could be achieved. My father had just recently been experimenting with investments in the stock market, primarily in "index options". He had read some books about this type of investment and although there were risks involved it seemed interesting. It was basically "betting" that the stock market S+P Index would rise or fall. I really don't understand how this worked, but at the time it seemed to make some sense. I thought it would be fun (and probably profitable) to try this type of investment with my father. I always enjoyed spending time with him and this would be something we'd have in common. My uncle Jim (my Dad's brother) also decided to invest in these index options. We met with Gary Cohen, a broker at a local office of Merrill Lynch and we opened our investment accounts. He assured us that we could limit our potential losses by placing a "stop-loss" order with his firm. If our losses ever reached $2500.00 he would "automatically" get us out of that particular option. At that time my wife and I had saved $100,000.00. I didn't want to risk all of that so we opened the account with $50,000.00 and began the index option trading.

In the first few weeks I profited about $12,000.00! My Uncle Jim and my Dad were also making money. This seemed pretty easy. Certainly easier than working at my comic book store.

Next chapter: The big stock market crash of October 1987.

Part Fifty Two

In October of 1987 I was "investing" in index options. Gary Cohen, of Merrill Lynch, assured me that he would personally monitor my account so that I wouldn't lose any more than $2500.00 on any option position. If he saw that one of my options had lost $2500.00 he'd sell it to prevent further loss. He was the senior broker in a major national firm so we trusted him.

Early one morning in October of 1987, Gary Cohen called me to explain that the stock market opened substantially lower. In fact, the market was now so low that I had already "lost" $4500.00 on my index option. He couldn't have gotten me out of this with only a $2500.00 loss because by the time the stock market had opened, I had already lost more than that. He assured me that it was just a momentary drop in the market and he was confident that the stock market would rebound in a few hours. I asked him to keep me informed of the situation. Gary called me about an hour later and explained that the market was still dropping. He thought it was just nervous sellers. I had now lost almost $17,000.00. By noon he told me that I had lost almost $30,000.00. I decided to drive to his office to formulate a new plan. By the time I arrived I had lost $49,000.00. I was expecting to see his office full of depressed brokers but I was stunned by what I saw. Many of the brokers were joking and laughing! I overheard Gary calling a client and saying, "Hey, do you have your seat belt on? Well, you're going on a wild ride!" When he got off of the telephone I saw him laughing. The brokerage was going to make a fortune in commissions for selling the stocks and options while their customers lost a fortune and the brokers were laughing. I called my wife to tell her about this huge loss. She asked if this was going to "change" our lifestyle in any way and I told her I'd do my best to see that this loss wouldn't adversely affect us. She knew there was nothing I could have done to prevent this loss, (other than not invest in the stock market at all) and she was quite understanding. In the early afternoon the stock market had a little up-turn and I was able to sell my option and "only" lose $34,000.00. At that point I was just happy to be finished with this nightmare. I would try to avoid investing in things that I have no control over. Manipulators and brokerage firms control the stock market with only their own interests at heart.

My father and my Uncle Jim also lost a lot of money in these index options. We all learned a valuable lesson and we were all able to laugh about our losses a few months later. This doesn't mean that we were happy about the lost money but the three of us now realized that we shouldn't have been risking our hard-earned money in such a phony manipulated market. Although this experience wasn't as much fun, we now had another "gambling" experience in common. I'll tell you about my previous gambling story with my Uncle Jim in the next chapter. It was much more fun!

I was now going to concentrate on my main business to earn my money. My business is selling comic books and collectibles.

Next Chapter: Gambling with The Mob in Las Vegas.

Part Fifty Three

My Uncle Jim owned a successful convenience store and gas station with a large customer base. One of his customers knew that Uncle Jim was a spontaneous guy and he offered Jim the opportunity to go to Las Vegas as part of a chartered group tour. Uncle Jim called my wife, Mal, and I because he knew we'd probably also enjoy a quick trip to Vegas. The deal was almost too good to pass up. If we agreed to send the casino a check for $3000.00 for them to hold in the "cage" (their vault), then we'd get our hotel room, airfare, and all of our food for only $300.00 per person. Obviously, the casino hoped you'd gamble away the $3000.00 but they didn't require you to gamble any of it. We had no intention of risking that much money. I was excited to go because the Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard fight was the same weekend and I thought it would be fun to see a major fight in person. Our good friends, Allan and Debbie Traylor, took care of our two children while we were on this trip. My employee, David M. Lynch, took care of running the comic book store for the five days I was gone.

When we got on the airplane at Logan Airport in Boston we realized that everyone on the plane knew each other except for us. They all seemed to be good buddies and they were all men. After the plane took off we were introduced to a large man who had been sitting in the back of the plane. It was evident that he was the man in charge. When we were introduced it suddenly became clear. This guy was the head of the Irish Mafia of the Lowell-Lawrence area of Massachusetts. Everyone on this airplane was involved in the "mob" except for the three of us! While Mal and I were nervous about this situation, these guys were all very friendly and courteous to us. My Uncle Jim seemed a little embarrassed about this turn of events but there was nothing we could do about it now. We might as well make the best of it.

When we arrived at the hotel we were issued badges that would identify us as part of this "elite" group of people. We were treated like royalty while we were there. The "pit bosses" (the gambling supervisors) would make it a point to frequently ask, "How are you enjoying your stay?" and "Is there anything you need?" They all must have assumed that we were part of the mob.

I was disappointed to find out that all of the tickets to the big Marvin Hagler-Sugar Ray Leonard fight were sold out. I could get a ticket if I wanted to buy one from a "scalper" but I wasn't willing to pay them the $700.00 that they wanted. I discovered that Frank Sinatra was performing at The Golden Nugget Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. Tickets were outrageously priced at sixty dollars each. In the mid- 1980's that was a lot of money for a concert ticket! Mal had seen Sinatra in concert a couple of times before and she didn't want to pay that much money but she knew I'd enjoy seeing him in Vegas so she convinced me to go. I called and reserved a ticket.

When I arrived at The Golden Nugget I was surprised to see that Frank Sinatra was going to be performing in a room that only held 300 people! The show was "general admission" so there were no reserved seats. I gave my ticket to the maitre-d and he sat me in the very back of the room. I thought it was strange that he gave me such a lousy seat because I was the first person in the line. Then I noticed that the people coming into the room were tipping him and getting better seats than I had. I went up to him and said, "I forgot to give you this", and I handed him ten dollars. He said, "Right this way" and brought me to a seat right down front. I had to sit through a "comedy" act with Jan Murray but it was all worthwhile when Frank Sinatra came out. In such a small, intimate setting, Frank felt comfortable telling stories of his old mafia pals and the Rat Pack days with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. His voice was in top form. It was like having Frank Sinatra in your living room. Eventually I'd see Frank perform seven times but this was the best Sinatra concert of them all for me.

We all arrived home safely and our "association" with the mafia was done.

Next chapter: An unpleasant tax surprise!

Part Fifty Four

There are hundreds of comic book stores all around the United States and I've always wanted my store to stand out as something different. Most comic book stores sell old and new comic books, trading cards, and comic book related action figures. I consider "That's Entertainment" to be a combination comic book and collectable store. The term collectable can be used to cover almost anything that someone is interested in "collecting". We sell magazines, posters, action figures, board games, strategy games, model kits, records, movies, trading cards, toys, sports memorabilia, and much more. The key to making our store stand out from most other stores is our diversity. Our inventory is constantly changing and we're always interested in buying stuff that we don't already have in stock. We strive to always have ample money available to purchase interesting collectibles from vendors and customers.

My wife Mal and I were out shopping one day and I noticed that a hobby store had a big sign in their window advertising a "clearance sale". They had lots of classic board games like chess and checkers, dartboards and dart supplies, Othello games, Parcheesi, and a bunch of craft supplies. I talked with the owner and I could sense that he just wanted to get rid of this inventory so I made him a ridiculously low offer that he accepted! Even though this was not the kind of inventory that I'd normally sell in my store I felt pretty sure that I could sell some of it. I paid the store owner in cash, loaded the stuff into my car, and brought it to my store. I set up some display tables close to the entrance of my store and made some "cheesy" looking hand-made signs offering this new inventory at half-price. To my surprise I sold most of the items within two weeks. I realized that my customers are normal people who play darts, chess, Parcheesi, and more. It ended up a very profitable deal for me and a good deal for my customers too.

One of my strangest purchases happened in the mid-1980's. A man was hired by a local homeowner to clean out a big barn. The man was told that he could keep (or sell) anything that he found as he was cleaning the barn. He brought me a lot of old magazines and books from the 1950's that he found and he was very satisfied with my offers. I gave him a list of the types of items that I would be interested in buying from him and he continued to bring in more items as the week went by. Finally, when he was done cleaning out the barn and he had nothing left that he thought I'd be interested in buying, he thanked me for doing business with him. Almost as an afterthought, he asked, "Do you know anyone who would be interested in old milk bottles?" I knew that there were some people who collected milk related items so I told him that if the price was "right" I'd buy them from him. He explained that he had over one hundred different glass milk bottles and they all had different pictures or logos silk-screened on them and they appeared to be from the 1950's. He said he'd like to get $140.00 for the lot and since it seemed reasonable to me, I agreed to buy them from him. I didn't think I'd ever be able to sell milk bottles in my comic book store but I knew that I'd be able to sell them through Skinner's Auction Gallery that was in the small town of Bolton, Massachusetts, where I lived. It didn't make any sense for him to carry all of the milk bottles into my over-crowded store because I'd just have to carry them out at the end of the night, so I gave him the keys to my car and asked him to put the bottles into the trunk of my car. He loaded them into my car and I paid him the money. I was really busy for the next week so I didn't get a chance to go to Skinner's Auction Gallery. The milk bottles were still in the trunk of my car. A man stopped by my store and looked around but didn't seem to find anything he wanted. I asked him if I could help him and he said, "Is there any place in Worcester that sells milk-related collectables?" I laughed and handed him the key to the trunk of my car. He went outside and looked at the milk bottles that were still in my trunk. He came back into the store and asked, "How much do you want for them all?" I offered him the whole lot for $400.00 and he was thrilled to pay that. He paid me and then he went back out and loaded the boxes of milk bottles into his car. He returned my keys and left. I sold the whole collection and I had never seen or touched them at all! The "odds" of a collector coming to my comic book store looking for milk bottles was so slim but it really happened! It's one of my favorite purchases.

My store has been open for over twenty-three years now and we have always been able to buy any collection that's offered to us. Money has always been available. Except for one brief period. Normally, I try to get all of my "end of the year" tax information to my accountant early enough for her to begin calculating my tax liabilities in early January. This one year I was late with the information. I pay very large quarterly estimated tax payments to the federal government so that my full tax due will be more easily budgeted. By the time my accountant finished my tax return it was only a few days before the April 15th filing deadline. She called me with the good and bad news and said, "The good news is that you were very profitable this year. The bad news is: You know that vacation you were planning? Forget it." I owed over $60,000.00 more in taxes! This was in addition to the high quarterly estimated payments I'd already made during the year! I didn't have that much money available. Most of my money was invested in CD's and I couldn't get it out. I decided to write the IRS a check that I knew I didn't have the funds to cover, but I knew it would probably take four or five days for the check to get to them and at least another four or five days to get to my bank. I explained the situation to my employees and decided that we could not buy any new product for the next three weeks. I used my existing credit terms with Diamond Comic Distributors so that I'd have the full thirty days before I had to pay for the weekly comic book shipments. I could "catch-up" with Diamond later. With this "belt-tightening" and the money that I did have available I was able to pay the full tax bill on time. It was the only period of time in the past twenty-three years that my store wasn't actively seeking new inventory to buy.

Next chapter: Two comic book collectors fall in love at my store!

Part Fifty Five

In the mid-1980's the average customer of my comic book store was a male between the ages of twelve and fifty. My store was in a rough section of the big city of Worcester so not too many women came to the area. My main product line was comic books and not too many women read comic books in those days. But occasionally we had some female collectors. Marvel Comics published a comic book of The X-Men that appealed to men and women alike and we had two teen-age female fans that shopped at my store each week. They almost always came to the store together and they'd laugh and joke with us. They were very outgoing. One of the girls, Christine, had purple hair. Paul Dinsdale, my good friend and customer, noticed her right away. Paul spent a lot of time each week visiting me and hanging around with some of the other "regulars" at the store. He loved getting beaten by me in Chess and the strategy game of Risk so we'd try to play a few days a week. He'd listen to my employees, David Lynch and Pat Donley, as they interacted with Christine. He knew she had a good sense of humor and he liked the idea that a woman was enjoying comic books. Paul wasn't dating anyone at the time and it was obvious that he was "interested" in Christine. He was just a little bit too shy to ask her out on a date.

One day, after Christine paid for her comic books and walked out of the store, Paul Dinsdale remarked that he'd like to ask her out. I said, " Watch the store for a minute!" I ran outside and caught up with Christine before she drove away. I told her that Paul was the tall thin guy in the store. I told her that he was kind of shy and explained that he'd like to take her out on a date. I also assured her that he was a "gentleman" and he's relatively harmless. She agreed to give him a try. I gave "Dins" her phone number and they began dating. Paul and Christine began dating in 1987 and got married in 1993. For some reason, they invited me to be part of their wedding.

At home, my wife and kids were busy with school for Adam and dance lessons for Cassandra. During the summer months Mal would take them to a local town pool in Clinton for swimming lessons. They'd be there four or five days each week and both of our kids loved to swim. I'd join them after work. Although Mal enjoyed taking the kids to the pool, we both agreed that it would be much nicer if she didn't have to pack up all of the stuff and drive all of the way to Clinton to cool off. We started planning to have a pool installed at our home in Bolton. We hired our friend, Paul Weatherbee, to clear about half an acre of dense trees to make room for our new pool. We also hired our friend, Allan Traylor's brother Danny, to prepare the area by leveling the ground and removing the tree stumps. We hoped that we could afford to have the actual swimming pool installed the next year.

Our friend, Debbie Traylor had been fighting cancer for quite a while now but she had reacted well to a new chemotherapy and seemed to be winning the battle. In 1988 we all decided to go on a cruise together. We were such good friends that we thought we would be comfortable enough to stay in the same cabin together. We had vacationed together for years and we always had a great time. This trip was no exception. This was the first cruise for Allan and Debbie and they had a good time but Debbie seemed exhausted. She would sleep late and frequently take a nap. We didn't mind because we were just happy that she was going to beat the cancer and we were glad to all be together.

When the trip was over Debbie went to her doctor and found out that the cancer had spread again. Eight weeks later, Debbie died. Mal lost her best friend. Allan lost his wife. Five-year-old Peter lost his Mom.

Part Fifty Six

Our lives were changed when Debbie Traylor died in October of 1988. My wife, Mal, lost her best friend. My old friend, Allan Traylor had lost his wife and he now had the difficult job of raising his five-year old son, Peter. Several people pitched in to help take care of Peter so that Allan could return to his job. Mal offered to take care of Peter after school as often as possible. Our children, Adam and Cassandra, loved Peter and they got along great.

Losing Debbie changed my life too. As she was struggling with cancer many of us were praying for her full recovery but as she got sicker it appeared as if our prayers were not being answered. I had been taught that if we prayed for things that God would "answer" our prayers. With Debbie's death I decided that God is "in control" and that my real prayer should be for the desire and ability to trust that our Creator loves us and has a plan for our lives. I no longer feel the need to pray for the same thing over and over again. I believe that my prayer is heard if I pray sincerely for something. God "gets it" the first time. The answer to our prayers just may not be the answer we were hoping for.

Allan eventually found love again and married a great woman named Pascale and they raised Peter and Pascale's two children, Monica and Frank. Pascale was part of a large, close family and we all found it difficult to schedule much social time together. We still keep in touch and we consider them as good friends but it's not the same as spending time together.

One day in 1988, an old friend, Don Phelps, came out to my store to sell me an old comic book. It was the first issue of Captain America from 1941 and it was in beautiful, near mint condition. It was valued at about $5000.00 and Don sold it to me for $4200.00. I was willing to pay that high a percentage for it because I had a good feeling that our "big-city newspaper" would be interested in writing a story about a our local comic book store paying "crazy" money for a comic book. I was right. The newspaper ran a full-page story about me, the store, and about old comic books in general. They even included a large photo of me holding the Captain America #1. Newspaper readers tend to notice and read articles that have pictures included. As I had hoped, this article generated a lot of interest in the local community. We got dozens of phone calls from people who had old comic books and other collectibles that they wanted to sell to us and we were happy to purchase them all. That's how we stay in business. We need to constantly replenish our inventory of older collectibles.

I decided to price this comic book at $7,000. I also knew that I could eventually sell the copy of Captain America #1 for at least as much as I paid for it so I knew it would all work out great. Surprisingly, it took almost six months for me to find a collector willing to buy this comic book from me for the $7,000. This exact same copy sold for an astounding $150,000 in 2003. Even though I only made $2800 on the comic book when I originally sold it, the value of the new publicity for the store is worth many thousands of dollars. I bought many collections of toys and comic books that I've sold at a profit because of the article and I've gained dozens of new regular collectors and customers who spend money at my store every month. It's hard to place an accurate value on my purchase and marketing of the Captain America #1 but I'm guessing that it far exceeds the $150,000.00 sale price of the comic book in today's market.

Next chapter: My customers heard it through the grapevine.

Part Fifty Seven

I really enjoy most of my customers. I consider many of them to be more like friends than customers but sometimes I'm amazed at the depth of these friendships. I have a customer named Bob Jean (not his real name) who used to come to my store all the way from Rhode Island every two weeks. Bob collected lots of Marvel and DC comic books and he also enjoyed Disney comics. He also loved old television shows from the 1960's so we'd always have lots of things to talk about when he came to my store. We had a lot of common interests. Bob would always bring his wife with him when he came shopping and she would patiently stand around while we would talk and laugh about comics and TV shows. Sometimes she'd wait for over an hour! I'm sure she was bored but she never seemed to complain about our visits.

Bob called me one day in 1988 and asked if I'd be interested in buying his old model kit collection. Usually I don't ask why people are selling their collectibles. It's really none of my business and it wouldn't affect my offer anyway. But this time, because of my friendship with Bob, I asked. He told me that his wife was sick and he could use the extra money that he could get by selling off some of his collection. We arranged a time for him to bring in the model kits so that I could make him an offer. As it turned out, Bob had a really nice collection of un-built, still in the box, character and monster model kits made by Aurora Plastics in the 1960's. Bob told me that he wanted $4400.00 for this collection. I didn't have much experience selling such hard-to-find model kits so I needed to rely on the listed values from a toy price guide. It became clear that Bob was hoping to get almost full price guide value for these kits. Even though I knew I had no specific customers "waiting" to buy these expensive model kits and I knew they'd probably take a long time for me to resell, I agreed to buy them for Bob's full asking price. I'd just have to price these kits higher than the current price guide values in order to justify this large purchase.

Marketing these old model kits wasn't going to be easy. Although I did maintain a large mailing list of customer's names and addresses, I had no indication if any of these customers had interest in old model kits. There were really no computers or email in those days, so a full post office mailing would be expensive and it may not have been effective. I'd need to think about this. I thought about placing an ad in the local newspaper but their advertising rates were outrageous. There were toy shows in Massachusetts that attracted hundreds of toy collectors but there were no shows coming up soon. I wanted to get these into the hands of collectors because I had invested a lot of money in these models. I wanted to begin to get some money back right away so I priced these model kits and displayed them by just putting them on top of my comic book shelves. The display looked great because these Aurora kits had beautiful paintings on the box lids. Included in this collection were Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, The Creature of the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, King Kong, The Munsters, The Addams Family, The Forgotten Prisoner, Zorro, The Land of the Giants, The Lost in Space Cyclops Monster, The Lost in Space Robot, Batman, Superman, Superboy, The Penguin, and many more. Now I had to figure out a way to let the collectors know I had these.

The next day a customer came in and commented how nice these kits looked and although he didn't buy any of them, he mentioned that he had a friend who collected old Aurora model kits. Collectors are an interesting group of people. They're usually thrilled to share their enthusiasm and information with other collectors. It makes it seem as if there is a real underground "grapevine" through which information quickly travels. Word got out that I had these kits and collectors that I'd never met before came into the store. Without any advertising on my part I sold almost half of these expensive model kits within the first week! With most of my investment back, I now wasn't worried about selling the rest of the kits quickly.

A few months later I got a late-night phone call from Bob. He was calling from a hospital in Rhode Island where his wife had just died. He needed a friend to talk to and I was available. Even though I hate funerals, I knew that Bob needed me to be there so I went down there to be of any help that I could.

One of the things about being in a big retail business is that you get to know thousands more people than the average person knows. On one hand it's a nice, positive thing. But on the other hand, there's also more opportunity for sadness when some of these customers and friends suffer illness and tragedy. Sometimes it's hard for me to deal with.

Next chapter: I lose David M. Lynch.

Part Fifty Eight

My store was running great in 1988. David M. Lynch was my one full-time employee and Pat Donley was a part-time employee. Both of these guys had strong knowledge of both music and comic books although Pat's main interest was the more modern era of comics. David knew the entire history of comic books from the 1930's to the 1970's and he knew almost everything about older music. Pat's expertise with the current music scene helped when it came to buying records and tapes to sell in the store. Pat also knew a lot about sports and sports cards. Between the two of them we had a really good team of "experts". I was still working at the store about four days each week and we all got along pretty good. Pat seemed to enjoy annoying David by playing 1980's music on our in-store music system and then he'd give David a hard time when David played his 1960's music. But overall it worked out. The biggest problem was that I was not paying these guys what they were really "worth". Even though my store had grown in sales to a comfortable level I was reluctant to commit to paying them a higher salary. It's not that I was greedy. I always wanted to be conservative in my promises to my employees. I was concerned that if the business collapsed I would not be able to meet my commitments to them. In my business, after all of my employees and the bills were paid, I kept whatever was left as my paycheck. The employees came first. There were some weeks when I didn't get paid at all. But there were other weeks when I was "paid" a substantial amount. Pat Donley was a college student so he didn't require a lot of money, but David needed more and I was unwilling to pay him as much as he needed so he quit. He began selling comic books at a local weekly flea market. Looking back, I wish I had shared more with these early employees.

