The guy who ran the bookstore I bought them from was a prick. If you even dared peek at the pages inside of a new or used comic on his rack, he would yell "Are you going to buy that? This isn't the library. You can't read those for free."
It was the only store in town, so I couldn't take my loose change somewhere else. I had to gamble a bit and judge the comic books by their covers alone. And they sucked me in, much like a National Enquirer cover hooks a gossip junkie.
I didn't always get what I bargained for. Sometimes the covers duped me. I stumbled across one comic called The Cross and The Switchblade in the 1970s. I typically bought anything that had super heroes and super villains kicking each other's asses on the cover. This one was different. It featured some street thug holding a knife to a preacher's heart, telling him "I Could Kill You Preach." The Preacher replies "Yes, you could, Nicky! You could cut me up in a thousand pieces and every piece will say I love you."
I didn't know what to think of this. It seemed like a sappy thing to say - even if you are a preacher - to some asshole who is about to give you unscheduled open-heart surgery. But I couldn't get past the title. It had the word Switchblade in it, so it had to be cool. One kid at school got suspended for having a switchblade comb, so buying a comic book with the word switchblade made me feel almost as ballsy.
Anyway, I got home and the comic ended up being a total holy roller issue. There wasn't even a good knife fight inside. Even The Bible had way better fights in it than this comic book did. The Bible had David smoke out Goliath with a rock. In The Cross and the Switchblade, the preacher kept trying to reach out to hippies with religion and managed to talk some chick out of using heroin. I preferred to see Spider-Man kick the Green Goblin's ass instead.
From that day forward I learned when judging a comic book by its cover backfired on me, all I had to do to fix it was use my imagination. Sometimes my ideas seemed a better fit for the comic than what was actually inside.
In my version of The Cross and the Switchblade, maybe the thug would try cutting the guy into 1,000 pieces to see what happens. In the end, 999 pieces don't say a fucking thing. But the mouth piece says "I love you" 1,000 times to make up for all the mute pieces. There are so many pieces of preacher lying around that the thug goes insane because he can't find the piece that's doing all the talking, and is dragged off to spend his life in an asylum. Through some sort of divine intervention, the preacher survives the attack and is stitched back together by a local quilting group. He continues preaching, but decides to keep his mouth shut if ever held at knife-point again.
OK, so that story is a little twisted for a book put out by Spire Christian Comics. Need further proof? I did a search on the internet for comic book covers and discovered there are plenty of people out there who are more obsessed than Comic Book Guy. Some of them have scans of the covers of every comic book in their collection - numbering in the thousands - posted on various websites.
After viewing these, I realize the store where I bought comic books sucked. It didn't have the selection of comics compared to today's information superhighway. I found so many side-splittingly hilarious covers. I'm not sure how I missed these covers growing up because they had my undivided attention at first glance now. My imagination was in overdrive thinking of their potential plots. I didn't actually read any of these issues, so I decided to be super judgmental and make up horseshit comments and/or the possible storyline contained inside for the sake of humorous parody.
Here's my Top 10:
10. In this LAUGH comic, Archie is letting a kid bury him with sand on the beach while on a date with that rich bitch Veronica Lodge. He spots a hot redhead on the beach and a sand dune begins to form at his groin region. Veronica pleads with the kid to "cover up his head, too." I wonder which head she was referring to?
9. With a title like FLAMING LOVE, I expected to see two men kissing on the cover. Or at least Satan swapping spit with Leona Helmsley.
8. These LOIS LANE and SUPERMAN comics tied for eighth place, and you can see a trend developing with Superman's supposed steady girl. She isn't worried about another woman taking away her man. But those Mermaids are another story. At left, Superman hooks up with a wheelchair-bound mermaid, who suffered paralysis in a commercial fishing tuna net accident, so he can abuse her handicap parking privileges in Metropolis. On the right, Superman opts for the more mysterious mermaid who leaves more to his imagination by swimming around in a dress. Superman later actually changes into a Merman to further pursue this fish fetish, which ends abruptly after he is caught by Babe Winkleman on a million-pound test line with a big-ass silver spinner and a sucker minnow. On the last page, Superman is mounted and hung on the wall of the Red Lobster in Smallville.