I had been renting the same store building since 1980 and I still had no lease. The landlord insisted that I rent it on a monthly basis. The store was located in a rough neighborhood but it was on a major road with heavy traffic. I had offered to buy this building numerous times but the landlord turned down my offers because he knew that he had a reliable tenant who would be happy to continue to pay the rent on time each month. I didn't complain much because he had not raised my rent in the eight years I'd been there. He lived in another state and he seemed to be unaware that the Worcester area had become a "hot" real estate market. I was worried that the landlord would eventually realize that he could charge two or three times as much for rent. I needed to secure the future for my business. I contacted a real estate agent and was surprised when she told me that the building right next to my store was for sale. Included in this package of property were a 1200 square foot brick retail building that was currently being used as a restaurant and a separate "three-decker" apartment building that had three decent sized apartments. All three of these apartments were already occupied but the tenants were not paying very high rents. The top two apartments were only paying $250.00 per month and the ground floor apartment was only paying $200.00 per month. The real estate broker convinced me that I could easily double the rents that the tenants were currently paying and they'd still be getting a great deal. I made an offer of $185,000.00 and it was accepted. Suddenly I was in the "landlord business". I was comforted knowing that I would always have an alternative place to move my store if my current store landlord ever decided to raise my rent.

Next chapter: My wacky tenants.

Part Fifty Nine

The owner of the building I had been renting for the past eight years was unwilling to give me a lease on the property. He was content to rent the building to me one month at a time but I was afraid that he'd eventually raise the rent to an outrageous level so I bought the commercial property that was directly next to the store. The property consisted of a brick commercial building that was currently rented as a restaurant and a separate three-story apartment building. The apartment building was fully rented but the rents were significantly below "market value". I notified the tenants that I would be raising the monthly rent and they all agreed that I was being reasonable.

A young, single man named David rented the top floor apartment. He paid his rent for the first two months that I owned the building but when he was late paying the third month's rent I became concerned. David told me that he didn't have the money to pay his rent. I asked him if he was thinking of moving out and to my surprise, he moved out that weekend.

The second floor contained a three-bedroom apartment that was rented by a young, newly married couple. They continued to rent this apartment for the next two years but when they decided to have a child they moved to a safer neighborhood.

The first floor apartment had three bedrooms, a large living room, a dining room, and a large kitchen. An elderly lady, Mrs. Ducharme, had rented this apartment for over twenty years. She lived alone but she was quite active. She volunteered at a local senior center and she walked all over the city. She kept the front of the property clean and always paid her rent on time. Since my store was right next-door, she'd bring her rent of two hundred and fifty dollars in cash to me on the first day of the month. I'd write her a receipt for her payment. After I had owned the property for about six months I noticed that she seemed to be getting more forgetful. She began coming in to my store to apologize for being "late" with the rent and she'd give me another envelope with money in it. I'd explain to her that she had already paid the month's rent but she'd insist that I take this additional payment. I'd tell her that she didn't need to bring me any more money until the next month. The very next week she'd bring in another envelope with two hundred and fifty dollars in it. At one point I explained to her that she had now paid her rent six months in advance. I told her I couldn't accept any more money from her. I was worried about her so I located the phone number of her son who lived in Arizona. I called him and introduced myself and explained that I thought his mother was losing her mental ability and I wondered whether she should be living alone. At first, he got angry with me and said it was none of my business. He later calmed down and thanked me for my concern but he offered no solution. Two weeks later he showed up with a moving van and he loaded up all of his mother's things and was moving her out to Arizona. Mrs. Ducharme came into my store crying. She asked me why this man was making her move out. I had to convince her that her son would take care of her and that this was for the best. Her son didn't say a single word to me and I never heard from Mrs. Ducharme again.

I rented the second floor apartment to three guys. Rick, Ray, and Bernie were "gamers" and they were primarily customers of my main competitor but they began shopping at my store after they rented the apartment, probably because we were so nearby. Rick was a serious guy but he was friendly to me. Ray was a great guy. He was friendly and soft-spoken and he had a generous, easy-going spirit. Bernie was much older than the other two and although he was friendly to me, he was also kind of "gruff" on the outside. These three guys rented this apartment for a few years until they decided to move out of state to North Carolina. Ray got a job doing social work. I just recently learned that Bernie killed himself.

I rented the first floor apartment to a family consisting of a mother, a father, and two children. This family always paid their rent on time but they were disgustingly sloppy. There was trash and garbage all over their apartment. The basement began to fill up with their junk. The grass in the front yard was destroyed and littered with broken bottles and trash. The apartment building ended up infested with cockroaches after this family was there for six months. We had never had any of these problems before this family moved in. I knew I had to do something about this but I quickly learned that the liberal Democrats of Massachusetts had essentially removed the rights of the property owner. As long as these people paid the rent on time, I couldn't force them to move out. The next two years were full of constant repairs to the building, pest exterminators, and mediating conflicts with the other tenants. This family would actually call me at home to complain that some other tenant had parked in "their" parking space. I'd explain that there were no reserved parking spaces but it usually required a trip into the city to smooth it out with everyone.

One day I received a notice from the Board of Health stating that I had three days to clean up the mess in the yard before they'd fine me five hundred dollars per day! I called the Board of Health and explained that I couldn't possibly get it all cleaned up over the weekend because the trash companies were now closed until Monday. They gave me a twenty-four hour extension and I spent most of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, cleaning it up. I hired a trash company to pick up all of the junk first thing on Tuesday morning so the city inspector could examine the property on Tuesday afternoon. In typical city government fashion, the inspector didn't come to the property as we had arranged. He came ten days later. By that time, the gross tenants threw more trash in the front yard so all of my work was in vain and I was summoned to court. I was furious and I tried to explain the situation to the judge. He was not sympathetic. He said it was my responsibility to keep this property clean. I asked him if he'd feel the same way if I threw old tires and trash on his front lawn for him to clean up. He was clearly agitated by my attitude. I then told him that I was tired of the "Nazi Gestapo tactics" of his court and he threatened me with contempt of court. My wife didn't really want me to be thrown in jail so I didn't tell him that I did indeed have contempt for his court. I had no choice so I paid the fine. It was clear that the landlord business was not for me.

Part Sixty

I was stuck with the sloppy tenants in the apartment building I had purchased. These people were quickly destroying my property. The building wasn't very nice when I first bought it, but now it was becoming a slum! I couldn't legally force them out because they always paid the rent on time. Occasionally, I'd bring my two kids, Adam and Cassandra, with me to expose them to this situation as a learning experience. Both of them were shocked at how filthy these tenants were and we'd discuss that just because people are poor, there was certainly no need to be dirty. We discussed that the tenants were actually nice people but they were unnecessarily gross. My kids proclaimed that they'd never be messy like that.

It was around this time (the late 1980's) that the real estate market in Worcester, Massachusetts, collapsed. As it turned out, I had purchased this property at the absolute peak of the market and the value was dropping fast. Fortunately, all of the tenants of the apartment building were paying their rent so this property wasn't losing too much for me each month. The separate commercial building was another story.

We had rented the commercial part of this property for seven hundred dollars per month to a young woman who wanted to open a Jamaican restaurant. For the first two years she paid her rent although it was almost always a struggle for me to get it from her. I'd stop in after I closed my store and she'd say, "I'll give it to you tomorrow." But it usually wasn't available the next day either. Some days she'd give me fifty dollars towards her rent and sometimes a bit more. But usually there was some excuse why she didn't have the money. Since my store was located right next to her restaurant, I could see that she had lots of customers every day. There was a steady stream of people coming in and out of her building. I later heard a rumor that she had been selling drugs out of her restaurant. I asked a lawyer what I should do about this and he explained another stupid law in Massachusetts. Apparently, I could have my property taken away from me because somehow, as the owner of the property, I'm responsible for any illegal activity that takes place there. The problem was that until this lady was arrested and convicted of a crime, I had no right to evict her for "suspected" illegal activity! Eventually she got caught and was arrested and served a year in jail. A relative ran her restaurant while she was in jail and he paid the rent as best as he could. When she got out of jail she began to fall behind on the rent again. At one point she owed me nearly seventeen thousand dollars in back rent! I had tried to find a new renter but the economy in Worcester, Massachusetts was in a horrible recession and I could find no other interested parties.

In 1988 my wife, Mal, and my friend, Kevin Simpson, drove into Boston and waited in line for a few hours to get an autograph for me of Davy Jones (from The Monkees). This may seem unrelated to anything now but later in this story it becomes relevant.

My son, Adam, was really enjoying his time at The Imago School. He seemed to enjoy learning and he had an easy time making friends. His report card grades were always very good but it was always noted that he was disorganized. His desk was always the messiest in his class but somehow he could dig through the mess and find the work he needed. His teachers tried to get him to get more organized but Adam just didn't seem to be bothered by the mess.

The Imago School was offering what they called a "classical" education. They were taught history, English, literature, Latin, math, science, and much more. There were no "after school" activities to divert attention and resources away from the students' education. They did offer a few special activities though. One of the founders of the school would write an entire play each year based on The Reformation. These were historically based plays that included every student in the school. The plays weren't very exciting but the students thoroughly enjoyed performing. The youngest students only had small "walk-on" parts but they understood that as they got older the parts for them would get larger. The system worked pretty well so that there wasn't much envy or jealousy. It was understood that eventually, each student would get speaking parts. The Imago School Reformation Plays played a major part in developing my children's interest in pursuing a career in acting and performing. These plays were two or three hours in length but all of the parents enjoyed them, or at least pretended to enjoy them. Even the parents who didn't enjoy the play recognized the enormous amount of effort that was put into these Reformation plays.

The Imago School also had an annual "Fine Arts Revue" that showcased the talents of the students. Many students played classical violin and piano. The performers wore dress-shirts and ties or "school dresses". It was a nice night of serious talent until Adam decided to perform. He decided to perform a funny song entitled "Under My Bed" dressed in his pajamas. Our friend, Allan Traylor played background guitar. The song was about all of the "scary" things that could be found under Adam's bed. It was pretty funny and the audience liked it. Adam would go on to perform a funny song for each of his remaining years at The Imago School. Our daughter, Cassandra, took over that tradition when she later attended Imago.

In 1988 Cassandra began her gymnastics and dance lessons. She was the smallest kid in the classes and she was adorable!

Next chapter: A story about a few companies with lousy customer service (Topps Card Company, Upper Deck Card Company, and the company who manufactured Trivial Pursuit!)

Part Sixty One

Over the many years I've been in business, I've dealt directly with many companies to buy our inventory. Most of the companies treated us as valued customers but some were less than professional.

Topps Chewing Gum Company has been manufacturing trading cards since the early 1950's and in the 1980's they were still the leader in the baseball card business. We contacted Topps and opened an account with them when we first opened our store and decided to deal in sports cards. We were told that we must pay for the product three months before it would be shipped to us and we would not have return privileges. We were also told that the local candy distributors would get the product significantly before us. This didn't seem right to us because the local candy distributors paid less for the baseball cards than we were being charged, had full return privileges on any unsold product, and they had thirty to ninety days to pay for the cards after they receive them. We were told that had no choice so we continued to send them our money. Each year we'd buy at least one hundred and fifty cases of the Topps baseball cards, which meant that I had to tie up over twenty thousand dollars for months before we ever received the product. I would sometimes hear that the candy distributor was selling the baseball cards directly to collectors at a price below what I paid for them! These distributors were supposed to only sell to retailers but all they cared about was moving the product quickly. After a few years of this I decided to call the customer service department of Topps in New York. The head of the customer service department was the type of woman you'd expect to find at a truck stop diner. In her thick New York accent, she basically said, "That's our company policy and there's nothing we can do for ya. If you don't like it just don't buy our product, okay Hon?" Although I knew that I needed to have Topps cards as part of my inventory, I decided that I would no longer directly support this company. I began to buy very small amounts from local sources. I paid a slightly higher price but I was no longer letting Topps hold my money for months at a time. I'm sure that Topps didn't care at all, but I certainly felt better.

The Upper Deck Card Company released their first baseball card product in 1989. The suggested retail price for each pack of cards was an outrageous eighty-nine cents when all of their competition was pricing their cards at fifty cents per pack! We thought that it would be very difficult to convince baseball cards collectors that these new cards were worth the money but we ordered the cards anyway. To our surprise the cards sold quite well so we continued to order large amounts of their product. We developed a good reputation with our customers as a reliable source for Upper Deck products. In the third year of our relationship with them, Upper Deck began to limit the number of cases we were "allowed" to buy. The first year that Upper Deck created football cards I sold almost one hundred cases in the first week. The second year they only allowed me to buy ten cases. This didn't make any sense to me because I was selling out of every case that we were getting and I actually wanted to buy more! When I called the customer service department to request an increase in my "allocation" I was informed by Jay McCracken (the top guy) that the policy made good business sense. He actually said, "You are like the child and I'm the father so you've got to trust that I know what's best." I explained that he doesn't understand my business. I'd now have dozens of sports card collectors who would have to go elsewhere to find the Upper Deck products that I used to be able to provide to them. I wasn't thrilled with the idea that my customers would now be forced to shop at other card shops. He didn't see any problem with that. From that moment on I developed other sources for a much smaller quantity of Upper Deck product. There's no sense in promoting and building a demand for a product that I'm not able to provide to my loyal customers. Although Upper Deck still hasn't changed their policy, I was later told that Mr. McCracken was let go and last I heard he was running a small (and probably an unprofitable) sports card shop.

There was a time in the early 1980's that I used to get periodic visits from an old salesman for a company called Selchow and Righter. He used to drive a beat-up old Buick and he'd come into my store and almost plead with me to buy a Parcheesi game or some jigsaw puzzles or a Scrabble game. I explained to him that I was primarily a collectibles and nostalgia store so if he had anything that was based on old television shows or movies, I might be interested. Occasionally I'd buy a few puzzles from him. One day, one of my customers, Zvi Szafran, told me about a great new game that he saw on a trip to Canada. It was called "Trivial Pursuit" but it wasn't currently available in the United States. He encouraged me to try to buy the rights to distribute this game in the USA but I didn't believe that it would be a popular game. A few months later, on the TV show "Family Ties" starring Michael J. Fox the actors were shown playing Trivial Pursuit and they were pretending to have fun playing it. People were curious about this new game. The salesman for Selchow and Righter came into my store and offered to sell me some Trivial Pursuit games because they had recently bought the United States rights. I was still reluctant to buy a bunch of them because the suggested retail price was so high. Most board games were being sold for $9.00-$12.00 at that time and Trivial Pursuit was a $30.00 game. I bought ten games from him. To my surprise, I sold all ten pretty quickly. I called the salesman's toll-free phone number and ordered a dozen more. I put a sign in the window of my store that read, "we have Trivial Pursuit" and it became crazy! So many people kept coming in trying to buy this game that I was ordering more almost every week. I was too timid to order a huge amount because I knew that I didn't want to get stuck with any of these when the "fad" ended. After a couple of months of successfully selling these games, the big department stores started ordering them so I knew it was only a matter of time before the excitement would end. I called to place another order and I found that Selchow and Righter had disconnected their toll- free phone number. I called the regular number and left messages for the salesman but he wouldn't return my phone calls. I was irritated but I could "live" without Trivial Pursuit. The big department stores and toy stores were now fully stocked with the game and they began discounting the price. When the salesman finally showed up at my store again, he was driving a new Lincoln. He explained that Trivial Pursuit was the hottest game on the market and if I'd like to buy six Trivial Pursuit games I'd have to also buy a case of Parcheesi games and some Scrabble games. That attitude was enough for me. I tried to explain to this guy that this wasn't good long-term business thinking. I believed that companies should take care of the customers who support them but it was apparent that Selchow and Righter didn't agree. I didn't order anything from him.

A year or two later, when the Trivial Pursuit craze was over, the salesman stopped into my store and sheepishly asked if I was interested in buying some Trivial Pursuit games, some Parcheesi games, or some Scrabble games. I declined.

Most of the companies we deal with recognize our unique "partnership" in business and we are usually treated with respect and gratitude. In a future chapter I'll discuss the most outrageous antagonistic attitude of all: Terry Stewart and the betrayal of Marvel Comics.

Next chapter: The year of The Batman.

Part Sixty Two

In early 1988 we were beginning to hear more serious rumors about a big-budget feature film that Warner Brothers was making of Batman. We were excited about the many possibilities that this could bring if the movie was any good. Our comic book industry could get much needed national attention in the media and people might be interested in reading comic books again. Although my business was growing each year our main customer base was made up of serious collectors and it would have been great to get more of the "general public" interested in going into comic book specialty stores like mine. Unfortunately, the early rumors we were hearing were not good. A comic book writer wasn't writing the movie. The movie was going to be directed by Tim Burton who was primarily known for directing Pee Wee Herman's movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" and "Beetlejuice" starring Michael Keaton. Both of these were pretty good movies but they were comedies and, as fans, we wanted a serious Batman movie. Then we began hearing rumors that Michael Keaton was being considered for the role of Batman! Horrors! He's short, balding, has no chin, and his body isn't in great shape. How could Tim Burton possibly make him into a serious and believable Batman?

The answer became obvious as publicity photographs were released. Since Michael Keaton wasn't a well-built "muscleman" they'd have to make the costume look the part. They built a rubber costume that made it appear as if Michael Keaton could actually be The Batman. He didn't look like the Bruce Wayne that we've all come to know from the comic books or the Adam West television show but at least he'd look like a superhero when he was in the costume.

When I was satisfied that the movie would at least be visually interesting, I decided to try to put together a project to make this movie a special event for my customers. I called the Boston office of National Amusements (the company that distributed the films to the local theaters) and tried to arrange it so Worcester would be able to have a big premiere on the first night of the movie's release. I tried to assure them that I would be able to generate a lot of good radio and newspaper publicity for the movie. They explained that although Worcester was the second largest city in all of New England, they were more interested in premiering the movie in Boston. I tried to get them to agree to simultaneously release it in Boston and Worcester but they just didn't think Worcester was an important market for them. I was frustrated because I wanted to be involved in this big-budget movie premiere. There hadn't been a good major comic book related movie since the Christopher Reeve Superman movie from the 1970's and I was now reading really good things about this upcoming Batman movie.

Next chapter: A sign of intelligent life in Boston.

Part Sixty Three

It was early 1989, and it was getting closer to the release date of the big-budget Batman movie. I had been unable to convince the company that was handling the distribution of the film to the Massachusetts area to let me organize a big Worcester premiere. I was explaining my predicament to my friend, Linda Weatherbee, and she told me that her sister, Carol, worked at that company! I now had an inside contact person that I may be able to work with.

Carol was smart enough to realize that Worcester was an important city for movies because of its large population and she was willing to work with me to make the release of the Batman movie a special event. She wasn't able to convince the company to allow us to have a special premiere but she allowed us to have a private screening the morning after the movie opened. I purchased five hundred tickets at a slightly reduced price from the Showcase Cinema in downtown Worcester for a 10:00AM show. I decided to give these tickets away (for free) so that this event would be run as a "thank you" for my customers. I wanted to somehow let them know that I appreciated all of the business they had given me for the past nine years and this seemed like an interesting way to do it. There were some potential problems though. I couldn't really purchase any more tickets because none of the theaters held more than five hundred people. I had over a thousand regular customers and their family members that I wanted to give these tickets to. I didn't want to make the difficult decision of who wouldn't get the free tickets so I came up with a plan that would be as fair as possible. I'd give one ticket to each of the first five hundred people who came into my store on a Saturday two weeks before our special presentation. This seemed like a good, fair plan.

I designed a large illustrated ticket with the Bat-Symbol on it and had them sequentially numbered from #1-#500. I kept the first six of the tickets for my wife, my Mom and Dad, myself, and some of my employees. I wrote some press releases to send to local radio stations and newspapers. I began "hyping" the event to my regular customers when they came into the store. Everything was under control and the movie wasn't going to be released for another three months!

Next chapter: What could possibly go wrong?

Part Sixty Four

I had planned carefully for months for the big screen debut of the Batman movie. Everything was under control. Well, maybe not. I was contacted by the management of the Showcase Cinema three weeks before the special screening I had arranged for my customers. I was told that they weren't sure if the Batman movie would be playing in the downtown Worcester theater. They had opened a theater in another section of town and they wanted to have the film there instead of downtown. I explained that I had completed almost all of my promotional work to promote the originally agreed upon location and all of the special tickets had already been printed. They didn't care.

It was interesting to me that most of the theater managers had so little confidence in this movie. Tim Burton had directed two other movies that were only minor hits but there was a lot of good "buzz" on this movie within the comic book industry. A few small companies had managed to buy the licensing rights to produce toys based on the movie and a few other companies started making t-shirts featuring Batman and the Joker that were actually based on the comic book series instead of the feature film. We bought and sold hundreds of these t-shirts in the months before the movie's release. As it got closer to the actual opening day of the film the serious comic book collectors were buying almost anything with Batman on it. The comic book series had been selling poorly for a few years. Sales had slipped in the United States to around 100,000 copies per month of the Batman comic book. Because of the collector interest in this soon-to-be-released movie, sales of the Batman comic book soared to almost 500,000 per month! Back issues of the comic book series from the 1960's and 1970's were flying out of our store and our stock was rapidly dwindling. Comic book stores all around the country were reporting huge increases in the sales of Batman related merchandise because none of the big department stores had enough confidence in the movie to order large quantities of the toys and t-shirts. Our little comic book industry basically had an exclusive with this film.

I knew that I'd have to convince the Showcase Cinema management that it was essential to play the Batman movie in the downtown theater as we had contracted for the success of this event. I finally went back to Carol Boole, my inside contact of the company that was in charge of this release, and begged her to try to fix this mess. Two weeks before the film was to be shown, she worked out a plan with the Showcase manager. The Batman movie would premiere at the other location and first thing the next morning they'd have a currier bring the film to the downtown location in time for our special screening. Then the currier would rush the film back to the other theater in time for the noon show. I had no choice but to believe that this would actually work.

Two Saturdays before the screening I was going to give away the five hundred free tickets. The night before the ticket give-away, I stayed late to clean the store and have everything organized for the morning. I didn't have any idea what to expect. Would there be very many people interested in waiting in a line for a free ticket to a movie that many thought might be a "bomb?"

Next chapter: Batmania

Part Sixty Five

I arrived at my store early on the Saturday that I was going to give away the five hundred free tickets to our private showing of the new Batman movie. My store doesn't open until ten o'clock but I knew that I wanted to be there around seven o'clock to be sure that the store was organized enough in case there was a good-sized crowd of people. I had no idea what to expect. By seven o'clock there were about one hundred people waiting in a line for my store to open! The first person had arrived at four o'clock in the morning! Everyone seemed to be enjoying passing the time by talking about comic books and the excitement and anticipation about the Batman movie was growing. I explained to the people in line that I couldn't begin to give the tickets away until the store opened at ten o'clock but nobody seemed to mind waiting.

By the time that my employee, Pat Donley, got to the store we had about three hundred people waiting in line. My wife, Mal, and my two children, Adam and Cassandra, arrived at just about ten o'clock and by that time we had almost five hundred people in line.

I was giving the tickets away as a "Thank You" for my loyal customers, friends, and Worcester residents, so making a lot of money in return was not my intention. As it turned out though, my "gift" was returned to me in huge sales. I thought that most of the people in line would come into the store to get their free ticket and then they'd leave but I was wrong. Most of the people stayed and shopped. Many bought Batman related merchandise but by the end of the day I was surprised to see that we sold a bunch of every product line that we carried. It was a fun-filled day for me at the store. Almost every customer was in a good mood and the excitement was building for next week's special screening of Batman. Our small store was jam-packed with so many people that we had to have some customers wait outside until there was room for them to enter. After eight hours of "ringing the cash register" my pointer finger was sore. (For some reason, cash register manufacturers put a small raised bump on the number five key and it actually made my finger hurt because of the heavy use!) But I certainly wasn't going to complain about this situation.

The next Saturday was the big day. Pat Donley stayed at the store because we were open for business at the same time that we would be showing the movie. I arrived at the downtown Showcase Cinema location and paced the floor while I waited for the currier to bring the film from the other Showcase theater. In the meantime I greeted many of my customers as they entered the lobby and directed them to our reserved theater. My mother and father sat with Mal, but we had decided that our two children were too young to see this movie. Adam wasn't happy with us but Mal and I were concerned about the dark, evil, somber tone of the movie at that time in his young life. He was only ten years old. He'd get to see it a couple of years later. Cassandra was only five years old and she didn't seem to mind missing this movie.

The currier finally showed up fifteen minutes before "show-time" and we actually started the movie right on-time. The crowd loved the movie. They cheered and clapped when Batman first appeared on-screen. The movie was visually exciting and the soundtrack was dynamic. Tim Burton did an amazing job of entertaining both young and old. He even made it seem okay that Michael Keaton was Batman. My father said it reminded him of the old-time movie serials and the teen-agers thought it was cool. It was definitely a success. It was a lot of fun to see this movie with just a room full of friends. As the film ended I made sure I was at the exit of the theater to thank each and every person for attending our showing. I also invited everyone to comeback to my store for a "Batman party" where we had a huge Batman cake, soda, and lots of snacks. I was the last person to leave the theater and by the time I got back to my store the whole store was packed with people. Everyone seemed to have a fun time and my store had a record-breaking sales day. This special movie showing cost me a few thousand dollars but the huge sales on both Saturdays, the great stories in the local newspapers about our store, and the goodwill generated by this event made it successful beyond my expectations.

Next Chapter: Hank Stolz and the Same Bat Channel comic shop.

Part Sixty Six

In the late 1980's comic book stores were springing up all over the United States. New comic book sales were reaching levels that hadn't been seen since the 1960's. I had a fairly good relationship with many of these store owners. I had been in the comic book business for quite a number of years and I'd known these guys for a while. One such man was Hank Stolz. He owned four or five comic book stores in Massachusetts called "Same Bat Channel Comics". I'd run into him every week while I was picking up my huge new comic book shipment in Boston and my cousin Steven and I noticed that Hank was buying enormous quantities of extra comic books and "trade paperback" editions. We knew he had a bunch of stores but these quantities were really huge! Apparently, business must have been great for him.

Hank was one of the most friendly and down-to-earth comic retailers of our whole group. He was quite young.early twenties perhaps. He was married to a nice woman and had a child. This was an unusual thing in the comic book business. Many comic dealers are rather strange. They tend to live alone. But not Hank. He seemed happy and successful.

Hank called me one day and asked if he could drop by my home after work to discuss something with me. I always loved talking about the "business" so I agreed to meet with him. When he arrived I could tell that he was upset. He explained that he had gotten behind in his payments for his weekly comic book shipments with Diamond Comic Distributors and they were threatening to "shut him off". If he was not allowed to continue to get the new comic books each week his customers would be forced to shop elsewhere and his stores would go out of business very soon. If Hank's stores went out of business his father could lose his home because he had taken a large loan against his home to help finance Hank's stores. Hank was hoping there was something I could do to help him out of this situation. He offered to sell me his "chain" of stores but I declined because I knew I wasn't ready to go from one store to five stores over-night. Although he owned one small store on Main Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, most of his stores were in high rent shopping malls in Massachusetts and New York. If I were going to buy his stores, I'd need adequate time to review his lease agreements with the mall companies. Also, I had recently lost my only full-time employee, Pat Donley, and I didn't want to try to deal with hiring more people right now. There were just too many reasons to not buy his stores. After seeing that this was an emotional and difficult time for Hank, I offered a potential solution to his dilemma.

I had a friendship with Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comic Distributors. I called Steve and explained that Hank was also a friend of mine. I told Steve that I really believed that it was Hank's intention to repay all of his back debt, but if he wasn't allowed to continue to receive the new weekly comic book shipments his stores would go out of business and Diamond Comics would end up with a huge unpaid debt. I suggested that Hank could be required to pay, in cash, for each week's new shipment and as long as paid at least a portion of his back debt it would be a "win-win" situation for everyone. Eventually Diamond would get all of the money owed to them and they wouldn't get stuck with the huge orders for new product that Hank had ordered two months in advance. Hank would be compelled to pay for each week's shipment with cash so that he could keep his customers coming in on a regular basis for the new product. If Hank failed to keep his end of the agreement the comic book shipments would be stopped and he'd end up out of business. This plan was in everyone's best interest so Steve Geppi agreed to give it a try. He had nothing to lose.

Before Hank left my home I explained to him that I was convinced that the high rent that most shopping malls charged made it very difficult for a comic book store to be profitable. I expressed some interest in buying his store located on Main Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts (because it was more like my store in Worcester and the rent was fairly reasonable), but Hank wasn't interested in selling just one of his locations. He assured me that he'd contact me if he changed his mind about this.

Next chapter: Hank changes his mind.

Part Sixty Seven

1989 was a busy year for my family. Adam was working hard at The Imago School. Cassy was busy with her dance lessons. We took Adam and Cassy to Disney World again and then Mal and I went to Los Angeles (and Disney Land) without the kids. Our beautiful in ground pool was completely finished at our Bolton, Massachusetts home. Mal and the kids loved having the pool because they'd normally have to travel to a nearby town to enjoy a community pool. I was thrilled because they'd be able to enjoy the convenience of just walking out to the back yard to swim. I only enjoy swimming if the water temperature is above 80 degrees. That meant I didn't swim very often because unless you heat the pool, the temperature rarely gets that warm. I'd occasionally break my rule just to play with the kids in the water.

At my store things were even busier. Business was at a point where I couldn't handle the intensity with just a couple of part-time employees and myself. I had recently lost my only full-time employee, Pat, and I was searching for a replacement. There were plenty of people willing to work at my store, even for the low pay that I was offering. I think that most of them thought that it'd be fun. They probably thought we'd basically be sitting around reading and discussing comic books and collectibles all day but those easy days had come to an end. The store was now hard work.

We had hundreds of regular, weekly customers and hundreds more who shopped at our store slightly less frequently. We had to sort and save the weekly new comic books for all of the customers that were part of our "subscription" service. We had to evaluate and make offers on every collection of comic books, toys, records, and sports cards that we were offered. Then we'd have to "process" these collectibles. For comics, that meant we'd place them in special plastic bags that we had specially manufactured for us, tape the plastic bag closed, put a blank price sticker on the bag, put the collection in alphabetical and numerical order, and I would personally price every comic book. For sports cards there was a similar process but I had help from my employees when it came time for these to be priced. My days at the store were hectic and then I'd do all of the bookkeeping and bill paying at home. I needed a full-time employee that I could really count on and most importantly I'd need someone I could trust. Honesty and loyalty were my two main criteria during my search for another full- time employee.

While I was looking over some possible candidates I got a phone call from a woman in Worcester. She explained that she was responsible for liquidating the estate of the former owner of "Colonial Stamp and Coin", a collectible store that was once located in Worcester. She told me that her uncle had owned this store and that he had a huge inventory of old comic books that he used to sell until there was a devastating fire in the late 1970's. He had closed the store after the fire but he had a warehouse filled with coins, stamps, comic books, cards, and magazines that he had not yet brought to his store. After he died, this woman was named as the executor of his estate and she was efficiently getting rid of everything. She had already sold the coins and stamps and was in the process of completing the deal to sell off the large baseball card collection. She was now entertaining offers on the comic book collection.

Although my "policy" was that the comic books must be brought to my store in order for me to properly evaluate them and make an offer on any collection, I decided to make an exception for her. I tried to set up an appointment to see the comic books as soon as I closed my store that night but she explained that she had a competitor of mine already scheduled for that evening. She assured me that she wasn't going to sell these comics without getting at least two bids so I would get an opportunity to see the comic books the next day. I called my part-time employees and asked them to fill in for me at the store while I bid on this big collection.

When I arrived at the storage building I was surprised to see hundreds of boxes and piles of comic books from the 1950's to the late 1960's in varying conditions with most of them being in near mint to mint condition. She explained that her uncle would buy collections of comic books and only bring these copies to his store when he sold out of similar issues. Many of the comic books in this collection were comics that were not eagerly sought-after in the 1970's but they were really hot now! This was bigger than I had anticipated. I started in one corner and carefully evaluated each and every comic book. I wrote the price I would offer for each book in my notebook and worked as fast as I could. It ended up taking two full twelve-hour days to finish this process and make my final offer. After this painstaking work, I was told that my offer was only four hundred dollars higher than the competing comic dealer's offer. She explained that the other dealer came in and barely looked at the collection and just made an offer off of the top of his head. She appreciated that I took the time to go through everything so carefully and she accepted my offer. I paid her and began making dozens of trips from the storage building to my store to unload this new collection.

Collections like this one are very scarce. I have always had a great inventory of old comic books and we are well known for having comics in stock that are very hard to find. But this collection was important because we actually needed over two thirds of it in our stock. This collection had complete runs of the famous EC Comics including Tales Of The Crypt, Haunt Of Fear, Weird Science, Crime Suspenstories, and dozens more. There were also great groups of the pre-hero Atlas Comics including Tales of Suspense, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales To Astonish, and more. These books were scarce and I knew they'd sell quickly to eager collectors. Normally I'd try to get this collection ready for sale and I'd "premiere" the collection as a special event but I knew it would take me such a long time to price these comic books because I didn't have any full-time help. Also, I had paid such a high price for this collection and I'd need to start recouping my investment as soon as possible. As soon as I could price a full box of the comics I'd make them available for sale. Many of the comic books sold right away. I had several other comic book dealers buy full runs from me before my customers even got a chance to see these comics!

As I was busily pricing this massive collection I got a call from my friend Hank. He wanted to try to convince me to buy his Fitchburg store. I told him that I had recently spent a small fortune buying this collection but I would still meet with him after I closed my store that night.

Next chapter: Hank makes me an offer I can't refuse. Sort of.

Part Sixty Eight

I called my wife and told her that I was going to meet with my friend Hank about potentially buying one of his comic book stores. She urged me not to make an impulsive decision but I'm sure she knew I'd do it anyway. I do tend to make quick decisions, but it frequently works out okay when it is comic book related.

When I arrived at the "Same Bat Channel Comics" store in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, I was introduced to one of Hank's employees, Richard Ortwein. Richard seemed to be a friendly guy. Hank's "right-hand man", Chris Ball, wasn't with him on this night. I had seen Chris many times in Boston while we were all waiting to pick up our new comic books each week and I knew that he was a good guy too. Hank didn't mention to any of his employees that he was entertaining offers to sell this store to me. He probably figured that the odds were slim that I'd actually buy it because I had told him about my recent purchase of a huge collection of old comic books. There was no sense getting his employees upset or worried about their jobs unless he was sure that I was going to really buy the store. Hank showed me around the store, including his back room and storage area. This store was a very typical comic book shop. He had display racks along the outside walls to display the new weekly comic book releases and he had the back issue comic books in bins in the center of the store. As I examined his comic book inventory I noticed that it wasn't very comprehensive. Hank had spread his inventory out over his five stores so it was pretty weak in this location. The inventory wasn't going to be a major deciding factor in my decision to buy the store because I already had enough extra stock to fill numerous new stores. Hank wanted thirty thousand dollars for this store, without the inventory, and it seemed reasonable to me. I knew I could have made a lower offer but I considered Hank to be a friend and I knew he needed the money from this sale.

Hank didn't want to discuss the sale around Richard so he suggested that we go to a nearby restaurant for a more private talk. Hank began to give me all of the details about this store. His rent was fairly reasonable and he didn't have any lease that I'd be locked into. His customer base was fairly small but the store was profitable. The store employed two full-time employees (Richard and Chris) and one or two part-time people. I asked Hank if he thought that Chris and Richard would be interested in working for me if I bought the store and he thought they probably would at least be open to the possibility. Then Hank told me how much he was paying them. I was actually shocked at the high salary he was paying the two full-time guys. It was more than I had ever paid my employees. I questioned whether I could afford to pay the same salary to them if I bought this part of Hank's business. Even if I could afford to do it I was quite sure that I didn't want to pay that much!

While we were going over the details of Hank's offer, Richard and Chris "just happened" to come into the restaurant. Hank didn't want to be dishonest with his employees so he told them what we were discussing. Both of the guys were surprised that Hank's situation had gotten to the point where he really needed to sell off this store. They thought that things were going great, but as it frequently is, the employees were unaware of the details and difficulty of keeping a business profitable. Chris had plans to become the overall manager of Hank's chain of stores and was sure that he'd be making a huge salary soon. Now it must have seemed as if his dream was crumbling.

I explained that for me to agree to buy this store I'd need both Richard and Chris to agree to begin to work for me. Chris said he had no interest in leaving Hank's business. Hank tried to convince Chris that his future looked brighter with me but there seemed to be no way to make this work. That was the "deal breaker" for me so I thanked Hank for his offer and called Mal to tell her that a deal wasn't reached. She was thrilled that I wasn't buying this store.

Next chapter: Chris shows up at my store the next morning.

Part Sixty Nine

Late one night, Hank and I had negotiated a buy-out of his comic book store in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. This deal was set to be consummated if his two full-time employees would agree to come to work for me. Richard seemed ready but Chris refused my offer. I didn't have any extra employees available to take over Hank's store so the deal was off. My wife was glad. I was almost relieved because I knew that adding a second store wasn't just double the work, it was much more than that. More employee issues to deal with, more government paperwork, and more stress.

By the next morning, the deal to buy Hank's store wasn't even in my thoughts anymore. But that didn't last long. At ten o'clock, as I opened my store, the first person to come in was Chris Ball. He explained that he had changed his mind and he wanted to come to work for me. Although Chris had a key role to play in the "Same Bat Channel Comics" chain of stores, Hank had convinced him that the future was most likely more secure if he joined the "That's Entertainment" team. Chris and I talked about my expectations for employees and what I had planned for the future, including my eventual retirement from active participation in the day-to-day operations of the store. We discussed his required salary and I agreed to continue paying him the same amount that he was earning while he was working for Hank. Chris said he'd be interested in the job. I wasn't convinced that this drastic change-of- heart was authentic. I was worried that if I agreed to buy Hank's store, based on Chris's agreement to come to work for me, there was no way to force Chris to actually follow through with his commitment. Once Hank had my money, Chris could just quit and I'd be stuck with another store and I wouldn't have enough employees to handle the increased workload. I was still in the process of trying to find another full- time employee for my Worcester store and I wasn't having much luck. I knew Hank pretty well and I trusted that this wasn't a trick to get me to buy his store. Hank was a man of principle and an all-around nice person. My dilemma was that I didn't know Chris well enough to really trust him yet. He might be doing this just to help Hank's financial picture.

When we were done discussing a lot of the details, I told Chris that I'd think about this situation and I'd get back to him with my decision soon. I called Hank and told him about this new development. He assured me that Chris made this decision on his own. Hank didn't have anything devious up his sleeve.

I called my wife and told her that the deal was back on. I was still uneasy about the decision but I trusted Hank enough to take the risk. After I closed the store I drove to Fitchburg and gave Hank a check for thirty thousand dollars. Hank used this money to pay off most of his debt to Diamond Comic Distributors and it allowed the rest of his comic book store chain to survive. Hank began removing his inventory that night. By the next morning I had enough of my inventory there and I was able to open this new store on time. The customers had no idea that there was going to be a change of ownership and everything went quite smoothly. Business was pretty good already but with a new "fresh" inventory and with a renewed enthusiasm of Richard Ortwein, business increased quite a bit. Within six months the store earned enough in profits that my entire purchase price was recovered.

Chris Ball spent much of his time at the Worcester store. I needed the help there and I wanted to spend time training him in the ways I wanted things run and my basic philosophy of business. Chris was a great employee. He worked hard at keeping our customers happy. He had a tremendous memory for details and was willing to do any task I needed done. After a few months had gone by I began to feel confident that Chris intended to stay with my company.

Next chapter: One of my favorite customers tells me an amazing story!

Part Seventy

Over the years of running a comic book and collectible store, I've gotten to know hundreds of interesting people. Zvi Szafran is one of the most interesting of them all. He began shopping at my store in the very early 1980's. Each week I would save all of the comic books that he collected and Zvi would come into the store to pick them up once every few months. He would have come in more often if he could but he actually lived in Columbia, South Carolina. He had relatives in Worcester so when he'd come into town to visit them he'd visit my store too. He would buy all of the huge piles of comic books that I had reserved for him and then he would shop for many back issues that he needed to fill in his massive collection.

I always appreciated Zvi's business but I mostly enjoyed visiting with him. He was always intelligent, funny, politically aware and also the first person I had ever met who was willing to share his Jewish faith with me. Zvi would explain the many differences and similarities between his faith and mine and he was never critical or judgmental. Zvi told me the following story about a trip to Israel that he and his wife, Jill, made years ago and I thought it was interesting enough to share with you.

Zvi and Jill were taking a bus in Tel Aviv, going to the beach. As they got on the bus, an elderly woman sat in the seat behind the bus driver, and Zvi and Jill sat in the seat behind her.

The elderly woman began to complain to the bus driver that he was late. In Israel, the bus drivers are part of a cooperative where they own their own buses, and they don't put up with much from their riders. The driver said to the elderly woman, "Shut up old woman, or I'll throw you off of the bus." A few stops later, a second elderly woman got on the bus and sat in the seat next to the first woman. The first one said, "Don't complain about the bus being late or the driver will bite your head off." The second woman said, "You're so right. That's how youth are today. No respect!"

The two started talking and the second asked the first where she was from. The first woman answered with the name of some small town in Poland. The bus driver said, "Where did you say?" When the first woman repeated the name of the small town, the driver said, "That's where I'm from." He then asked her what her name was. When she told him, he stepped on the brakes and stopped the bus. He grabbed her and gave her a big kiss. It was his mother! She thought that he had died during World War II in the death camps, and he thought that she had died. They hadn't seen each other in thirty years!

The driver and his mother left the bus parked on the side of the road, and went off together, leaving Zvi and Jill and the rest of the passengers, to wait for the next bus. It goes to show you that you never know just who you're dealing with when you meet a stranger, doesn't it?!

Next chapter: Brian Paquette and I publish "The Toys From Uncle" memorabilia guide.

Part Seventy One

I had attended a convention called "Spy-Con" in the late 1980's to promote "The Man From Uncle" comic book series that I was publishing. This convention was a gathering place for fans of spy-related movies and television shows including "James Bond," "The Man From Uncle," "The Wild Wild West," "The Avengers," and many more. Dealers and fans from around the United States set up booths to buy, sell, and trade many spy-related collectibles. I hoped that I'd be able to locate some of the rare Uncle toys that I was missing in my collection. I was disappointed to find out that most of the dealers only stocked the paperback books, magazines, and fan-produced fiction. There were very few toys offered for sale at this show.

One collector displayed a small notebook that contained photographs of many of his favorite Man From Uncle collectibles and this was of great interest to most of the Uncle collectors. Many of these items were rarely seen by collectors and a group of us discussed the need for a complete listing of everything that was made about The Man From Uncle. When I returned home, I got together with my friend, Brian Paquette, and we came up with the idea of publishing a book about The Man From Uncle collectibles.

I had published the official Man From Uncle comic books in 1988 so I figured that I could handle publishing a "real" book. Brian was an artist and I knew he'd be great with the entire creative end. Between the two of us, we had almost every item ever made about The Man From Uncle television show. We would use our collections as the main part of this new book project. We began photographing the hundreds of items using colorful backgrounds and began to write detailed descriptions of everything. We wanted this book to be different from most of the memorabilia guides based on other television shows so we made sure that the photographs were large and clear and the descriptions were detailed and accurate. We also carefully researched the current values and actual selling prices of these collectibles by attending toy conventions and monitoring dealers' catalogs and auction results.

Since this project began before home computers were commonplace, the whole book was done by "hand". The photos were taken using a film camera and then developed at a local photo studio. If the photos came out okay, we matted them with a black paper border. We designed each page and pasted the written descriptions underneath the photos. We got together at my house to combine our collections in order to create a photograph for the front cover of our new book. Brian designed our chapter title pages and was mostly responsible for the professional "look" of this project. We decided to title this project "The Toys From Uncle Memorabilia and Collectors Guide." My good friend, Michael Warshaw, a very talented writer, wrote the introduction for this book as a favor to me. After a few months of work, we sent the pages to Associated Printers of North Dakota (my favorite printer) and they "screened" all of the photos so the photographs would reproduce quite clearly.

The cost to produce this project in full color, as we had wanted, would have been outrageously high. A cover price of almost thirty dollars would have been required. Brian and I wanted collectors to be able to buy the book for less than ten dollars so the book was printed in black and white with full color front and back covers. Most of the books were sold through Diamond Comic Distributors at fifty percent of the cover price of nearly ten dollars. Although it was a lot of work to put the book together, Brian and I enjoyed this experience.

Over the years following the publication of "The Toys From Uncle", this book has become recognized as an important reference work and a valuable "checklist" for every collector of "The Man From Uncle." Ironically, this book now sells on Ebay for as much as fifty-five dollars!

Next chapter: The end of the eighties.