7. Taking the half-human, half-beast thing a step farther in this great LOIS LANE comic, Superman decides to continue to court Lois, even though the old nag has become half horse. Superman couldn't break her on his own, so he had to enlist the aid of Robert Redford, also known as "The Centaur Whisperer." After whispering sweet nothings like "I love what you've done with your mane" and "Your horse's ass doesn't look fat in that saddle," Lois settled down and let Superman ride her like a rented mule. In a tragic twist, their love was shattered when Lois broke her leg in a fall and Superman had to lovingly put her down with his heat vision.
6. The shoe is on the other foot in this LOIS LANE comic as Lois won't leave her man's side despite the fact he is turning into a tree. Lois isn't even a vegetarian but is constantly called nicknames like "Tree Hugger." Lois learns to live with Superman's rare condition and the woodpeckers, squirrels and rakings in the fall that come along with it. Superman shows his appreciation by letting Lois carve their initials in his barky chest. Later, Lois runs into Superman's high school sweetheart Lana Lang at Home Depot while shopping for some pruning snips, then makes her jealous by bragging about the new wood Superman has been sporting lately. In the end, Lois fends off lumberjacks who want to cut Superman down by climbing him and building a treehouse in the branches coming out of his head.
5. In this ARCHIE comic, he hopes to get in Veronica's pants by giving her a plastic frisbee for her birthday. Thanks to a slumber party game of truth or dare the night before, blonde Betty spills the beans on what Veronica really wants from Archie - A "pearl necklace." Betty hopes this could break the ice for a possible threesome invitation. But Archie, totally clueless and a virgin (his carrot stick still untouched), spoils the mood when he asks Betty if she thinks Veronica would be cool with fake pearls until he can afford real ones.
4. Lois and Lana are shellshocked in this LOIS LANE issue when Superman dumps them for being too stupid to figure out his Clark Kent "disguise," which is just a pair of glasses. After Superman storms off to have rebound sex with Wonder Woman, Lois and Lana feel like Dumb and Dumber for not picking up on Clark's super hints. Lois thought Clark constantly went into phone booths to satisfy his addiction to phone sex chatlines. When Clark bragged he knew what color everyone's panties were due to his bitchin' X-Ray vision, Lana believed it was was simply an attempt to make her jealous. And they both thought Clark was simply a candy-ass when he high-tailed it at the first sign of trouble.
3. This SUPERMAN comic shows his true weakness is not kryptonite, but a super dominatrix with great go-go boots.
2. In this JIMMY OLSEN comic, Superman's pal begs for mercy so he does not have to go through with marrying an ape. We soon discover this whole mess started when Jimmy was set up on a blind date with Ko-Ko by Lex Luthor. Jimmy wasn't attracted to Ko-Ko, but she knew sign language and was nice, so he decided to go through with the date as "just friends." After a bender of banana dacquiris, he woke up naked with the ape in a trashed hotel room surrounded by Samsonite suitcases. Later, Jimmy thinks Ko-Ko is psycho and trying to trap him by faking a pregnancy. Superman plays the Witch Doctor card and says the shotgun wedding show must go on. Note: The writer of this issue may have misunderstood his editor's request for a jungle love storyline, but they went to press with it anyway because monkey covers sell, baby.
1. Archie shows just how far he will go for love in this edition of BETTY & ME. Blondes in bikinis get plenty of attention at the beach (just ask Pamela Anderson). That's why Archie isn't afraid to admit to Betty he beat off 3 other guys just for the right to rescue her. Betty pretends to be flattered, but secretly wonders how many guys Jughead would have jerked off to rescue her.
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