Part Seventy Two

As the 1980’s were coming to a close I took the time to reflect on my current situation. I now had two stores that were successfully selling comic books, sports cards, and other collectibles. With the recent addition of Richard Ortwein and Chris Ball from my newly purchased Fitchburg, Massachusetts store, I felt confident that my group of employees was more than adequate. I now had a bunch of good quality part-time employees, including Mark Dufresne, Rob Leary, Albert Aeed, and occasionally, David Hartwell. Sales were so good that I wasn’t worried about meeting my payroll needs each week. I was paying Richard and Chris more than I thought I could possibly pay them but it was working out fine. I even agreed to pay for their health insurance, which was unusual for someone in the comic book retail industry. The sports card business was “on fire” and it appeared to many people as if it would be an easy way to make a lot of money. Card collectors and some unscrupulous “flea market” dealers began opening up small card stores in Worcester. They’d rent a small storefront and stock it with new card product and just wait for the money to begin rolling in. At one point in the late 1980’s there were over thirty sports card shops in the city of Worcester. Many of these stores would be out of business within six months. Some hung around longer. I’m not a big fan of competition. I understand and appreciate the dream of private business ownership, so I don’t criticize people for opening up a store. It’s just that many people try to run a business when they lack the sufficient capital to make it work. Many people just don’t have the “business sense” necessary to take it past a hobby into a real profit-making business. I don’t believe that any business enterprise benefits from having competition. The only thing that I could do to protect our business was to make sure that we did our best to watch our cash flow and be reasonable and fair with our customers. Of course, we didn’t always accomplish this.

One such situation has bothered me for many years. We had a customer named Mike Daley (not his real name). He collected comic books and he’d come into the Worcester store every week on “new comic day.” Mike had a great sense of humor and a deep knowledge of comic books. He’d spend time with our fun group of serious “That’s Entertainment” customers each week (the group that would come in on “new comic day” and hang around for a few hours at a time), talking about comics, laughing at my bad jokes, and having a good time. Mike shopped at my store for quite a few years. One day he called me before he came into the store and asked if I’d be interested in purchasing a 1968 Nolan Ryan rookie card from him. He told me that it was in very good condition and that he wanted eighty dollars for it. If the card had been in perfect condition, it would have been worth about five hundred dollars but in very good condition it probably would sell for one hundred and twenty dollars so I told him that it sounded like a fair price to me. When he brought it into the store later that day, I looked at the card and disagreed on the condition of it. I made him an offer that was lower than eighty dollars. He declined my offer, but he seemed to understand that the card really wasn’t as nice as I was led to believe. But I must have handled the situation wrong somehow. Mike must have felt that I wasn’t being fair to him. Mike cancelled his comic book “reservations” with us and he stopped shopping at my store. I missed his fun personality and for many years I’ve wondered how I could have handled this better.

In December of 1989 a man named Lee came into my Worcester store carrying an old mailing envelope from the mid-1950’s. Inside of it was a comic book published by a company called EC Comics. Lee had received this comic book in the mail in 1954 and he had read it once, placed it back in the shipping envelope and carefully stored it away. The comic book was in near mint condition with beautiful white interior pages but because it had been stored in this mailing envelope for all of these years, there was a slight indentation on the cover where the envelope clasp touched the comic. Lee recognized that this was a significant enough defect to make this otherwise gorgeous comic book actually only be in only very good to fine condition. I offered to ay him fifty percent of the current price guide value of the comic as if it was in fine condition. He accepted my offer and seemed as if he was ready to leave my store when I remembered to ask him this very important question, “Do you have any more comic books?” He told me that he had about four hundred other comic books from this time period. I went to his home and was thrilled to make him an offer for the entire collection. This collection had over one hundred EC Comics in the original mailing envelopes including The Haunt of Fear, Weird Science-Fantasy, Incredible Science Fiction, Tales From The Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales, Vault of Horror, the original comic book sized Mad Magazine, and many more. Lee also had some of the original form letters that the EC company had sent to the mail-order subscribers to inform them of publication changes and subscription expirations. I bought all of these too! There was also a nice selection of hard-to-find 1950’s DC Comics publications including Superman, Batman, Showcase, The Brave and the Bold, and more. Within a year, all of these comic books were sold to eager collectors. At home, my son Adam, was doing great. Adam was developing into a unique individual. He was very confident in many of his abilities. He was a voracious reader of books; sometimes he’d read a book each day. He enjoyed comic books, magazines, novels, and history books. His grammar school was located next to a library and one day he came home all excited because the library had thrown out a lot of old books. Adam “rescued” a whole bag of these books from the dumpster including science books and World War II history books about the Nazi death camps. He read them all. Although Mal and I tried not to spoil our kids with lots of toys, we willingly indulged Adam’s desire for books. Adam was also confident in “who he was.” He dressed in nice clothes when the occasion called for it but he had developed, even at this early age, a fashion sense that wasn’t always typical for kids his age. Nothing seemed to embarrass him. The Imago School was having a play rehearsal one day that called for some of the boys to wear kilts, but Adam chose to wear his while he was waiting for our “carpool partners” to pick him up. He had no problem being seen in a kilt as his local town friends rode by on the school bus. I know that I would have been very self-conscious when I was his age. I guess I was too vain.

Next chapter: The big jewelry goof-up. Another one of my huge mistakes!

Part Seventy Three

I worked hard to earn my living as a seller of comic books, toys, sports cards, and collectibles and was rewarded with a fun place to work, relationships with some really nice people, and a sizeable income. Our lifestyle was not extravagant; money was spent carefully and most of it was saved and invested. My biggest “splurge” was usually spent on a nice vacation.

When I was in my teen years, my family would usually go camping for our family vacation each year. My mother and father would pack up the car with the tent, lanterns, sleeping bags, and tons of other equipment, along with the six kids, and we’d head off to the mountains of New Hampshire or Maine to spend the week “roughing it.” Although I usually put up a fuss about going, I’d end up enjoying the vacation. My father would spend time hiking, boating, and playing around with us. My mother ended up doing more work “on vacation” than she did when she was at home. Cooking and cleaning was much more work at a campsite than at home. It didn’t seem right to me. Now that I could afford a little more “luxury” for our vacations, I wanted it to be fun for my wife, Mal, too. We would usually stay in decent hotels and we’d eat in restaurants as often as possible. But Mal and I also wanted our kids to experience camping.

Our friends, Brian and Claire, invited us all to go camping with them for a couple of days. Brian knew that camping wasn’t high on my list of fun things to do so to entice me to commit to this trip, he offered to have the tent set up by the time we arrived. Brian spent time fishing and canoeing with my children, and Claire was patient enough to include the kids while we all played cards. Although we had a great time with Brian and Claire, our camping trip was still plagued by the usual camping hardships including sleeping on the cold, hard ground, waking up feeling all damp, and being attacked by gnats and mosquitoes. For years, we’d joke that we took the kids on this camping trip so they’d be motivated to work and study hard in school so they could get a good job so they could afford to stay in a nice hotel and they’d never have to camp again.

I’ve told you about this camping trip as a “lead-in” for my real story. The night before we met Brian and Claire on the camping trip, Mal decided to hide her jewelry. Mal didn’t own a lot of valuable items but she did have things that were meaningful to her. She had her high school ring, her original, small engagement ring, the special rings I gave her when she gave birth to our two children, a ring her mother wore, and some other pieces like that. We didn’t have a safe to store our valuables in at the time and although we had an alarm system, we thought it would make sense to simply hide the jewelry. Mal placed the small jewelry box filled with jewelry in the bottom of a small wastebasket and then placed a trash bag inside, on top of the jewelry. She made sure that I knew it was there so I wouldn’t throw it away by mistake. Then, the next morning we went camping.

We returned home on Thursday night after our fun camping trip. We were scheduled to leave for a week long vacation in Disney World early on Saturday morning so we were busy on Friday getting all of our last minute errands and details taken care of in preparation for the trip. As Mal was finishing her packing of our clothes for the trip she said, “Paul, could you get my jewelry for me?” I asked her where she had put it and I was shocked when she told me that she hadn’t taken it out of our wastebasket. It was gone! I had wrongly assumed that she had taken it out of the wastebasket as soon as we had gotten home on Thursday but she hadn’t. I had emptied all of the wastebaskets on Friday morning and put them out for the rubbish company to pick up on Friday morning. All of her special rings, necklaces, and pins were now buried at the dump.

Since it was late at night, and we were scheduled to leave early the next morning, there was nothing that we could do to recover the jewelry. We called my mother and told her the story. She took some of my brothers to the dump the next day and they spent hours digging through the trash piles looking for the box of jewelry. They convinced the dump’s bulldozer driver to help by uncovering and moving large piles of trash. The jewelry box was never found. Maybe someday, many years in the future, some kid will be digging around and they’ll find an actual treasure chest buried there.

Next chapter: Neil Gaiman, the creator of DC Comics Sandman comes to town!

Part Seventy Four

In 1990, Diamond Comics Distributors organized a huge gathering of comic book retailers, suppliers, and publishers, in Las Vegas for a comic book retailing seminar. I decided that it would be an important business and educational experience for some of my new employees so I booked the trip for Chris, my Fitchburg store manager, my friend Kevin Simpson, and Mal and me. My cousin Steven and his wife Donna also booked the trip. I had also convinced Dave Edwards, a friend of mine who had recently gotten into the comic book retailing business, to attend this seminar.

I had attended a few of these seminars before and although I learned something new at each one, I had decided that I would have my employees attend the teaching parts of the seminar and I’d give much of my attention to the blackjack and roulette tables. My cousin Steven also enjoyed the occasional “game of chance” so we spent many hours together at the tables gambling. By the end of our trip we both had won substantial amounts of money at the tables. Our wives enjoyed sightseeing and shopping. By the end of their trip, they had both spent hundreds of dollars on jewelry. It was a “successful” trip for everyone.

Chris came back from this seminar eager to work at promoting our stores and expanding our business. Chris worked with Diamond Comic Distributors and DC Comics to arrange an in-store appearance of Neil Gaiman, a relatively new comic book writer. Gaiman had created a new character called “Sandman” and DC Comics had been publishing the comic book adventures for less than one year. DC Comics believed that this comic book series would be successful if they could get comic readers to try it so they were very willing to spend some money and expend some effort to get the comic books into reader’s hands. DC Comics gave retailers one free copy of “Sandman” issue #8 for each copy that they bought. We were urged to be sure that these “free” copies got to the potential new readers so they’d get “hooked” on this exciting, well-written series.

All of the “events” that we planned for our Worcester location had been successful in the past but we had no experience running these kinds of events at the new Fitchburg store location. Worcester, Massachusetts was a huge city and Fitchburg was a small city with a high unemployment rate. We had no idea if the customer base and the mainstream population would turn out for an event of this sort. It was our intention to show our “new” Fitchburg customers that we didn’t just care about our larger store. Chris wanted this to be big! He also arranged to have Kevin Eastman, the co-creator of The Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Steve Bissette (a popular artist and writer of comic books) attend the event as guests. They all visited with the fans and did free drawings for the collectors. These professional comic book guys were also happy to come because it gave them an opportunity to visit with Neil Gaiman.

As it turned out, the event didn’t draw a large crowd but the hundred or so people who came seemed to really enjoy themselves. Just as importantly, the local newspaper wrote a half-page article with photographs about the appearances that promoted our store to the local population. Some of these people eventually came into the store or the first time because of this article and they’ve become regular customers. Every new customer is as important to us as our existing customers. We’re satisfied if we can get a few new customers from each event we plan. Chris was enthusiastic about planning future events and I knew that if we worked together, the events would be even more successful.

Next chapter: “Warning, Warning, Will Robinson!” Bill Mumy from the TV show of Lost In Space comes to the Worcester store!

Part Seventy Five

As my second store’s manager, Chris, and I thought about possible future events to stir up some more excitement for the customers of our comic book and collectible stores I received a phone call from my old pal, Kevin Burns.

Kevin had moved from Massachusetts to California to work for Twentieth Century Fox. Kevin was a long-time fan of the 1960’s television show of “Lost in Space” and he had developed a friendship and business relationship with the original cast of the show. Kevin had been the primary force behind the big twentieth anniversary Lost In Space convention that was held in Boston in the mid-1980’s that reunited the surviving cast members. June Lockhart, Marta Kristen, Mark Goddard, Angela Cartwright, Bill Mumy, and Jonathan Harris were all there. Kevin invited me to attend a very intimate dinner party with the cast. Since I was allowed to bring a guest, I chose to bring my old journalist buddy, Mike Warshaw. The cast of “Lost In Space” was seated in a straight row of tables and they were introduced to the sixteen guests as we were seated across from them. Kevin had also acquired and rebuilt the original Robot from the TV show and we had a chance to get our photograph taken standing with it.

After the first dinner course, June Lockhart came around and spoke with all of us. She remembered all of our names and seemed to be genuinely interested in our comments. We were impressed that she cared enough to spend this time with us because she could have stayed seated with her celebrity friends like most of the other cast members. Mike and I got a real “kick” out of this special dinner. Now, a few years later, Kevin Burns was offering me an opportunity to have Bill Mumy as a guest at my Worcester store. Bill Mumy played young Will Robinson in the television show of “Lost In Space” and he still had many fans who would enjoy seeing him in person. Because Bill was a serious comic book collector we agreed to pay him for his time by giving him his choice of $250.00 worth of collectible comics. A few hundred fans lined up and got a chance to meet Bill and get his autograph and, as usual, many of the local newspapers ran interesting stories about his appearance in our store.

In 1990 we also arranged for my old friend, Carol Kalish, to come to my Worcester store to evaluate portfolios of aspiring artists. Carol had collected comic books for many years, she worked as a comic book distributor, and she was now a vice president of “Direct Sales” for Marvel Comics in New York. She was one of the few people in the comic book industry who understood almost all aspects of this business. I enjoyed Carol because she was honest and humorous even in her role as one of the most important people in the comic book business. I remember her speaking to a gathering of comic book retailers at a comic book seminar in Baltimore. Referring to a popular (but poorly written) comic book series she said, “ Let’s be honest. Secret Wars series one was crap, right?” The room full of comic book storeowners all agreed. “ But did it sell?” The retailers cheered. “ Well, get ready for Secret Wars series two!” We all laughed but we knew she was right. Secret Wars series two would be one of the biggest selling comic books of the year. We knew we could trust Carol’s opinion.

When she came to my store, Carol chatted with dozens of artists and writers and because of her “gentle spirit” she was able to honestly critique my customer’s work without hurting their feelings. She pointed out the weaknesses in their work but also encouraged many of them to continue to work to improve. Like most people who met Carol Kalish, my customers enjoyed the time she spent with them. Within one year, while walking down the streets of New York City, Carol died of heart failure at the age of 36. We all lost a special friend on that day.

Next chapter: The family goes to England.

Part Seventy Six

When I bought my second comic book and collectible store from Hank Stolz in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, I was afraid that his employees wouldn’t stay on board with me as their boss. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case. Chris enthusiastically embraced his opportunities with my company. He worked hard at developing relationships with our customers and he had a great ability to match the right product with the waiting collector. Hank’s other former employee, Richard Ortwein, was finally given the responsibility of becoming the Fitchburg store manager. Richard worked hard to keep all of our customers happy and he quickly learned how to order the new product for this store. The customers seemed to like Richard. The only problem was with me. I was not an easy guy to work for. I held the store manager responsible for the profitability of their store even if it was out of their control. I also tended to “micro-manage.” I expected the employees to think of ways to increase sales but I felt that I needed to be included in all of the planning and discussions for these decisions. I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant environment to work in. My poor management skills didn’t seem to bother Chris, but after about a year and a half of working full-time for me, Richard decided to devote his efforts to a more meaningful career. He went back to his previous vocation of helping disadvantaged children find foster families. I was sorry to see him leave but I couldn’t try to talk him out of such an important career choice because he really had a “heart” for helping children.

Ken was a pleasant, regular customer, who had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of comic book history. He was quiet and soft-spoken but he had a unique, dry sense of humor that always “cracked me up.” I hired him to work thirty-two hours each week in Fitchburg and eight hours in Worcester. It didn’t take long for Ken to increase the sales in Fitchburg because he is a real “details” guy. He carefully and meticulously made sure that each customer was able to find the items they needed to fill-in their collections and he would recommend interesting new product that he knew they’d enjoy. Customers appreciated his attention to detail. So did I.

Ken also began to work on what would become the first “Employee Handbook” for That’s Entertainment. Although I was now paying my employees better, I was not excited about beginning to offer decent benefits. My policy was that there would be no paid sick days. If they were sick, I’d still pay them, but they’d have to make up the time on some other day that they didn’t normally work. When I worked a normal job I noticed that employees would consider sick days as extra vacation days and I didn’t want that to happen in my store. I offered no paid holidays. We were open every day of the year except Christmas and Thanksgiving and I needed every employee to work their shifts as scheduled. I had no “extra” employees. Everyone was essential. Ken worked hard to convince me that I needed to treat the employees better and it was really just about the only disagreement we would have. Eventually he convinced me to start improving the benefits a little bit at a time. We began to give the employees paid sick time and increased the amount of paid vacation time. Most of my employees appreciated this and they didn’t abuse the new upgraded benefits.

At one employee meeting, one employee shocked me with his lack of understanding. Ken and I had just finished explaining that these new, paid sick days were not to be considered as “personal days” or extra vacation days, when one guy said, “I’m going to be moving next weekend and I was wondering if it would be okay if I took my sick days as personal days.” Arrrggg! That’s exactly why I didn’t want to offer these kinds of benefits! We explained the situation to this employee again and we’ve really had no problems since then. I must admit that most of the employees I’ve had have been dedicated “professionals.”

1991 was also a busy year for my family activities. During the winter Mal, Adam, and Cassy had convinced me to learn to snow ski. The kids had learned to ski with a group from the Imago School that they attended, and although I hated the cold, it would give me a chance to do something with them. I learned pretty quickly but Mal and I enjoyed nice, slow trails, while Adam and Cassy preferred the more difficult, fast trails. I did my best to keep up with Adam but he usually left me far behind. Speed seemed to be his favorite part of skiing while I tried for style over speed. Cassy was fun to watch as she skied. She was about four feet tall and she skied without ski poles. She was very graceful and always seemed in complete control. My favorite part of the whole ski experience was the time we all enjoyed on the ski lift as we rode to the mountain summit. We’d finally have uninterrupted time together as a family. No phone calls or television. One of our highlights each winter was our trip to my sister Sharon’s house in Laconia, New Hampshire. New Hampshire students had their school vacation the week after most Massachusetts schools did, so Adam and Cassy would frequently go to the private school in Laconia just to be with their “favorite” cousins. Then, on the weekend, Sharon’s family would come skiing with us at a nearby mountain called Gunstock and we’d usually end up spending close to a week with them. Our kids all got along great! But inevitably, no matter how long we stayed with them, when it was time to leave Mal and my kids would say, “But we hardly had time to play!” I’d end up being the “bad guy” because I knew we really had to get back home to get the kids ready for school the next week.

1991 was also the year I took Cassy to her first major league Red Sox game at Fenway Park in Boston. One of my customers gave me free tickets. I wanted this to be a special father-daughter day so I made a big deal about our big train and subway ride to the baseball park. Our seats weren’t very good. We were out in the direct sun and it was over ninety degrees that day. We spent most of the game eating like pigs! We ate lots of hot dogs, ice cream, and we each had multiple sodas. The sodas were a problem because Cassy was only seven years old at the time and each time she had to go to the bathroom I had to stand outside of the ladies room nervously waiting for her. I was certainly paranoid about someone harming my little baby girl! By the end of our day those free tickets ended up costing me $70.00 by the time you totaled up all of the expenses. But it was worth every penny. Cassy and I still laugh about all of that junk we ate.

During that summer, we all got together with my sister Sharon and her family at a multi-day Christian Festival called “Kingdom Bound” at Darien Park in Darien Lake, New York. Darien Park was a decent sized amusement park with some pretty exciting thrill rides including The Python Roller Coaster. Cassy was a daredevil and she really wasn’t afraid of anything. Adam was not too thrilled with heights and he had never been on a real roller coaster. Sometime during the three days we were there, my brother-in-law Greg and his son Jesse and I convinced Adam to try this roller coaster just once. I explained to him that if he went on it and hated it I wouldn’t try to force him to ride it again so he agreed. While we waited in the long line I could see Adam was getting more and more nervous. I’m sure he thought that this was a bad mistake. He wanted to back out of this agreement but we all talked him into trying it, just this once. All during this ride Adam had the funniest forced smile on his face. He wanted to pretend that he was enjoying this. I know he was really frightened but I didn’t let him know that he wasn’t fooling me. When the ride was over I asked him if he wanted to go again. Trembling, Adam said, “No thanks. Not right now.” I didn’t want to pressure him anymore. Although it was obvious that Adam didn’t enjoy scary rides as much as his little sister did, he would always at least try them.

Before the kids went back to school, we went on an eleven-day vacation to England with our friend Kevin Simpson. We spent most of our time in London, exploring art museums, antique stores, and the usual tourist destinations including Big Ben, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, 221 Baker Street (the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes), The Wax Museum, The London Dungeon, and more. We also took the kids to see the famous murder mystery play of “Mousetrap”, which was the longest running play in the world. Kevin was adventurous enough to rent a car and drive us all to Bath, a small community north of London where there are natural hot water springs. Driving on the opposite side of the road was no problem for Kevin. We had a great time on this vacation and even though we were in London for almost eleven days, there was still more we wanted to see. We’d have to return to England some other time.

Next chapter: Even on a vacation to Maine, I find unusual stuff to buy for my store.

Part Seventy Seven

Although comic books were my primary interest when I first opened “That’s Entertainment,” I learned to appreciate many other fields of collectibles including records, trading cards, toys, movies, model kits, and more. I enjoyed reading price guides and books about collectibles and I found that this new information enabled me to profit from a wider array of materials.

In the 1970’s and early 1980’s I only specialized in comic books so when I’d travel to the large flea markets in Brimfield, Massachusetts, I’d be able to browse through the thousands of dealer’s booths in a short time. As I learned about more collectibles, these trips took longer but I was able to make more money because I was now able to sell almost anything in my store. On one such trip to Brimfield, I was disappointed in the selection of old comic books but as I was leaving I found a booth that specialized in glassware. This dealer also had recently bought a bunch of old model kits (still sealed) based on the television show of “The Flintstones.” These were model kits that became large battery operated Flintstones vehicles when they were assembled. It was at the end of the day and he offered these to me for ten dollars each. I bought all that he had and sold them very quickly at my store for $150.00 each.

On a vacation to Cape Cod with my family we discovered an old junk-antique store and we all enjoyed digging around for potential “treasures.” While Adam and Cassy enjoyed old toys, Mal looked at jewelry and furniture, and I looked through a pile of old record albums. An album by a group from the 1950’s called “The Five Keys” struck me as something that I’d seen pictured in a record album price guide. I couldn’t recall what was “special” about this particular record album but I figured that it was unique enough for the price guide publisher to include in the full-color section, then I should take a chance on it. Besides, it was only one dollar. When I got back to my store I looked in the record price guide and discovered that the record album had been pulled off of the market because the front cover photograph seemed to be lewd. It wasn’t, but at a glance, it looked as if it was. I sold this to a serious record collector for one hundred dollars and he was thrilled because this was “valued” at over three hundred dollars.

At the same antique store I found some hardcover children’s books from the 1950’s priced at five dollars each that featured beautiful, full color illustrations by N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. I had a hunch that some fan of these great artists would buy these books for at least thirty dollars each. I was right.

In October of 1991 my family went on a vacation with my good friend, Allan Traylor, and his wife Pascal and their children. We rented a cottage in Maine and because of the cold weather we spent most of the time trying to watch the televised Clarence Thomas hearings on a television that had poor reception. The kids all played together while we listened in amazement. Later, since my son Adam was old enough to “baby-sit” the other kids, the adults had a chance to go out and explore the area at our leisure. We ended up at an old country general store full of vintage and antique stuff. I didn’t see much that I was interested in buying to resell in my store except for some old products on a shelf near the ceiling that had a large sign that said, “Not for sale” on it. I brazenly asked the shop owner if I could buy some of these items and he explained to me that these were just for display and they weren’t for sale. He also told me that these items were very collectible. I don’t remember what I replied to him but I know that within a few minutes he allowed me to actually buy three or four of the old, empty cereal boxes that were “not for sale!” He charged me two dollars each! The “Corn Flakes” and the “Rice Krispies” cereal boxes were from the 1930’s or 40’s but my favorite was the “Sir Grape Fellow” cereal box from the early 1970’s. This was only sold for a very short time in the early 1970’s and it’s quite rare to find an example of this cereal box. I sold this box for $175.00 within a few weeks. It took me a few years to sell the other boxes but I had decided many years ago that I’m not in a hurry. I can wait until the right collector comes along.

Next chapter: Two cool customers.

Part Seventy Eight

Every customer is important to the profitability and survival of most small businesses and I really appreciate the people who support my two stores. We’ve always believed that it would be better to have one thousand customers who would each spend one dollar than to have just one customer spend one thousand dollars. Many comic book retailers just can’t understand this kind of thinking. We believe this because if a few of your smaller spenders decide to stop spending money at your store you can still (hopefully) count on the rest of your customers, but if you rely on just the “big spender” and he decides to leave the hobby you’re out of business.

Leonard was one of my big spenders. In the late 1980’s he collected every comic book that Marvel Comics and DC Comics published each week. I’m serious. He read and collected every single comic book! He also bought ninety percent of all of the various independent publishers’ comics. Comic books usually sold for about thirty-five cents each when I first opened my store in 1980 and at that time Leonard spent about one hundred dollars each week. At that time we had quite a few comic book fans that were considered “Marvel Zombies” who tried to keep up with everything that Marvel Comics published, but it was rare that someone bought absolutely everything. Most collectors couldn’t afford them all. Comic book prices rapidly increased throughout the 1980’s and it forced most collectors to stop reading many of Marvel’s comics just because the reader couldn’t continue to spend that much money on their hobby. The steady price increases didn’t stop Leonard though. By the very late 1980’s Leonard was spending about three hundred dollars each week. In their relentless attempt to increase their bottom line profits, Marvel Comics raised the cover price of their comic books until it was too expensive and it became close to impossible for any collector to continue to buy the entire output of Marvel Comics. Many customers began to trim the list of comics that they felt compelled to collect. Once Marvel made it too difficult for them to afford, it became a convenient “jumping off” point for collectors. Marvel Comics didn’t seem to care because hundreds of new comic book stores were opening up all around the country and they were ordering enough new comics to compensate for the collectors who were cutting down on the number of comics they used to buy. Although Leonard was a highly paid management guy for a local seafood distributor (and he almost always smelled like fish) even he couldn’t afford to keep collecting as many comic books as he wanted to. At one point, in order to help Leonard be able to afford all of his new comics, I hired him to drive into Boston each week to pick up our huge shipments of new comic books. It worked out great for both of us because after doing this pick-up each week for almost ten years I needed a break and Leonard needed the extra money.

Jim was a local healthcare worker and he was a friendly, outgoing customer. He had tried to invest some money in new comic books and he had been shopping at a competitor of mine. My competitor had given him some really bad investment advice and Jim came to me for my advice. I tried to encourage him to invest his money in “proven” collectibles like comic books from the 1940’s through the 1960’s because I knew that these comics were scarce and historically they had proven to be solid investments. I was pretty convinced that these comics would offer a reasonable return on his investment over the long-term but Jim was more excited by potential short-term gains in the new comic book market. I wasn’t convinced that investing in newly published comic books was the best investment choice because most new comics were printed in very large quantities and the vast majority of them were purchased by careful collectors who would take good care of them. These comics would be plentiful in “high-grade” condition for many years so they wouldn’t be considered scarce. Supply would exceed the demand for these comic books and the prices should remain low. It seemed as if I’d just about have Jim convinced and he’d get lucky because he’d buy fifty copies of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. These quickly rose in price from $2.50 to $10.00 within a few months because most of the country’s comic shops had underestimated the demand for this groundbreaking Batman comic book series. A few lucky purchases propelled Jim’s enthusiasm to buy more new comics.

New comic books had to be ordered from the publishers two months before they would be released and I always ordered new comic books carefully so I would sell out of each issue within a few weeks of its release. Jim wanted to buy such large quantities and I didn’t order enough to satisfy him so I worked out a good solution for him. I’d call him a day or two before we headed into Boston to pick up our weekly shipments to get a list of the comic books he wanted me to get for him. I would then call the order in to Diamond Comic Distributors and they’d have as many of the comic books Jim wanted waiting for me. Jim would come to my store and he always paid for everything he had ordered.

The first year Jim had transferred his comic book buying to my store he spent about three thousand dollars. By the second year he had spent close to twenty thousand dollars. A few times during these two years I had suggested that he should sell some of these comic books while they were in high demand but he wanted to hang on to them until they were “worth more.” As it turned out, that day didn’t come. Jim decided he suddenly “needed” to sell these comic books and when I told him that I didn’t need very many of the comics in his huge collection he said he understood and left the store. He returned in a few hours and began to question me about my thoughts on “investing” in new comic books. I went over my philosophy again in great detail, explaining that although some new comic books do increase in value, investors are better off buying vintage collectibles with many years of proven collectibility. New comics should be read and enjoyed and maybe someday in the future they’ll become sought-after collectibles. When I was finished, Jim pulled a tape recorder out of his pocket. He was trying to “catch” me saying something that might be used to force me to buy back all of his comic books! When he realized that I had been honest with him from the very first time we met, his demeanor changed and his cheerful attitude returned. Eventually, I reluctantly did buy his entire collection of comic books but Jim didn’t get the amount he was hoping to get. He understood at that point that I was paying him as much as I could.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s many comic book retailers complained about “speculators” ruining the comic book business. The dealers were buying huge quantities of new comic books to satisfy the short-lived demand of these “investors” and when these speculators realized that these comic books were overprinted and they weren’t scarce, they stopped buying these huge quantities and most retailers got stuck with tons of unsaleable comics. My store didn’t get stuck with any unsaleable comics. We ordered only what we knew our loyal and serious customers requested.

Leonard lost his job and decided to move to Florida. I haven’t heard from him in over fourteen years. Jim began to collect and invest in baseball cards after that and he’s been quite successful with those. He remains a special customer to this day.

Next chapter: Foxwoods Casino opens in nearby Connecticut and the life of a friend is ruined.

Part Seventy Nine

After twelve years in my two thousand square foot store on Chandler Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, I decided it was time to start looking for a much larger space in the hope that offering more products I would increase my sales. I began to scan the real estate rental advertisements and called quite a few of them but I thought that the rents were too high. A local real estate agent tried to convince me to buy a piece of property instead of renting one, but real estate prices also seemed too expensive. I couldn’t justify spending five hundred thousand dollars for a building. I was still only paying seven hundred and fifty dollars a month for my rent and I was nervous about getting into debt by buying a big commercial building. It also seemed to be a bad time to buy property in Massachusetts because of the high selling prices, but the realtor kept looking for just the right property for me.

In February of 1992, the long-awaited “Foxwoods Casino” opened up in nearby Connecticut. A nearly extinct Native-American Indian tribe had finally won government approval to open this casino and they secured financing from a Malaysian investment group to build a huge high-stakes Bingo hall, a hotel, and gambling casino. Foxwoods was a convenient one-hour drive from Worcester and an easy drive from Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. I’m sure the casino was located there to pull as many of the serious gamblers from these big cities as possible.

For me, this was certainly going to be easier than the six-hour drive to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Before Foxwoods opened, a fun trip to a casino required a lot of planning and usually took up a couple of day’s worth of time. Even if I only spent one day in Atlantic City, I’d get home exhausted and it’d take another day to feel rested again. I couldn’t justify making the trip to Atlantic City more than a few times each year but once the Foxwoods Casino opened I could go more often.

The management of Foxwoods expected to have big crowds for the grand opening but the crowds far surpassed their expectations. The news reported capacity crowds for the opening week. Players couldn’t get a seat at a blackjack table because there were dozens of people already waiting for seats. The huge parking lots were completely full. People would drive throughout the lot just waiting for a space to open. This place was an immediate success. I knew I didn’t want to fight these huge crowds so I planned to go there a few weeks after it opened assuming that the initial excitement would be over and people would get back to their “real life.” I went with my wife, Mal, my father, and my sister, Sharon. Although it was still crowded on this Tuesday morning, it didn’t take too long before we were seated at a blackjack table. We played for hours and had a fun time. The management of Foxwoods was certainly friendlier than Atlantic City casino managers. Foxwoods management set up a system to reward players with “wampum points” for playing there. These points could be redeemed for free meals or rooms at the nearby hotel. Casinos in Atlantic City made it far more difficult to receive these “comps.” The atmosphere and attention to detail at Foxwoods was carefully calculated to be exciting and accommodating. I don’t remember if we all won or lost money there that day but I do remember that we had a great time.

I was telling a customer of mine, (I’ll call him Brad, not his real name) about how nice this new casino was and he asked if he could come with me the next time I went there. Brad was more than a customer of mine; he was a friend. Occasionally, I organized poker games with my family and friends and a few times I invited other comic book storeowners. Brad had been to my home a few times when I had these card games and also played cards with other people from time to time. He seemed to be a good card player and was always fun to be around. I never thought about the potential harm that casino gambling could cause because I don’t have an addictive personality and I have no problem controlling myself. Unfortunately, Brad wasn’t as strong.

Brad and I took a trip to Foxwoods one day and we both had a great time. I won a little bit of money and Brad played all-day and only lost a few dollars. He enjoyed the atmosphere of the casino and he was eagerly looking forward to going back another day. The next time Brad went to Foxwoods he won about eighty dollars. This was probably the worst thing that could happen to him because it only encouraged his gambling. Before long he was going on a regular basis, usually by himself. He worked a good, full-time job and he’d leave work at the end of his shift and stay at the casino until late at night gambling, usually losing a lot of money. I had no idea that Brad had a problem with gambling until I went to the casino with him one day and I noticed that he was recognized by most of the “pit-bosses” as we walked by the gaming tables. They’d say, “Hey Brad, how’s it going?” and “Brad, you’re back again already?” Brad seemed to enjoy the attention he was getting there but he didn’t realize that the casino was really only interested in separating him from his hard-earned money.

Next Chapter: The situation with “Brad” spirals out of control.

Part Eighty

“Brad” (not his real name) was a good customer and a good friend of mine. He had been shopping at my collectible store for quite a few years and we had spent some good times together. When the “Foxwoods” casino opened in the early 90’s Brad asked me to take him there so we could experience this exciting place together. I had no clue that this would eventually ruin his life!

Brad was in his mid-50’s and he was a responsible, hard-working guy with a really good job but he certainly couldn’t afford to risk losing money in a casino every week. But that’s what he did. There were some weeks that he went there multiple times. There were times when he’d get out of work, head for the casino, and he wouldn’t leave the casino until it was time for him to go back to work and I had no idea that this was happening.

A bunch of us, including Brad, got together and planned to meet at the casino for the day. We had fun gambling together and we all urged Brad to quit while he was slightly ahead and after a lot of coaxing he agreed to stop gambling and drive back home. We found out a few days later that he driven right back to the casino after we all separated in Worcester and he lost hundreds of dollars. Within a year all of Brad’s credit cards were completely at their maximum limit and his car had been repossessed. He now had to walk to work! He came to my store one day and he explained that he needed help. I encouraged him to seek help from “Gamblers Anonymous” and he seemed willing to try it. Brad convinced me that his gambling days were over.

I’m quite sure that Brad stayed away from gambling for the next year or so, but it wasn’t long before I began to hear rumors that he was taking trips to the casino with many of the employees at the company where he worked. Brad continued to shop for comic books and trading cards at my store but he didn’t visit my store quite as often as he used to and he certainly didn’t spend as much money on these hobbies. He never mentioned to me that he was gambling again. When I tried to call Brad to offer him some help, I found that his telephone had been disconnected. I wrote two letters urging him to call me, (collect if he had to), but he didn’t respond. I just recently heard that Brad has now lost his home because of his addiction to gambling. I no longer underestimate the clever marketing and psychology used by casinos and the potentially overwhelming possibility of addiction to gambling that affects many people. Brad’s life has been ruined and I’ve apparently lost a friend.

Next chapter: My friend Brian and I create “Classic Toys Trading Cards.”

Part Eighty One

In the early 1990’s, many collectors began to collect what were commonly called “non-sports cards.” These were trading cards that were based on movies, television shows, music, monsters, and many more subjects that had nothing to do with sports. These kinds of cards have been produced for almost one hundred years but they were not as popular as baseball, basketball, or football cards. There were exceptions of course. The Beatles cards from 1965, The Batman cards of 1966, and the Star Wars cards from the late 1970’s all sold huge quantities.

My friend Brian and I were both collecting old toys and we attended many local toy conventions together. Brian and I had successfully worked together on our book about the merchandising of the TV show of “The Man From Uncle,” titled “The Toys From Uncle” and we thought it would be both fun and profitable to create a series of trading cards based on old toys. We figured that a set of trading cards that pictured popular toys from the 1950’s through the 1970’s would appeal to both toy collectors and card collectors.

Neither of us had a computer at the time and digital photography wasn’t available yet so this whole project had to be done “the old-fashioned way.” We picked out some interesting toys out of our own collections and began snapping pictures of each item. Brian was designated as the creative member of our team because of his artistic ability and he worked on making the set-up and backgrounds look interesting. We would take multiple photographs of each toy and then we’d send the film out to be developed. There were no “One-Hour Photo” stores in those days so we would anxiously wait for three or four days to see if the pictures were actually any good. Frequently we weren’t satisfied with the photos so we had to retake the pictures. After a few weeks of trying to get decent photographs of the toys we decided to get the help of a professional photographer. There was a photographer in my hometown of Bolton who had a great reputation as a superior professional. Brian and I packed up a few boxes of rare and valuable toys and went to the photographer’s studio. Brian would select the background colored cardboard and set up each toy in an interesting position and the photographer would adjust the lighting and take the picture. I just stood around because I trusted Brian’s judgment when it came to the artistic side. After a very long day with this photographer we realized that he didn’t really care about our project enough to justify the huge additional cost for his services. We’d have to go back to taking the photos ourselves.

Brian worked full-time as a schoolteacher and I was very busy running my two collectible stores so we had to squeeze this project into our already busy schedules. We were both committed to making this set of trading cards a success so we were willing to make the time. In the middle of this project my situation changed. The real estate agent that had been trying to find me a larger store location called me with an interesting piece of property.

Next chapter: I make an offer on an interesting commercial building.

Part Eighty Two

While my friend Brian and I were working on creating a new project of a set of trading cards, I was contacted by a real estate agent who was trying to get me to buy a piece of commercial property so I could expand my comic book and collectible store in Worcester, Massachusetts. Real estate prices had fallen a little bit during the recession of the early 1990’s but the asking prices of commercial property still seemed too high to me. The realtor took me to a building that was quite interesting. It was an old three-story brick building that was used as a manufacturing facility. Each floor had about 2000 square feet of floor space. The first floor was already set up as a potential retail area and it was in nice condition. The upper two floors were unusable for retail without a lot of renovation because they had very old, oil soaked, beat-up floors. I was intrigued with this building though, because there was a nice parking lot, a loading dock, an elevator, and a nice office already constructed on the second floor. Almost all of the windows (and there were over seventy windows!) would need to be replaced. This would cost thousands of dollars so I considered this to be a big “negative.” There were some great “positives” though. This building was located on the very same major road as my current store but it was in a great area that would be much safer for my customers. The store I was using at that time was in a tough section of the city and I was eager to move out of there. This building was also located directly across the street from a very prosperous bookstore called “The Tatnuck Bookseller” and I knew they’d attract some of the same type of customers to the area that may be exposed to my store for the first time.

The owner of this building was asking $350,000 for it and I offered them $275,000. I thought that this would be a fair offer because of the amount of expensive renovations that would have to be done to make this building usable for me. Thankfully, they declined my offer.

The real estate agent called me a week or so later to tell me about another building. This one, a brick building built in the 1940’s and used as a car dealership for most of its history, was located on Park Avenue, the third busiest street in Worcester. It had almost 20,000 square feet of space including a small second level. The first level was divided exactly in half by a cement-block wall to create two almost identical commercial spaces. A small parking area would hold nearly ten cars. My current store had on-street parking for two cars so this new location would be a small improvement.

The building was being used as a “light manufacturing” facility for disabled people to assemble things for outside companies and state projects. This privately owned business was very successful until the governor of Massachusetts cut the funding for many state-sponsored programs in order to fix the huge deficit left by the former governor, Michael Dukakis. At one time, an interested buyer had approached the owner of this building, and they were offered $750,000 for the building. The owner didn’t want to sell it at the time because they were making a good profit using the building. They certainly didn’t foresee the huge state cuts coming. Once it did happen, the owners went back and offered the building to the potential buyer but he had already bought another property. They decided to put it on the market for $700,000. This property had been on the market for a couple of months by the time my real estate agent told me about it and they had only received one very low offer.

I was excited by the possibilities of this large space but I thought I’d never be able to fill it all up with merchandise. I was currently using about 2000 square feet for retail space and I did need more, but this was huge! I wanted this building but since I wasn’t in a desperate position I made a pretty low offer of $200,000. To my surprise, the seller accepted it.

I didn’t have much cash in the bank at that time so I needed to get a mortgage to purchase this property. I was still making monthly payments on the apartment building next to my store in Worcester and most banks were reluctant to loan me more money because I was now losing money each month on it. Although all of the apartments were rented, the commercial restaurant was still way behind on their rent and I wasn’t collecting enough to pay the mortgage and taxes each month. I finally found a bank that was willing to loan me the money to purchase this building but because it was a commercial loan, it would take almost six weeks for them to do a commercial appraisal of the property.

I met with the manager of the bank in my hometown and she suggested that I could refinance my home to get the cash needed to buy this building. My home was valued at about $350,000 and I had paid off the loan many years earlier so the bank was willing to give me a loan against the value of it. They gave me the money within a week and I hired a civil engineer to inspect the building before I bought it. He found some minor problems but I bought it anyway.

I hired my buddy, Jim Stoll, to quickly demolish many of the office partitions on the first floor of my new building. Jim, along with his wife Patty, worked long hours over a few weeks to clean this building out and they built a large, raised platform so we would be able to see the entire store from one spot. It was my intention to open in this new location in early 1992

Next chapter: The crazy, big move.

Part Eighty Three

We had successfully purchased a 20,000 square foot commercial building in Worcester in a great, safe area, on the third busiest street in the city. My friends, Jim Stoll and his wife, Patty, had worked hard for over three weeks to demolish the existing office partitions, clean out all of the debris, build a huge work platform (so we would have a clear sight-line of the entire retail floor from the cash register position), and painted the huge cement floor. It was now ready for us to move into.

I originally intended to move into this new location a little at a time so I wouldn’t disrupt my business at my original location and planned to start by moving in the entire inventory from my “back room.” Then the important store inventory would be moved a little at a time until everything was done. Because I needed every penny of sales in order to pay for all of the new expenses of buying this new building and getting it prepared to open, I didn’t want to lose any days of retailing at my old location. Neither did I want to inconvenience any of my loyal customers. They were all accustomed to my stable store hours of operation. The store was open seven days a week and three hundred and sixty three days each year (We were closed only on Christmas and Thanksgiving). I didn’t want to close my store.

So, one Sunday afternoon I rented a truck and many of my loyal friends came to the store and began to fill up the truck with my back-room inventory, shelves, tables, and supplies. Paul Dinsdale, Stanley Hosmer, Daryll Hunt, Chris Ball, Jose Rivera, David Hartwell, Kevin Simpson, and a few others helped me. We all took turns waiting on customers while the rest of us carried boxes to the truck. My cousin Steven and his buddy, Chris, also came to help us. Business was always good on Sundays but by about 4:00PM it had slowed down so we began to pack up all of the new comic books from the display racks and the new comic books that we were “holding” for our customers as part of our subscription service. I was nervous about doing this because I would have felt bad if a customer made a special trip to my store to pick up his weekly comic book shipment and the comics were packed away in a truck.

I wanted to be able to close my store on Sunday in my old location and be open for business the next morning in the new and improved location on Park Avenue. We had been telling our customers to expect the move soon, and we had signs prepared to alert them about the move. We certainly didn’t want anyone to think we had just gone out of business. My faithful friends worked late into the evening and got everything into the new store but I was left with the job of setting up most of the store, unpacking the boxes of product, and arranging the displays. Jim Stoll had built all new comic book display racks and he had securely fastened them to the wall. Ten new glass display showcases had been previously ordered and they were placed on the newly built platform. My cousin Steven cleaned the glass and installed the shelves. Knowing I’d have to get back to the store by 6:00 a.m. to finish up enough to open again by 10:00 a.m., I finally went home at 2:00 a.m., exhausted. The store wasn’t very well organized, but we opened up for business as scheduled. Many of our customers were shocked that we were able to completely move the whole store in one evening.

Next chapter: Our product, “Classic Toys Trading Cards” causes friction between Brian and I.

Part Eighty Four

Now that we had moved our entire store into our huge new location on Park Avenue in Worcester, we had an enormous amount of work to do to set up this store properly. In our old location, we only had about 1800 square feet of retail space so we kept a maximum of three of each back issue comic book out on display at any one time. We would keep track of every comic book we sold and then we’d pull out replacement copies from our backroom full of old issues and then we’d put these into our retail stock. This process took so much time and cost me so much in employee salaries that I decided to change this procedure at my new location. Since we now had more space in this building than we thought we’d ever be able to fill we decided to put every comic book back issue out on display in the main retail area. This system would cut labor costs for me because there would be no restocking costs. This meant that we had as many as one hundred copies of the same comic book available at any one time. This amazed a lot of collectors because they didn’t realize how big my inventory had gotten but now they could see the whole inventory at once. While this created quite an excitement with our customers, I began to notice that this new system slowed the sales of some back issues that we had dozens of copies of because the customer now perceived that there was no urgent need to buy these comic books. There seemed to be plenty of them available to buy some other day. Even though this wasn’t smart we decided to leave it this way because we needed to make it look as though we had a lot of product available in this larger store.

At the same time that my employees and I were attempting to rearrange things in the new store we also had to keep our normal business activities going. Business was great and it was increasing each week as we bought more products to offer to our customers. We also noticed that more women were coming into the new store because this new location was in a much safer neighborhood. It was nice to have entire families shopping at our store now. We continued to move stuff around to make it more appealing to non-collectors and our increases in sales indicated that we were making the right decisions.

All of this extra work left me little time to work with Brian on our ongoing project of “Classic Toys Trading Cards.” We had hoped to have this project finished by now but I just couldn’t get motivated to work on these cards and this frustrated Brian. We had been friends for years now and we had always gotten along but this situation was getting tense and it came to a “head” one day when we were attempting to photograph some collectible toys in one of the unheated storage rooms of my new store. Brian explained how much he wanted to finish these cards and he was upset that I wasn’t willing to set aside the time necessary to complete this project. He pointed out that he was also very busy with his full-time job as a teacher but he was willing to work hard to finish these cards. After a brief and angry exchange, we agreed to work together to get the cards ready to send to our printer. We were only mad for a short time once we got everything “out in the open.”

While we waited for the last batch of photographs to be developed, we began to design the layout for the cards. We wanted these to look “Classic” so we went to a wallpaper store and spent hours looking through books of wallpaper until we found one that looked like marble. This would be used as our border on all of the trading cards. We had intended to actually cut the wallpaper to the size of our trading card and we’d glue the developed photographs onto it but my old friend, Mark Marderosian, who now had access to a computer, thankfully helped us.

I had worked with Mark a few years earlier when I published his comic book, “Delta Tenn,” and he was always friendly, talented, and professional. He offered to design our clever “retro” logo for our “Classic Toys Trading Cards” and he scanned all of our photos and the wallpaper border into his computer. Mark ended up doing far more than he ever anticipated and this project would not have been as professional if he hadn’t been involved.

Brian and I photographed lots of interesting toys for this set of trading cards and most of them were from our own personal collections but we did get some help from a few other collectors who had items that we didn’t. Eventually we selected sixty-five collectible toys to feature in our set. The toys we selected included: Captain Action, Robby The Robot, The Man From Uncle Napoleon Solo Gun Set, Aurora monster model kits, Marx playsets, Barbie, Corgi cars, Star Trek action figures, The Beatle’s Remco Dolls, GI Joe, View-Master sets, Colorforms, lunchboxes, the Lost In Space game, Easy Bake Oven, the Mouse Trap Game, Star Wars toys, Major Matt Mason, Mr. Potato Head, James Bond items, Slinky, and many more!

We decided to design the backs of the cards to be an informational price guide so we researched the current values of all of the toys that we featured. We had fun writing some of these and many contain our “trademarked” sarcastic wit. All that was left to do was to get these cards manufactured.

Next chapter: The Death of Superman!

Part Eighty Five

On top of the almost overwhelming effort of moving into our huge new store location, managing two stores, finishing up our “Classic Toys Trading Cards” project, and the day-to-day operations of the comic book business, I decided to complicate my life even more. I had been married for nineteen years and my wife really hated my teeth. They were crooked and in some areas I had multiple rows of teeth. I thought it would be a nice “gift” for her if I got my teeth fixed. So at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, I got braces. This required five teeth to be pulled out and far too many inconvenient orthodontist appointments but she liked the results. Through the process I discovered some of the discomfort that my son, Adam, endured during his first experience with braces. Sore teeth, broken wires sticking into the inside of my cheek, and cleaning food stuck in the braces, were just a few of the negatives. This wasn’t fun for me but since it was only for a year and a half I knew I could handle it. After all, children do it all of the time. Eventually, Adam and Cassy both endured braces twice.

The commercial building I purchased had almost 20,000 square feet of floor space and it was divided into two almost equal spaces by a cement block wall. I planned to use one side as my retail section and eventually I’d use the other section for storage of my extra, un-needed “back-room” inventory.

Shortly after I bought my new store building a man named Gary contacted me. He had been interested in buying the building but he waited too long and I ended up with it. He asked if I’d be interested in renting part of it to him so he could relocate his business there. Gary and his wife, Janice, ran a Halloween store called “The Halloween Outlet” that sold costumes, props, wigs, makeup, and more Halloween related merchandise. I had no idea what most commercial spaces in this area were renting for but I figured out what my mortgage, interest, taxes, and insurance would cost each month and quoted Gary a little bit above that amount. Gary agreed to my asking price immediately. He knew what a bargain this was and I was thrilled to be in this new location at “no cost.” This relationship was important for both of us for many years. Some people considered this to be another one of the examples of my “luck” and they may be right.

In mid-1992 DC Comics revealed to retailers that they intended to “kill” Superman in the seventy-fifth issue of his current comic book series. This special issue was going to be sold in two versions. One would be a regular comic book and the other would be poly-bagged with a small poster and a black armband. The poly-bagged edition would have a $2.50 cover price and it would be sold exclusively at comic book stores. We ordered five hundred copies, double the number of copies we normally ordered of the ongoing “Superman” series. Since we ordered these comic books almost two months before they were released we really were just guessing at the demand for this “special” issue.

We were not prepared for the major press and media attention to this comic book. DC Comics managed to make this big news in the mainstream media by seemingly issuing press releases to everyone on the planet. I guess the gullible press really believed that when DC Comics “killed” Superman that he would stay dead! As the release date drew near, television, radio stations, and newspapers reported about Superman’s death and it began to seem as if the general public would actually be interested in buying this issue. We doubled our original order for this comic book to one thousand copies.

I don’t remember which one of my employees (it may have even been my idea) in my organization came up with the idea for our special “Death of Superman” event, but it was a great idea. We hired one of our customers to dress up in a Superman costume. Gary, the owner of The Halloween Outlet, let me borrow a prop coffin for our fake funeral for Superman. I called around to a few funeral homes to see if I could have some of their unwanted flowers that might have been leftover from recent funerals. Some of the funeral directors were insulted by my request (I guess they thought I was making a mockery of their profession) but I finally found one guy who was willing to help me. He gave me some nice looking funeral flower displays that were only slightly wilted and they would serve their purpose well.

Albert Aeed, one of my more “fun” employees, would dress up as a minister and he prepared a solemn and passionate eulogy about Superman. All of my employees had collaborated on this event in different ways. A few weeks before the funeral, they had all offered different ideas and many hours were spent discussing and planning this event. Everyone was willing to work together to make this fun for our customers and a potentially profitable event for the store. We decided to gather up a few thousand back issue comic books that featured Superman in them and planned to give them away to the people who attended the funeral. We also made up some packages of ten Superman-related comics to give away to anyone who came to the funeral dressed up as a “super-hero.” Faxes and press releases went out to radio stations, newspapers, and the cable company. We then followed up with personal phone calls to these media outlets. Surprisingly, most of them expressed interest in running some sort of story for this event. The major newspaper in the city ran a small story two days before the event and sent a reporter and a photographer to cover the funeral. The local cable-TV news channel did a nice two-minute segment the night before the funeral and followed it up with a story after the funeral too.

With all of this advanced publicity I was concerned that we wouldn’t have enough copies of the special edition Superman comic book to meet the demand. I called “Jeep,” my Diamond Comic Distributors representative, and he was able to do me a favor by getting me another seven hundred copies. We were pretty sure we were ready now.

There were already people lined up when we arrived at 9:00 a.m. at our store on that Saturday morning. By the time we opened an hour later there were a few hundred people! Our “Superman” laid perfectly still in the coffin with his eyes closed for almost six hours as almost one thousand people streamed by him to “pay their respects” to the fallen hero. Mal and our two children, Adam and Cassy, came to help out in any way they could. My mother and my Aunt Jody (Cousin Steven’s mom) even came by to be part of this event. A few dozen people came dressed as other superheroes including Sandman, Insect Man, and Batman. Albert Aeed’s eulogy was well received. We gave away thousands of the back issues of the Superman related comics and sold every copy of the special edition for $2.40 each. (It was our policy to sell all of our new comics for ten cents off of the cover price) The visitors had a great time and we were rewarded with a record-breaking day of sales.

Because of all of the publicity we received, people came in looking for a copy of the special “Death” edition of the Superman comic book for many weeks after the funeral. My pal, Jeep, managed to supply us with more copies so we were able to accommodate these potential new customers at the original cover price while most of our competitors were “gouging” people for as much as twenty dollars a copy! The goodwill we earned from this event paid off in many ways.

Next chapter: The Norman Rockwell comic book connection.

Part Eighty Six

I love collecting things. In fact, at one time or another, I’ve collected comic books, toys, trading cards, movies, TV shows, and artwork (primarily comic book art). The only non-comic book related art I wanted was an original Norman Rockwell painting. I had always admired his work but I couldn’t afford to buy one of his original oil paintings because they were usually sold for over $10,000 and I always had more “important” things to spend my money on, like food and school tuition for my children.

The comic book business was really great in the early 1990’s and by early 1993 I decided that I could finally afford to buy one. I began to mention my desire to a few of my customers and friends in the comic book business. One of my customers had a father who was an art dealer and he offered me two different Rockwell paintings but neither of them excited me. One pictured an astronaut and the other was something else I had no interest in buying. My good friend, Tom Stanford, gave me a catalog from an auction house in Michigan that was going to be selling a nice Rockwell oil painting. The catalog showcased the painting on the front cover and it was a painting I was familiar with. It was titled, “Shuffleton’s Barber Shop” and it pictured an old-fashioned barbershop that was closed, but in the background you could see that there was a light on in the back room and there were some men playing instruments there. The auction house had estimated the value at $8000-$11,000 and I was ready and willing to pay that much. When I showed the catalog to my wife she encouraged me to bid on the painting.

A little later, as I was leafing through the rest of the catalog I came across a double-page spread that showed the entire painting. (The picture on the front of the catalog was apparently cropped so it would fit the cover.) I discovered that this painting actually had a small rack filled with comic books in the foreground! This was the only Norman Rockwell painting I knew of that featured comic books in it and I was now convinced that I should own this great painting. I mailed in the bidding form with an opening bid of $11,000.

The auction was scheduled to end a few weeks later, but it turned out that my son, Adam, had a performance of his school play of “Yankee Doodle, A Musical Revue” on that same night. Adam was in the seventh grade and this was going to be his first lead role as an actor and there was no way I was going to miss this performance. I arranged to have access to the school administrator’s telephone (this was in the days before cell phones) and I sat in Joodi Ward’s office waiting for the scheduled time for the painting to be sold. My wife, Mal, came in and told me that the play was about to start. I got through to the auction house’s phone “bidder” and I could hear the auction happening. The Rockwell painting was displayed and described to the live audience of bidders. The bidding opened at my mailed in bid of $11,000 and it appeared as if I was going to be the high bidder at that price. I was thrilled! I heard the auctioneer say, “Going once. Going twice. No advance over $11,000?” Suddenly some bidder offered $13,000. I countered with $15,000. Mal came in again and said, “Come on, the play is about to start!” The auctioneer said, “I now have $18,000.” I bid more and for almost thirty seconds it seemed like I was going to end up the high bidder. But someone increased the bid again. By the next time that my wife came in she heard me bidding $32,000! She just gave me one of those “looks.” I knew I couldn’t really justify spending any more than that on this painting so I stopped bidding. It sold for $51,000. A Rockwell original oil painting now sells for over $200,000. I guess I’ll never own one.

I rushed into the theater just in time to see the play begin. Although I would liked to have been the high bidder on the painting, I would hate the constant worry that would come with the ownership and care of such a valuable item. By the way, the play was great.

Next chapter: Our “Classic Toy Trading Cards” are finally released.

Part Eighty Seven

After I finally forced myself to make the time available to help Brian finish photographing the toys that we wanted to include in our new product, “Classic Toys Trading Cards,” we worked hard to write the descriptions for the backs of the cards while our good friend, Mark Marderosian, did the finishing touches on his computer layout of the final set of sixty-six cards. Mark also designed a full-color advertising flyer that we had our old printing friends at “Associated Printers” of Grafton, North Dakota, print up for us. We sent these to “Diamond Comic Distributors” so they could include these with the next order form that would be sent to almost every comic book specialty store in the United States, Canada, and England. I found a printer in “up-state” New York who was able to print the cards in large sheets and then cut them into individual trading cards. To complete the project, they would put seven random cards into a foil package and put thirty-six of these packages into a box. The box would then be shrink-wrapped and twenty of these boxes would be put into one case. We sent the printer the computer disk with the sixty-six card fronts and backs on it so he could assemble these into the large un-cut sheet format. He produced a “proof-sheet” for Brian and I to review before the cards were to be printed.

I remember our excitement when we received this “proof-sheet!” The cards looked great. We carefully looked at each card to be sure that there were no spelling errors and to be sure that the front of the cards matched the backs of the cards. When we were satisfied that everything was correct, we called the printer and gave him the permission to print the cards. I brought the “proof-sheet” home to show my family. My fourteen-year old son, Adam, looked over the large sheet and said, “Dad, why are there two Paul McCartney cards?” ARRRGGGGH! Somehow Brian and I had both missed this error! Luckily, we were able to contact the printer just before he printed the cards and he corrected his mistake.

My agreement with Brian was that I would put up all of the money to produce these cards and he would be the main artistic guy. We’d then split any proceeds evenly. It was now time for me to send the printer the $42,000. Thirty days later we received the three hundred cases of “Classic Toys Trading Cards.”

We shipped out the cases that were pre-ordered through the comic book distributors and we began to enjoy the favorable reviews that the trading card publications wrote about our new product. Within a few months we had my original investment back and we still had about one hundred cases of cards left. Unfortunately, the trading card market was “crashing” and the interest in our product faded. Over time, we eventually made a modest profit on these cards and this remains as the product I’m most proud of. For a couple of guys with no professional experience, we produced an excellent set of cards.

Next chapter: Hey, Hey, it’s Davy Jones of The Monkees!

Part Eighty Eight

One day in 1993 I received an advertising flyer from a talent agency that represented a large number of celebrities and entertainers. My store manager, Chris, and I looked through the roster of people they were offering but most of them had no connection to our business of selling comic books, toys, and sports memorabilia. There were lots of singers and some old television stars but one name “jumped out” at me. Davy Jones of The Monkees was available through this talent agency!

The Monkees was one of my favorite bands from my childhood and I thought it would be such fun to have Davy Jones as a guest at my Worcester store. The Monkees had gotten back together for a highly successful tour from 1986-1987 and I had paid to see them five or six times during that period. Each show was extremely entertaining and the audiences seemed to love these guys. Chris and I weren’t sure that our customer base, primarily collectors of comic books and sports memorabilia, would have any interest in seeing an ex-Monkee, but if the price was reasonable enough I would book Davy Jones just for my pleasure. The Monkees were not touring as a group at this time so I thought that perhaps this could be affordable.

The talent agency asked me a bunch of questions about what I would want Davy Jones to do at my store. I explained that I wanted him to sign free autographs for my customers. I wanted Davy to be available to “meet and greet” my customers from 10:00 am to noon, and then he’d take two hours for lunch and come back to sign more autographs from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The agent thought that it sounded possible and she quoted me a price for Davy’s services. The fee was reasonable enough so I accepted the deal with the conditions that Davy Jones would be responsible for his own transportation and hotel expenses. The agent cleared the appearance with Davy Jones and she sent me a contract that I signed and returned. I now had four months to make this a successful event.

Chris and I worked on press releases to send to the newspapers and radio stations in the area and we created a flyer to be sent to the people on my huge mailing list but I wanted to let the general population know about my exciting guest. I decided to advertise his appearance with some “spots” on cable television.

A few months earlier, I had been approached by a cable-television advertising sales person (named Sue) when she was trying to sell me on the idea of actually spending some money on television commercials. I explained to her that I was not in the habit of spending any money on advertising. I had built my business over the previous thirteen years by spending about twenty dollars per year on an advertisement in the annual “Comic Book Price Guide.” I was not going to be easy to convince that I should buy television commercials. But Sue was very persistent and she presented me with a proposal for a fifty-two week advertising campaign. The cable company wanted me to run seven spots each day and pay thirty-five dollars for each of the thirty-second commercials. They also wanted me to pay for the production of the commercials. Cable companies have over a hundred channels running twenty-four hours per day for which they need to sell commercial time. If they don’t sell that space they’ll be forced to run a “PSA” (Public Service Announcement) that they won’t get paid for. So I “countered” with a quite different suggestion. I wanted them to pay for all production costs. I was only to pay thirty-five dollars for one spot each day in a pre-scheduled time-slot and I would ask them to place ten “free” bonus spots anywhere on the television schedule. I was also only willing to commit to a thirteen-week contract. Sue spoke with her boss and they agreed to my suggested terms. We filmed two different television commercials in my store to show the viewers how huge this space was and to let the public know what types of products we sold. Our first thirteen-week contract was expiring soon when we got the contract for Davy Jones’s appearance. Sue convinced the cable company to renew our contract for another thirteen weeks at the same low rate.

The cable company created a new commercial to advertise Davy Jones visit and they really did a nice job. They used a little bit of the original theme song from The Monkees television show and some photos of Davy from the mid-1960’s to let the viewer know that he was coming to our store to sign free autographs. The commercial ran for three or four weeks before Davy’s store appearance and we hoped that the local television audience would be interested in coming to see him. But as we approached the event date, I was surprised (and dismayed) to learn that my loyal customer base seemed uninterested in coming to meet Davy Jones.

Next chapter: Could this event be a disaster?!

Part Eighty Nine

We had booked Davy Jones of The Monkees to make an appearance at our store in Worcester, Massachusetts in September of 1993. Davy’s manager agreed that he would receive a “lump sum” fee and Davy would be responsible for all of his own travel expenses. Davy would also agree to sign free autographs for any visitors. We wanted to be sure that Davy was safe so we hired a Worcester police officer as security for this event. We wanted this special event to be “perfect” and we tried to anticipate every possible problem that could come up. Our store had arranged to have many guests before but this would be the highest expenditure we ever had for an in-store event so I wanted it to seem really special for my customers.

We printed thousands of “flyers” to give to everyone who visited our store in the three months prior to Davy’s visit and we encouraged all of our employees to be sure to verbally advertise this appearance. We sent out the flyers to everyone on our huge mailing list and ran our newly created television commercial on cable television channels for a thirteen-week period before the September event. I was excited about the opportunity to meet one of my favorite childhood performers. I wanted my customers (and any new visitors to my store) to have the opportunity to get a personal autograph from Davy Jones without having to pay for it. But I wouldn’t mind making a bit of money on this event if I could figure out some way to do it.

Davy’s manager would get me some copies of the two different books that Davy had written about his days as a “Monkee” that I could sell. I ordered two full cases (forty copies) of one book and twenty copies of the other at a wholesale price of fifty percent off of retail price. I had to agree to purchase these on a non-returnable basis so I wanted to be sure that I didn’t order too many copies. I also got lucky because a good customer of mine had five different vintage photographs of The Monkees from the 1960’s that he offered to allow me to copy so that I’d have something interesting for Davy to sign for my customers. I went to a local printer and they reproduced five hundred of each of the 8 by 10 photos on a glossy paper at a very low price. I certainly didn’t expect to be able to sell that many photos but since the cost was so low I knew I wasn’t risking very much money and just in case I ended up with a big crowd there would be something there for them to get signed. I also knew many people might bring items from their own collections to get autographed.

We contacted the local cable news station and they agreed to do a small news segment about Davy’s appearance. Two of the larger newspapers also expressed interest in covering the event. I was satisfied that we were “covering all of the bases” as far as publicity goes but the almost complete lack of interest on the part of my loyal customer base surprised us all. We would try to remind every customer about the upcoming appearance and most of them would just shrug and say, “Yeah, I’m not a fan of The Monkees.” We’d try to get them interested by reminding them that he is a famous celebrity and he would be signing FREE autographs but as the day got closer we all began to believe that we’d really made a mistake.

A week before the appearance Davy’s manager called to inform us that Davy had a “gig” in New York City that wouldn’t get over until almost one o’clock in the morning on the day he was supposed to be at my store. By the time his concert was over he’d be exhausted and he’d still have a five-hour drive from New York to Worcester, Massachusetts. By the time Davy and his road manager checked into the local hotel there would be less than two hours for him to get some rest before I was to pick him up to bring him to my store. I certainly wasn’t happy with this new development. I hate surprises, especially when the financial risk was so high. I enjoyed being in complete control of my situations and this was ruining our careful plans.

Next chapter: Even the weather is against us!

Part Ninety

With all of the advance publicity done for Davy Jones’ guest appearance at the Worcester store, all that was left was the store preparation. My staff worked hard to clean up the displays of comic books, collectible toys, music CD’s, and sports cards. They swept the floors clean and did their best to make the bathroom presentable. I spent a few days selecting rare and valuable “Monkees” collectibles to have in a display behind the table where Davy Jones would be seated to meet and greet the customers, if anyone showed up.

Over the years I had accumulated an extensive collection of “Monkees” memorabilia, including all of the legitimately released records and almost every toy, jewelry, book, magazine, and clothing item ever produced! I tried to choose some of the most interesting-looking items for the display but I was nervous about having my own, personal collection out on display where there was a chance that these things could be damaged or stolen. I was always cautious and a little bit paranoid about shoplifting so my staff tried to be vigilant and aware of what was happening at all times. I decided to stand right next to Davy Jones behind the table. I set up an extra cash register on this table next to all of the merchandise that we were offering for sale so that customers could be tempted to buy a nice item to be autographed.

The night before Davy’s appearance, I barely slept. I was excited about meeting him but I was also very worried that no one would come to see him. By the time I left my house it was pouring rain. I thought that this was the beginning of a horrible day. I arrived at the store at seven o’clock and was disappointed to see that there was no one waiting in line to see Davy Jones. I kept myself busy by walking around the inside of the store, straightening out our shelves and displays, and listening to a cassette tape of music that featured Davy Jones as the lead vocalist from the days of “The Monkees.” This seemed to relax me as I realized that it probably didn’t matter that no one was interested in meeting him other than me. I’d certainly have fun with him!

By eight o’clock a few serious “die-hard” Monkee fans began to line up outside my store in the pouring rain. I felt bad that I couldn’t let them into the store early so they could get out of this rain but my staff wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another half-hour and I couldn’t help the customers and take care of all of the remaining details at the same time. As my employees and my wife and kids arrived they explained that there were probably lots of people just waiting in their cars for us to open the store so they wouldn’t get soaked in the rain. I had to leave at 8:45 am so I could get to the hotel where Davy and his road manager were staying by the pre-arranged 9:00 am pick-up time. I hated leaving the store when I had no real idea of the possible “turn-out” but I had to do it. I didn’t trust anyone else to pick up Davy Jones and I was too cheap to send a limousine. I wanted to be in control of the situation in case Davy was too tired to wake up after his exhausting schedule. I have no idea what I would have done if that was the case but I knew I’d figure out something.

As it turned out, although he was indeed exhausted, Davy Jones was a complete professional. He was ready and waiting for me when I called his room from the hotel lobby. We arrived back at my store by 9:30 am, a full half-hour before the scheduled time of his appearance, and I was thrilled to see that we had a few hundred people waiting in line. My staff had all arrived and they opened the store early to get as many people out of the rain as possible. With “Monkee” music playing on our stereo system, the customers seemed to be having a good time talking to each other about “The Monkees” and excitedly anticipating Davy’s arrival. I brought Davy into the store through our side entrance walked him to the back end of the store where we wanted him to sit. The cable news station and a local radio station were already waiting there for some quick and lively interviews and Davy handled them gracefully while his fans waited in line and listened to every word he said. As it neared the time for the ten o’clock autograph session to begin we positioned the uniformed police officer we had hired for security next to our guest table. My son, Adam, got behind the table with me to assist customers who wanted to buy any of the merchandise we had for autographing. I had piled up the five different “eight by ten” photographs that I had a local printer duplicate directly I front of Davy Jones. I priced them at $2.50 each or all five for ten dollars. I assumed that most customers would buy one or two but I guess the offer of all five for ten dollars, along with Davy’s neatly written autograph, was just too good to pass up. Hundreds of fans bought all five!

I had an agreement with Davy that he would sign autographs from 10:00 am to noon and then he’d get a two-hour lunch break and then he was to sign for two more hours. When noon approached, his road manager said, “Hey, let’s break for lunch.” Davy looked at the huge line that still went all through the store and out onto the sidewalk and said, “We certainly can’t have all of these fans just stand and wait while we go off to eat!” We sent out for tuna fish sandwiches while he continued to sign autographs and visit with the fans for almost five more hours. Davy posed for photographs with eager forty to fifty-year old women who couldn’t believe they were actually meeting him in-person! When a group of kids confined to wheelchairs came in, he gave them all free copies of his current music compact discs. I don’t think there was anyone who was unhappy with Davy Jones that day. Even though he was functioning on only two hours sleep, he was funny, friendly, full of enthusiasm, and eager to please everyone.

A little after five o’clock we decided that we needed to end the autograph line. Davy had performed “above and beyond” our original agreement. I felt as if I had taken advantage of his good nature. Davy never complained. At the end of the event when we went into the private “front-room” of the store and it was time for me to pay him I remarked about his kindness to all of the almost two thousand people who came to see him. Davy said, “Paul, it’s because of people like these that I can continue to make my living in the entertainment business. They are important to me.” It was refreshing for me to hear a celebrity really appreciated his fans. Although I had negotiated a fair contract with Davy, I decided that I would pay for his meals and his hotel for two nights. I also decided that since I sold over two thousand photographs at a very high profit, I would share some of this money with Davy. By the time we were done, Davy ended up with more than double the money he was expecting. He thanked me for the unexpected generosity and he said that he enjoyed the visit. When I brought him back to his hotel room he thanked me again and told me that I was one of the very few people in the past thirty years who didn’t try to take advantage of him. Davy must have believed that I was an honest man because he asked if I would be interested in becoming partners in his book publishing business. He was having trouble keeping his books “in print” because of his bust touring schedule and he wanted me to take over this aspect of his business. My wife and I discussed it but I eventually declined because I was intent on retiring from active work in the next two years and although I’d love to get to work with Davy Jones on a regular basis, I knew what my long-term goals were.

Besides setting a new one-day sales record at my Worcester store, this Davy Jones event was one of our best in terms of customer satisfaction and excitement. Very few of my regular store customers came to see him though. Almost two-thirds of the nearly two thousand people who came to our store that day were first time visitors and most of them were women. I’m sure that many of these “new” customers have continued to shop with us on a regular basis so the actual financial rewards have kept growing.

Next chapter: Terry Stewart, president of Marvel Comics, almost destroys the entire comic book industry.

Part Ninety One

This chapter is a very simplified explanation of the betrayal of our industry by Marvel Comics.

Most manufacturers, publishers, and suppliers understand how important their relationship is with stores like mine but many collectors believe that they are the actual customers of these companies. In actuality, the retailer is the direct customer of the manufacturers, publishers, and suppliers. We are treated with respect, courtesy, and gratitude by most of our suppliers but occasionally we end up dealing with some companies with bad attitudes and poor customer service. The Upper Deck Card Company, and The Topps Company were so bad that we decided to end our direct dealings with them. We now pay a little bit more for their product but we buy it from wholesalers who appreciate our business. This is the story of Marvel Comics.

Marvel Comics began publishing comic books in the 1930’s as “Timely Comics.” These comic books were distributed to local stores and newsstands through a system that offered returns on any unsold product. The retailers only made a small profit on each sale but they were not taking any risk because they could just send back any unsold comic books for full credit. In the 1970’s Marvel Comics began selling comic books on a non-returnable basis to “direct-market” distributors who resold them to convention dealers and comic book stores. This new system allowed the retailer to make a larger profit on each comic book but we assumed all of the risk. We could not send back any unsold product. Marvel Comics made more money because they could control the print-run as they knew they’d be no copies coming back for credit.

In the early to mid-1980’s, the management of Marvel Comics realized that we were “partners” in this business with them. As our individual stores grew, Marvel Comics made more money. Marvel’s management, including my friend Carol Kalish, devised programs to help the retailer increase sales. They helped us to pay for upgrades to our store fixtures and offered us “co-op” credit towards any mainstream advertising that we did. We worked together to “grow” the industry and comic book sales increased greatly. The industry even survived the greed of Wall Street tycoon, Ronald Perlman. He bought Marvel Comics and bled it dry by spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying up other “entertainment” and hobby companies including Fleer, Skybox, Pannini Sticker Company and more. Under his command, Marvel began flooding the market with sub-standard product at the same time that they increased the cover price of almost all of the comic book issues. Although many retailers expressed their displeasure at the policies of Perlman, the industry was still strong. This all changed when Marvel Comics became a publicly traded company.

Marvel hired Terry Stewart as president in the 1990’s and throughout his reign as president he made it clear that he was no longer interested in being “partners” with any of us “lowly” comic book retailers. He instituted policies that improved Marvel’s bottom line but adversely affected almost every comic book specialty store. He thought very “short-term” to please stockholders each quarter and his poor decisions were dangerous for the business in the “long-term.” He announced plans to open a chain of Marvel Mania restaurants that most retailers knew was doomed to failure. He attempted to lure our customers away from our stores by running advertisements in the comic books for his mail-order company called “Marvel Mart.” In face-to-face meetings Terry Stewart insinuated that he knew a better way for all of us to run our businesses. He was insulting and very condescending. As a result, retailers realized that Marvel’s management couldn’t be trusted to act in our best interest and they “revolted” by reducing the quantity of Marvel Comics product that they ordered. When Stewart saw the sales of his company’s product drop by 20% he made the biggest blunder of his disastrous career. Diamond Comics Distributors and the handful of other comic book distributors were all doing a fine job of getting Marvel’s product to every retailer in the United States but Stewart decided that he could do a better job and then the extra profit would boost Marvel’s bottom-line. He authorized the purchase of “Heroes World,” a small comic book distributor in New Jersey. This was a disaster that had potential to destroy the entire comic book industry.

Next chapter: The retailers fight back.

Part Ninety Two

As the president of Marvel Comics in the mid-1990’s, Terry Stewart proved that he had no interest in working in “partnership” with the comic book stores that made Marvel Comics the number one comic book publisher in the United States. Stewart reduced our discounts on the Marvel comic books we ordered each month. He also publicly stated to stockholders that his long-term goal was to sell directly to our customers so that Marvel wouldn’t have to share any of the profits with any of us. He had a “mail-order” catalog inserted into some Marvel comic books and insinuated that comic book shops were dangerous places to visit. He viewed us as unnecessary “middlemen” and worked hard to get rid of us. All of these changes irritated most comic book retailers but Stewart’s biggest mistake was the most destructive blunder for Marvel Comics. Stewart thought that the current group of independent distributors were not doing a good enough job promoting Marvel Comics so he authorized the purchase of a small, second-rate comic book distributor (Heroes World) in New Jersey. In his misguided plans, there was no reason to let the existing comic book distributors make a profit on the distribution of Marvel product.

Heroes World was made the exclusive distributor of the entire Marvel product line. Since Marvel produced almost 60% of the comic books in the United States, this move by Stewart adversely affected the remaining distributors who now lost 60% of their entire revenues! Diamond Comics Distributor immediately negotiated with some of the other comic book publishers to become the exclusive distributors for their respective companies. Most of the publishers understood that Diamond did a great job and they were the most financially stable distributor in the business. Many of these publishers signed up with Diamond Comics. Because of the enormous loss of revenue, this was the final “straw” for the remaining comic distributors and it wasn’t long before they all went out of business or were bought-out by Diamond. In the meantime, Heroes World struggled to figure out what they were up against. They went from a tiny distributorship handling a few hundred accounts to trying to process orders and take care of thousands of retailers overnight. They failed, miserably, on almost every detail. They lacked adequate personnel, phone lines, facilities, and employees who could actually count. Thousands of retailers complained about missing books from each weekly shipment. Frequently, the invoices were incorrect. Overall, it was a nightmare for the retailer. The retailer’s life was further complicated by now being forced to order from an “extra” distributor. For many years we were able to order almost all of the comic book-related products from one distributor. Now we were forced to deal with this inept group of unprofessional and ill-prepared people. Terry Stewart also began to charge shipping costs to each individual comic book store. Diamond Comics had spoiled us for many years as they offered us “free freight” for all of our regular weekly shipments. They offered us this in order to maintain their competitive edge over “Capital City Distribution” and the other smaller distributors. Now we found ourselves paying hundreds of dollars each week for shipping costs. Many retailers fought back by reducing their dependence on Marvel’s products. We cut our advance orders for Marvel comic books as low as we could without adversely affecting our customers. I was lucky because I had an employee, David Hartwell, whose primary job was to order all new comic book products and he had anticipated Terry Stewarts “betrayal.” David had been recommending other publisher’s comic books to our customer base for almost a year and we had reduced Marvel’s market share in our store from 55% to only 25% while our overall comic book sales actually increased. We still needed Marvel for our survival but we were determined to try to reduce our dependence on them. Apparently, many other storeowners had the same general idea. Sales of Marvel Comics dropped like a rock. Unfortunately, Terry Stewart’s policies caused hundreds of other comic book stores to go out of business. As these stores closed, the sales of every comic book publisher, including Marvel, plummeted. It didn’t take long before Marvel declared bankruptcy. They closed their stupid “Marvel Mania” restaurant. They began to discontinue many low and moderate selling titles in an attempt to reduce their fast-growing losses. The situation looked grim.

If Marvel went out of business every comic book store would be in danger of losing so much revenue that they may also be forced out of business. Although we had no respect for Terry Stewart and a handful of his underlings, we wanted Marvel Comics to survive. We joked that we looked forward to the day when we’d get to see Terry Stewart wearing a paper hat asking us, “Would you like fries with that?”

Our wish didn’t quite come true but it wasn’t too long before Stewart was gone from Marvel. Heroes World was closed down and Diamond Comics began to distribute Marvel comic books to the remaining comic book stores. But significant damage was done to the industry. Annual sales of new comic books dropped from over one billion dollars in sales to two hundred and forty million dollars in sales. Almost four thousand comic book stores had gone out of business in the United States during Terry Stewart’s reign at Marvel.

Next chapter: I wrap up 1993.

Part Ninety Three

The end of 1993 brought lots of change to my circle of friends and family. I bought our first real personal computer for my family and presented it to our kids as a “big” family gift. I think it was a Packard Bell system that operated at a whopping 66 megahertz for an outrageous $3,000. In “the olden days” these computer systems were a nuisance to get ready to use. All of the software had to be loaded using multiple floppy discs. Luckily, we had Adam to tackle this task. Even though he had never used a computer before, he had a knack for putting electronic equipment together. Within thirty minutes it was up and running.

Adam was halfway through the eighth grade at The Imago School and they did not offer a high school program there. We knew that we had no interest in Adam attending the local public high school. I had gone there twenty years earlier and it wasn’t challenging to me at all. It was “common knowledge” that the schools had only gotten worse over the past two decades so we began to consider our options. We had heard good things about Lexington Christian Academy, a college preparatory high school located in a suburb of Boston. The tuition was over $10,000 per year but we discussed this as a family and determined that we would “sacrifice” our big family vacations in order to afford this challenging school for Adam. Adam toured the school and scheduled an appointment to take the entrance exam.

As we were driving to the school on the day of the entrance exam, we realized that the almost one hour commute to and from school each day was going to be horrible. The only practical way to get there was by the major highway Route 128, also known as “Dead Man’s Highway,” because of the poor design and crazy drivers traveling at over 80 miles per hour! I was still working at my comic book store in Worcester on a regular basis so I couldn’t commit to helping Mal with the school commuting. She would have to deal with getting Adam to his new school and Cassy to her school each day. This drive wouldn’t be pleasant but it was worth the aggravation to provide the superior educational opportunities for Adam.

Adam took the test and got the highest score of any of the incoming freshmen so he was offered a spot for the next school year. His test score also allowed him to take another test to determine if he was eligible for the “Headmaster’s Scholarship.” His score on this test was the highest and he was the recipient of this distinguished award. This scholarship would have been for a full, four-year tuition at Lexington Christian School but since my income was deemed to be too high, Adam received an annual stipend of $750.00. Obviously, it’s not quite the same, but every little bit would help. Most importantly, we were very proud of Adam.

Business at my two comic book and collectible stores was still growing. Baseball cards and comic book sales had dropped a bit but we got lucky enough to find a product that would sell enough to make up the difference. It was called “Magic The Gathering” and a small company called “Wizards of the Coast” created them. This was a trading card fantasy strategy game that was also collectible because the manufacturer deliberately printed less of certain cards to make them “rare.” A customer had requested these cards a few months before they were released so I was probably aware of them before most of my local competitors. I ordered ten full boxes and we sold all of them within a few weeks. Demand for these cards became intense and the prices rose quickly on the “short-printed” cards. We were able to get a few more small shipments of these cards but we certainly couldn’t keep up with the demand. Luckily, we had a good relationship with numerous distributors and they took good care of us with “Magic The Gathering” cards. By the time the second series of cards were released, we were pre-ordering over fifty boxes that had a retail value of over $100.00 each. These sold out within one day. When the third series came out we sold over one hundred boxes the first week. My Fitchburg store co-manager, Richard Ortwein (who had recently returned to work there after a short time away), was smart enough to alert the local media about this amazing new product and the local newspaper ran a large story about these cards and our great second store.

This also was the year (1993) that two of my favorite customers, Paul Dinsdale and Christine Carelli, got married. This was a big deal for me since I was involved in “setting them up.”

Next chapter: Do you remember “POGS?”

Part Ninety Four

While the nation-wide sales of comic books and sports cards declined, we were fortunate enough to discover new products to add to our store inventory so that our gross sales figures were stable. “Magic The Gathering” cards were the hottest selling product in the specialty stores like mine and we were able to establish relationships with numerous distributors to maintain a good, continuing supply for our eager customers. We sold all of our supply at low prices while most of our competitors began to charge huge premiums above “suggested list price” on packs of these cards. We knew that this would benefit us in the long run because our customers would realize that we were honorable and we could be trusted to sell our products at the lowest possible prices. We try hard to think long-term.

There was a company in Hawaii that manufactured a juice called “Passion Orange Guava Juice.” This was combination of these three fruits. Underneath the bottle top they included a round cardboard disk with an illustration on it. These disks were nicknamed “POGS” and thousands of Hawaiians began to collect them. Eventually, the company created a simple game that included these POGS as game pieces. The game could be played with two to six players. One at a time, each player would stack one of his POGS, image face down, in the center of a playing area until about ten to twelve POGS are in the stack. A player then throws a thicker POG, called a “slammer,” on top of the stack attempting to turn over as many POGS as possible in his turn. The player “wins” the POGS that flip face up. The next player restacks the remaining POGS and repeats the process. The winner of the game is the player who was able to turn over the most POGS. The game became very popular in Hawaii and some clever entrepreneur began to distribute these POGS into the rest of the United States. Other companies began to manufacture similar game piece disks that could be used in the game. There were POGS with pictures of birds, flags, animals and flowers. As these POGS became more popular, the companies began to license images of Star Wars, NASCAR, comic book heroes, television cartoon shows, and hundreds more. The game of POGS caught on with mostly young children and it became a national obsession. Part of the reason that these were so popular with kids was that they retailed for a nickel or a dime each and any kid could afford to buy them. Adults also bought POGS to play with and some people even bought them to just “collect.” My store began buying POGS from various suppliers. We bought most of the POGS in “bulk” boxes of 1000 assorted styles for two cents per POG and put a sign in our store windows advertising that we had these available. Crowds of customers streamed in to dig through our large boxes of POGS. This game had now really caught on with young-teens and it seemed as if every school playground had regular POG games going. Within a few months, the craze had grown so big that we were now ordering new assortments three times each week. Some companies started manufacturing “deluxe” POGS with metallic finishes, 3D pictures and even holograms. These sold for more than the standard nickel. Some sold as high as twenty-five cents each. It may seem like it would be difficult to make much money on items that sell for a nickel or a quarter, but believe me, we sold thousands of these every few days. It was an exciting time because the kids loved the product. Sales remained strong on POGS for almost six months but Chris, my store manager, always ordered in an intelligent manner. It would certainly have been easier to just order a huge quantity of POGS at one time but he was content to order in smaller quantities a few times each week. This worked nicely because our customers now had a reason to come back to the store multiple times each week to see the new shipments. If we had ordered a ton of the POGS at one time, the customers would have seen everything the first time they came in and they’d have no enthusiasm to come back. Without much warning, the public school system banned POGS from the schoolyards. Apparently someone thought the game of POGS seemed like gambling since players “won” the opponents POGS. Sales screeched to a halt because school is the main place that children get together and now they’d no longer be able to play POGS at school. Any area that was affected by this change in school policy saw sales of POGS drop by 90% within a few weeks. Many retailers got stuck with huge inventories of unwanted POGS because they ordered hundreds of thousands of them at a time, but not us. By the time the POG craze ended we had less than fifty dollars worth of inventory left. It was time to find “the next big thing.”

Next chapter: My son starts high school and my daughter finds a “best friend.”

Part Ninety Five

While my whole family was watching television together we saw a brief commercial advertising a new attraction at Walt Disney World in Florida. The commercial was “hyping” the new, cutting-edge virtual reality interactive attraction at EPCOT. Adam was really intrigued by this and he asked if we could go to see it. Cassy had seen a commercial advertising a new attraction based on the popular movie of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and she wanted to see that. We hadn’t been to Disney World for a while and we knew that we would not be able to afford many of these kinds of expensive vacations once Adam started to go to Lexington Christian Academy because of the high tuition expense. We asked our kids if they wanted to invite two of their friends to come along with us and we all agreed that it would be nice to travel with two of our neighbor’s children, Nathan and Laura Daman. The Daman family had been friends of ours for quite a long time and we had shared the car-pooling duties to and from The Imago School for many years. We knew that the Daman family couldn’t spend the money for air travel to Florida because they had three children in private school, so we planned to drive our mini-van the 1500 miles to Disney World. Nathan and Laura were excited because they had never been to Disney World and my kids were happy to share this vacation with them.

We planned to leave early one morning in August but for some reason, once we had the van all packed up the night before, we changed our mind and decided to leave right then. Since the kids were all excited to go they were easy to convince. Mal and I each drove while the other slept and we ended up driving twenty five hours straight and we arrived in Orlando Florida earlier then we had anticipated. We had rented a large trailer in the same trailer park where Mal’s sister, Ginny, lived, so it was ready for us even though we got there early. The next day we got ready early and as usual, we arrived at Disney World before the park opened so we’d have a full day of “park time.” We headed directly to EPCOT and found the new attraction, “Innoventions” to try out the new virtual reality thing. We were the first group of the day to arrive there.

While we were waiting for the doors to open I began chatting with the Disney employee at the door. He told us that the virtual reality glasses were valued at $125,000 each and he explained how “cool” the virtual reality game experience would be. Then to my astonishment, he explained that only four people from each group of one hundred and fifty “guests” would actually get the opportunity to try this game! I told him that this virtual reality game was really the major reason that we made this long trip to Disney World and that I thought the television commercials were very deceptive because it appeared as if all of the “guests” would get to have this experience. The employee made it clear that there would be no possibility of our whole group getting to try this game. We all discussed this situation and we agreed that if only one of us could do it, it would be Adam. The employee was smart enough to sense our disappointment so he assured us that Adam would be chosen. Even though I didn’t personally get to try it, it was exciting to see Adam have so much fun.

The next day when we went to MGM Studios to see the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” attraction we were unable to pre-arrange it so that Cassy would be chosen to be part of the audience participation part. When we got there we were ushered into the attraction with a large group of other “guests.” We had tried to prepare Cassy in advance so she wouldn’t be too disappointed if she wasn’t chosen to “ride the giant bee” in the show and she seemed to understand. When the Disney “cast member” asked for volunteers from the crowd, dozens of kids raised their hands. For some unknown reason, both Cassy and Laura were chosen! Both of my children had a great vacation and Nathan and Laura had fun too.

In the fall of 1994 my son, Adam, was to begin attending Lexington Christian Academy for high school. This prestigious school was located near Boston and my wife was going to have to make the nearly one hour (each way) commute to get Adam there and pick him up at the end of each school day. It would mean almost four hours of driving just for Adam and we would still have to get our daughter, Cassandra, to The Imago School each day when it was our turn to drive in the carpool with the Daman family. Mal was not looking forward to this nightmarish schedule. A week before Adam’s school started classes we were presented with a list of all of the families with children attending the school. Mal contacted the Tedeski family, who lived one town away from us, and suggested a carpooling possibility. They had already committed with another family but they agreed to also drive Adam on their “designated” days. Mr. Tedeski drove to our home to pick Adam up in the morning even though it was out of his way. The other family involved in the carpool was not as cooperative. They insisted that Adam would have to be driven to their house on the mornings that it was “their turn” to drive even though it was expected that we drive out of our way each afternoon to get their child home. We were just happy to reduce the driving requirement.

Adam fit in with the other students at Lexington Christian Academy right away. Most of the students were hard working, motivated and eager to be taught. It was “suggested” that all students should participate in the sports program and almost every student did. Adam’s former school didn’t offer any sports and Adam didn’t have much interest in joining the town leagues so he had very little athletic talents although he had played “T-Ball” and one season of little kids soccer. He reluctantly decided to join the junior-varsity soccer team. He went to every practice and played in almost every game but he only scored one goal in the whole season. He didn’t seem to mind because he enjoyed spending time with the other team members.

Adam was a fun guy and he made friends easily. His true passion was acting. The Imago School had made acting fun for Adam and in the eighth grade he was the lead actor in the musical, “Rags to Riches.” Chris Greicco, a dedicated and creative teacher, taught Adam drama at Lexington Christian Academy. Before Adam went to high school his desire was to be an actor. It didn’t matter what he would act in. Film, television or theatre was fine. But once he was taught and directed by Chris Greicco his interest became mainly theatre.

My daughter, Cassy, was now in the fourth grade at The Imago School and she had many friends at the school. A new girl, Bethany, came into Cassy’s class this year. Cassy had noticed Bethany’s name on the Imago School family list and she had called to arrange for Bethany to come over to our house to play before the school year started since she lived very close by. For some reason they didn’t hit it off on this first time together but by the middle of the year they really became “best friends.” Bethany was a fun, giggly, girl and when Cassy and Bethany got together they laughed most of the time.

Next chapter: I prepare to “retire” from my comic book business.

Part Ninety Six

When I was twelve years old I commented to my slightly younger brother Jay that I didn’t want to work past the age of forty. I have no idea why this crazy idea popped into my head at such a young age. When I was a kid it just struck me as a good idea. I had watched my father work very hard to support his family and I thought it would be more “fun” to be playing at home instead of working at an office. When my children were born I began to seriously consider the possibility of “early retirement.”

When I hired employees I hoped that these would be the right people to take over my comic book and collectible store when I ceased coming into work each day. Some worked out great and others not so great. I had employed dozens of people since I opened my Worcester store and I never had to fire anyone. Some of the worst employees left on their own and unfortunately, a few of the good employees left to either start their own comic book stores or left because they desired more money or decent benefits. I was now paying higher wages and we had developed a good benefits package so most of my employees were satisfied enough to stay working for me. I placed many of our best employees at the Worcester location since most of my earnings came from this larger store. My Fitchburg store was profitable and it was important to me, but my main focus was on the fast-paced activity and high sales of Worcester.

Chris was being “groomed” to be the overall company manager. He would oversee all employee-type issues and he would see to it that the inventory was properly balanced by moving stock between the two stores for the maximum sales potential. Chris also learned to do our basic bookkeeping and bill paying. He did a really good job of this.

David Hartwell was responsible for the ordering of all new comic book products, which still accounted for the majority of our annual sales. His job was to order enough to satisfy the needs of our customers without having any extra, unsold copies. Our slogan was, “Nobody ever went out of business by selling out, but lots of stores go out of business with unsold inventory.” David was also instrumental in our increase in sales of independent and alternative comic books as well as maintaining our high sales volume of mainstream super-hero comic books.

Jose Rivera was one of our most popular sales clerks. He had a love and enthusiasm for comic books, toys, and Japanese animation. Almost everybody loved Jose because of his helpfulness and positive attitude. Jose had been a customer of our Worcester store since he was a teenager and we were happy to hire him when he became available.

Ken Carson was spending most of his week at the Fitchburg store, working with Bernie, but as my fortieth birthday drew near, it was clear that he would be needed in Worcester.

We had quite a few other people working for us, including full and part-time employees, and I was fairly confident that this group could take care of my comic book stores in my absence. I was ready to actually retire from day-to-day involvement in the business that I had spent many years building. It was a strange feeling for me. I loved my business! I enjoyed my friends and customers and I still was excited about most of the different products that we dealt in. How could I possibly leave this business that was so much a part of my life?! I knew I wanted to be a major presence in the lives of my two children and I enjoyed spending time with my wife and kids even more than I enjoyed my stores. I figured it was worth a try. So, two days before I turned forty, I turned my business over to Chris Ball and the rest of the gang of “That’s Entertainment.” Chris had a cake for me and he had converted an action-figure into a miniature Frank Sinatra and stuck it onto the top of the cake to indicate that I had done it “My Way.”

Next chapter: My father’s 60th birthday gift and my wife goes away for far too long!

Part Ninety Seven

As of January of 1995 I was “retired” from active participation in the operation of my two comic book and collectible stores. I was now able to be more involved in the lives of my children and I’d be more available to help my wife with day-to-day family issues like carpooling. I knew this would be a big relief for Mal.

My father was turning sixty in January and I had booked a short three-day cruise for him and I to go on for this milestone birthday. He had never been on a cruise and I knew he’d enjoy it and I was certainly looking forward to spending some uninterrupted time with him. Unfortunately, my father’s older brother, Tom, who had been fighting cancer for a while, died the week before our planned trip. I loved my Uncle Tom. He was also my “godfather” and I had fond memories of him from my childhood. Each Christmas, for quite a few years, I would receive a gift of a flannel shirt. Even though these were not the type of shirts that I was wearing at the time, I still appreciated that my Uncle Tom and Aunt Eileen were so thoughtful to buy me a gift. In 1965 I was looking forward to getting my flannel shirt because most of my friends were now wearing them but for some reason Uncle Tom bought me an early “Rolling Stones” record album! I wasn’t a fan of “The Stones” back then but I grew to enjoy them and I think of my Uncle Tom almost every time I hear their early songs.

Obviously, my father and I had to cancel our trip, but since I had already paid for the cruise, I convinced my wife to go on the cruise with her youngest sister, Madeline. We knew she’d be criticized for going on a “vacation” instead of going to my uncle’s funeral but at the time, I rationalized that I would be there to “represent” my family and Mal’s attendance wouldn’t be necessary. It was my mistake, not Mal’s. I had insisted that she go on the cruise.

It was strange for Mal to be away on a cruise without me. In our more than twenty years of marriage we had very rarely been apart for more than one day. I was pretty spoiled by my mother and my wife. I was good at my business but I was nearly helpless at home. I couldn’t cook, I didn’t vacuum or clean, and I certainly had no idea how to use a washing machine. When I was a kid, my mother did all of that and now, as an adult, my wife did everything for me. That was all about to change.

Our two kids were in different private schools and their school vacations were not scheduled at the same times. This meant that we couldn’t go on a vacation as a whole family (other than at Christmas) during the school year. We decided that it could be a good mother-son “bonding” time for Mal to go on a vacation with Adam so in March of 1995 they flew to Florida for a visit with Mal’s father and her sister Ginny. Mal used to say, “I can’t believe a forty-year old man can be so helpless. If you can’t find something to eat, you deserve to starve.” I’m pretty sure she was joking. Previously, when we traveled, I always took care of the flight arrangements, rental cars, and hotel reservations but since I was going to have to learn how to take care of household chores and deal with getting Cassy to school, preparing her school lunch, and actually cook meals while Mal and Adam were gone, we figured it was time for Mal to learn how to handle the details of a vacation. She did a great job. I wasn’t so good. Most of the “meals” I prepared were from a can or fast food, but we all survived.

It’s a good thing that Mal had “taught” me to survive on my own because shortly after her vacation with Adam, it was time for her to go on a vacation with Cassy! They went out to Colorado to visit Mal’s sister, Madeline, and our old friends, Art and Suisei Goguen. Mal and Cassy were away from home for eleven LONG days and they had great fun while I was home doing very “un-fun” stuff. At the time, I really hoped we’d never have to be apart again.

Next chapter: Mal gets sick.

Part Ninety Eight

I’ve been luckier than many people because I’ve been relatively healthy for most of my life. I’ve never been admitted to a hospital, had a broken bone or been seriously ill. I have had “hay fever” for a month each year. I injured my back while working at a computer company in the 1970’s and although I’ve never really recovered from that, it’s really minor discomfort and it comes and goes. Pretty lucky, especially considering that I don’t take very good care of myself. I don’t exercise and I love to eat “junk-food.” I should be in bad condition but for some reason, I’m not.

My son, Adam, was born prematurely and he almost died twice at birth. He had a very serious asthma attack when he was young. He had allergies that caused constant nasal stuffiness and discomfort for him for eight months each year during the first sixteen years of his life. He inherited my crooked teeth and he endured a corrective “lip-bumper” to expand his jaw and two sets of corrective braces to straighten his teeth. He rarely complained about this though. He just knew it was part of life.

When my daughter, Cassy, was young, she was a tiny girl. She was so small that she wasn’t even “on the charts” as far as average height and weight goes. At eleven years old she was the height of most seven year olds. We took her to a recommended endocrinologist to determine if there was anything “out of the ordinary” with Cassy’s development but we were told that she was just going to be small and there was nothing that could be done for her. Cassy suffered severe chest pains because of a heart defect called “mitrovalve prolapse” for most of her childhood. She also got “my teeth” and ended up with braces for a few years.

My wife, Mal, was not so lucky. Although she had a healthy early childhood, when she hit her late-teens she found out that she had developed tumors in her left eye. Although these were not malignant tumors, they still presented a problem for her eye and they needed to be removed. She was sent to “Mass Eye and Ear” a division of Mass General Hospital, in Boston and her surgeon was the top eye specialist in this highly respected hospital. Mal’s first eye surgery required the eye to be removed from its socket and the tumors were removed by cutting the eye on the backside. This surgery took place before laser surgery became commonplace. Eventually she needed several more surgeries because the tumors returned. Finally, shortly after Adam was born, lasers were used but there was too much scar tissue inside of her eye and she was left permanently blind in her left eye. Mal has adapted to this partial blindness but it’s not always easy. Driving isn’t simple when your depth perception is bad, (try closing one of your eyes while you drive!) but she manages.

In 1995 however, Mal began to get tired easily. We led a typical, modern busy lifestyle because of our kids activities at school and the extra after-school activities like sports, horseback riding, music lessons and community theatre involvement but until 1995 Mal had plenty of energy. Now these “normal” activities left her exhausted. We both assumed that this would soon pass but then she began to experience intense pain in different spots on her body that several doctors couldn’t explain. Some of the pains were located in her joints but others were seemingly just small, random spots on her body that defied explanation. One doctor suggested that this could be a form of early arthritis and since some relatives in Mal’s family had suffered with arthritis, it was recommended that she see a specialist. After a long series of tests it was determined that Mal had “Fibromyalgia.” This disease is similar to “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” but along with exhaustion comes joint and muscle pain. At that time there was no cure for this disease but the doctor recommended a change in diet and suggested more exercise. Well, a change in diet could be done but Mal certainly didn’t feel well enough to increase her exercise. Her whole body hurt.

The normally energetic Mal was so tired and even though she tried to get to bed earlier she found that the pains in her body would prevent her from sleeping through the night. Lack of sleep made it harder for her body to “re-energize” and she began to need short “cat-naps” during the day. She was determined though, to not let this illness take over her life and she continued to remain as active as possible in the day-to-day activities of the kids. This was getting harder to do because our kids were involved in lots of things.

Adam was maintaining good grades at Lexington Christian Academy and he had arranged his first “real” date with Kelly Crispell, a girl he had briefly known at The Imago School during his first or second grade. We had a family rule that our kids weren’t allowed to date until they were sixteen but we allowed him to invite her to our home for a visit. We thought it would be okay if we all ate together and watched a movie but afterwards Adam explained that he found it uncomfortable for us to be hanging around them. A few months later when Adam was sixteen he went on the real date with Kelly. Mal and I drove him to a movie theater to meet Kelly, who was driven by her folks. While the teens saw the movie we visited with Kelly’s parents. It was a strange thing to deal with. Our child was almost an adult. How bizarre!

As the school year was ending I was told about a local family whose young son Joey was struggling with a terrible disease known as “leukodystrophy.” This is the fatal disease that was seen in the movie “Lorenzo’s Oil” starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon. Most children afflicted with this debilitating disease die within a few years and they suffer with blindness and seizures during their short lives. I was asked if I would donate some comic books or other collectibles that could be sold so the money could be donated to the family to help pay for the expensive experimental medicines that could help ease young Joey’s pain. I decided to contact some of the comic book publishers to solicit donations of merchandise from them as well as choosing some of my own store inventory to auction off at a local fundraising day of activities for the Johnson family. Adam and I set up a display of interesting collectibles and I played the part of the auctioneer. We raised more money from this auction than the rest of the rest of the fundraising activities combined. Many of my customers came to support this very worthwhile cause.

Next chapter: After fifteen years we fire our first employee…not a fun decision.

Part Ninety Nine

In the mid-1990’s, my sister Sharon’s husband Greg was offered an opportunity to work for a year in England. The American company he worked for needed to increase sales in Europe and they knew Greg could successfully tackle this project. Greg moved his wife and three children into a large, rented home in Windsor, England.

We had made the decision to cut back on expensive vacations in order to afford Adam’s expensive private high school education but when Greg and Sharon offered to let us come to England to visit them we jumped at the chance. We had enjoyed our previous trip to England in 1991 and we knew we’d like to go back and with the offer of “free” housing it was an offer we couldn’t turn down. Mal loved my sister and she was eager to see Sharon again. My kids also loved their cousins and they enjoyed being together whenever it was possible, which wasn’t often enough since my sister had moved away to New Hampshire.

We planned to spend a week with Greg and Sharon exploring England, a week in France, and our third week with Greg and Sharon. When we arrived, Greg picked us up at the airport. We spent the week traveling and sightseeing with Sharon as our unofficial tour guide while Greg was working. We enjoyed his time with us after work ended. Sharon is a really good cook and we enjoyed quite a few “home cooked” meals but we also had the chance to eat out in some local restaurants including “Ye Old Beefeater.” During our visit to England we ate there a couple of times because the food was so much better than most other English restaurants. About three weeks after we got back to the United States we began to hear news reports about the outbreak of “Mad Cow Disease” found in English beef!

While we were in England, Chris, my store manager, called to tell me that he planned to fire one of the managers of my store in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I was sad to hear that things had developed that way because we all really liked this employee. He was liked by many of our customers and he was fun to be around but it was decided that he just wasn’t able to properly do his job as a manager.

For example, we had a great relationship with the manager of the local movie theater. The theater would allow us to set up a large display in the lobby of the theater to advertise our store if we would agree to put up movie posters in our store to direct our customers to this particular movie theater. One of the more artistically talented guys at our Worcester location, Ken Carson, was willing to design and assemble these theater displays so there was no excuse that we wouldn’t have some free advertising for any comic book related movie. When the feature film version of “Casper The Friendly Ghost” came out I asked the Fitchburg store co-manager why we didn’t have a display in the theater lobby. He tried to explain to me that even though “Casper” was indeed based on a comic book, he saw no need to promote our store at that time. He actually said, “We have enough customers already.”

On another occasion, when he was instructed to maintain an inventory of “essential” trade paperback editions of popular comic series, he replied, “We already have plenty of other editions available. I’m sure the customers will just buy the ones we have.” The final straw was when he began to sell his own comic books at a local flea market and we found out that he was directing our store customers to shop at his flea market booth instead of buying the comics at the store. This couldn’t be tolerated. So, after fifteen years in business with no people being fired, we believed it was necessary to fire this employee. It was an awful feeling because this employee was, over all, a really nice guy. I was a little troubled because this was going to be done while I was out of the country but I knew I needed to trust Chris on this. Thankfully, the employee found another job very quickly.

After a week in England with my sister, my family and I traveled to Paris via the high-speed “Chunnel” train. My young daughter, Cassy, worked at learning important French words and I was amused at her efforts to list these words and phonetic pronunciations in her small notebook. We were prepared to be treated rudely by the French because none of us spoke the language but we were pleasantly surprised at how courteous the citizens were. We did find out that one stereotype about Europeans was true. Most people we encountered had horrible body odor.

Apparently, deodorant wasn’t a hot-selling item over there. It didn’t help that Paris was in the middle of an unusual heat wave and the temperatures were well into the mid-90’s every day we were there. Mal and Cassy would put a lot of perfume on their sleeves before we left our hotel each morning so that when they were suddenly overwhelmed by the people’s odor, they could block their noses with their sleeves and at least smell something good. Adam and I didn’t mind too much but Cassy was so short that she was always stuck under someone’s armpit on a subway train or in an elevator.

Our week in Paris included lots of the usual tourist destinations including museums, churches and castles. Our only mistake was that we planned to be in Paris during “Bastille Day.” This was the equivalent of our “Fourth of July” holiday and the French people went “crazy” on this day. Fighter jets flew directly over our hotel building while huge parades blocked the streets. Thousands of noisy people crowded the streets and we were kept awake long into the night by the sound of exploding firecrackers. Although we all enjoyed our week in Paris, my kids were sick of touring castles and they were eager to get back to England to see their cousins; Emily, Jesse, and Jacob.

Next chapter: The end of our big vacation and I take a huge pay-cut.

Part One Hundred

Mal and I, along with our two kids, had just spent a week in England with my sister’s family, then a week alone in Paris (including a trip to Euro Disney, now renamed Disneyland Paris) then we finished this great vacation with another week at my sister’s rented home in Windsor, England. My sister’s husband, Greg, took some time off from his work to introduce us to some local places of interest including the Windsor Horse Racing Track, The Chesington Amusement Park, and the famous “white cliffs of Dover.” These white cliffs are actual cliffs that contained part of the World War Two English command headquarters. This underground system of tunnels, communications centers and war rooms was restored to illustrate how this actually looked during the war and it was a relaxing and educational trip. All in all, this three-week vacation was really enjoyable, mostly because of the hospitality of my sister and her family.

When we returned home to Bolton, Massachusetts, we began to prepare for the beginning of the new school year for Adam and Cassy. Adam was to begin his second year at Lexington Christian Academy. His first year went extremely well and he made friends quickly there. He was elected to be the sophomore class president by his newfound peers based more on his popularity than any serious “campaign promises.” The previous year he had his first serious girlfriend but that didn’t last very long. He began to be more interested in Emma, a classmate who was a good friend and confidant. After a short while his friendship became more of a boyfriend-girlfriend thing but it didn’t take them too long to realize they were better off as friends. Then came Meridith. She was transferring to this high school as a sophomore and it didn’t take very long for something to develop between her and Adam. Meridith was a good friend with Emma and when it was apparent that romance wasn’t going to happen between Adam and Emma, she expressed interest in Adam. Adam fell for her pretty fast.

Mal was still battling her Fibromyalgia and she was exhausted and in pain all of the time, but she was trying to continue on with her regular routine as much as possible. One day after dropping Cassy off at The Imago School, Mal was invited out to breakfast with Kim, an old friend of ours. Kim had recently lost a significant amount of weight and Mal was surprised to see her eating bacon, eggs, and cheese for breakfast. Kim told her that she was successfully using “The Atkins Diet” and she explained the low carbohydrate diet to Mal. Mal was excited to try something new to get rid of the small amount of “extra” weight that she was unhappy with. She had tried other diets and had only occasional success with them. If she could lose some weight and still get to eat some bacon every now and then, this sounded like it would be worthwhile to try it. She’d just have to cut out bread, pasta, processed flour, and foods that are high in carbohydrates. Mal bought the Atkins book and read all about it before she tried it and it seemed to make good sense. After faithfully following this diet for a month or so she found that she had lost most of her unwanted weight but more importantly, she began to feel better. It seemed as if the symptoms of her Fibromyalgia were diminishing. Some scientists believe that Fibromyalgia is caused by a yeast imbalance and this seems a likely possibility since almost ninety percent of the people the disease affects are women. The medical community has been divided on this disease for many years. It was sometimes called “The Yuppy Disease” because it seemed to primarily affect women between the ages of 25-40. The environment to which many women were exposed was thought to be the cause since many of these women lived in new homes that were airtight and perhaps the air they breathed was contaminated. I don’t know what really causes this disease but I know my wife began to feel healthier when she cut out certain foods.

Since I had decided to “retire” from day-to-day involvement at my comic book and collectible store I knew I needed to be able to count on a stable, regular income for my family. Previously, I existed by paying all of the store’s expenses and paying all of my employees before I took any money for myself. My “pay” varied from week to week. Some weeks it was huge and some weeks there would be no money available for me, but that was okay because I was a pretty good saver. When the money was rolling in, I didn’t spend much of it. I knew I might need it later. So Chris, my company manager, and I agreed on a regular amount that would be paid to me each week in a paycheck. This turned out to be about forty percent less than I was accustomed to take but I knew that it was very important to allow the business to be comfortable to pay for the everyday expenses and to have the funds available to hire the additional people to replace me. (Don’t feel bad for me, I’m still making a good living.)

We also had to deal with paying off the loan for our huge building in Worcester. We financed this building by taking out a mortgage on my family home so I wanted this paid off. Each month, since 1992, we had paid an extra amount over and above our required mortgage. Some months it was only an extra one thousand dollars, but sometimes we paid an extra five thousand dollars directly to the principal loan amount and by the beginning of 1996 we had paid off the entire loan. It’s a liberating feeling to be free from the nagging obligation of loans.

Next chapter: Chris, the store manager, books a gre