TODD TAMANEND CLARK
2009-04-24 22:48:30 UTC
I was born on August 10, 1952 in Greene County, Pennsylvania in the
southwestern corner of the state, and when I was a child, my severely
epileptic mother and my assimilated-to-the-mainstream Lenape father
and I lived along the Monongahela River just north of the Mason-Dixon
line in the small village of Greensboro with my free-thinking civil
rights activist maternal grandmother and my semi-traditional Onodowaga
grandfather who would have comic books with Native American themes
around the house. Titles included LONE EAGLE, STRAIGHT ARROW,
TOMAHAWK, TONTO, and TUROK, among others.
I first began walking to the store and buying comic books on my own on
April 24, 1959. I was six years old and in the first grade at the
small Greensboro elementary school, where we had multiple grades in
each room and which is now the Monon Center museum. After school that
Friday, I walked the four blocks to Longo's Confectionary where Betty
Longo had just set out the new magazines for that week.
Comic books cost ten cents in those days, and the first issue I bought
with my own money was WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #102. It contained three
stories:
Superman And Batman: "The Caveman From Krypton!"
Tommy Tomorrow: "The Winged Space Raider!"
Green Arrow: "The Case Of The Camouflage King!"
Batman and Green Arrow are still two of my favorite DC characters to
this day, but Superman never really caught on with me.
These were the main comics that I then began following that year:
ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN
ADVENTURES OF THE FLY
BATMAN
CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN
DETECTIVE COMICS
FORBIDDEN WORLDS
GREEN LANTERN
HOUSE OF MYSTERY
HOUSE OF SECRETS
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY
MY GREATEST ADVENTURE
MYSTERY IN SPACE
STRANGE ADVENTURES
STRANGE TALES
TALES OF SUSPENSE
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
TALES TO ASTONISH
THE FLASH
TOMAHAWK
TUROK, SON OF STONE
WORLD'S FINEST COMICS
Later on in the 1960s, I became a fan of:
ADVENTURES OF THE JAGUAR
DAREDEVIL
DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM
DOCTOR STRANGE
IRON MAN
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
METAL MEN
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
THE ATOM
THE AVENGERS
THE DOOM PATROL
THE FANTASTIC FOUR
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
THE X-MEN
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS
Simultaneously in the 1960s, I became an audio aficionado with a
strong preference for avant-garde jazz and psychedelic rock. I
attribute having had an open mind to these new musical experiences in
a significant way to the imaginative surrealistic world of comic
books, as well as having had my vocabulary, my scientific knowledge,
and my appreciation for art greatly expanded at a young age.
The 1970s were a time when I lost interest in many of my former
favorites as the original artists and writers left. I continued to
read BATMAN, DOCTOR STRANGE, and GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW and added
new arrivals KAMANDI, RED WOLF, and SWAMP THING, but I found myself
buying less and less as the decade progressed. Fortunately for my
voracious reading habit, this era was also the birth of the new
hardcover format as Marvel began its Fireside books and Russ Cochran
began to reprint the complete 1950s EC library.
In the mid-1980s, there began a renaissance wherein modern comic books
again explored sophisticated adult themes. New additions to my
collection included ALPHA FLIGHT, ANIMAL MAN, AZTEC ACE, COYOTE,
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, HAWKWORLD, LOVE AND ROCKETS, MS. TREE,
SCOUT, TALES OF THE BEANWORLD, and THE NEW MUTANTS.
I stopped buying standard stapled comic books (often now referred to
as "floppies") on December 31, 1999. Today, all I save are collected
editions and prefer full-color hard covers with their higher grade
paper, wider palette coloring, and enhanced durability, as well as
their capacity to be stored using vertical wall space, but the same
altered state thrill still remains half a century later.
- - - - -
TODD TAMANEND CLARK
Poet/Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist/Cultural Historian
The Monongahela River, Turtle Island
http://www.myspace.com/toddtamanendclark
southwestern corner of the state, and when I was a child, my severely
epileptic mother and my assimilated-to-the-mainstream Lenape father
and I lived along the Monongahela River just north of the Mason-Dixon
line in the small village of Greensboro with my free-thinking civil
rights activist maternal grandmother and my semi-traditional Onodowaga
grandfather who would have comic books with Native American themes
around the house. Titles included LONE EAGLE, STRAIGHT ARROW,
TOMAHAWK, TONTO, and TUROK, among others.
I first began walking to the store and buying comic books on my own on
April 24, 1959. I was six years old and in the first grade at the
small Greensboro elementary school, where we had multiple grades in
each room and which is now the Monon Center museum. After school that
Friday, I walked the four blocks to Longo's Confectionary where Betty
Longo had just set out the new magazines for that week.
Comic books cost ten cents in those days, and the first issue I bought
with my own money was WORLD'S FINEST COMICS #102. It contained three
stories:
Superman And Batman: "The Caveman From Krypton!"
Tommy Tomorrow: "The Winged Space Raider!"
Green Arrow: "The Case Of The Camouflage King!"
Batman and Green Arrow are still two of my favorite DC characters to
this day, but Superman never really caught on with me.
These were the main comics that I then began following that year:
ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN
ADVENTURES OF THE FLY
BATMAN
CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN
DETECTIVE COMICS
FORBIDDEN WORLDS
GREEN LANTERN
HOUSE OF MYSTERY
HOUSE OF SECRETS
JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY
MY GREATEST ADVENTURE
MYSTERY IN SPACE
STRANGE ADVENTURES
STRANGE TALES
TALES OF SUSPENSE
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
TALES TO ASTONISH
THE FLASH
TOMAHAWK
TUROK, SON OF STONE
WORLD'S FINEST COMICS
Later on in the 1960s, I became a fan of:
ADVENTURES OF THE JAGUAR
DAREDEVIL
DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM
DOCTOR STRANGE
IRON MAN
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA
METAL MEN
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
THE ATOM
THE AVENGERS
THE DOOM PATROL
THE FANTASTIC FOUR
THE INCREDIBLE HULK
THE X-MEN
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS
Simultaneously in the 1960s, I became an audio aficionado with a
strong preference for avant-garde jazz and psychedelic rock. I
attribute having had an open mind to these new musical experiences in
a significant way to the imaginative surrealistic world of comic
books, as well as having had my vocabulary, my scientific knowledge,
and my appreciation for art greatly expanded at a young age.
The 1970s were a time when I lost interest in many of my former
favorites as the original artists and writers left. I continued to
read BATMAN, DOCTOR STRANGE, and GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW and added
new arrivals KAMANDI, RED WOLF, and SWAMP THING, but I found myself
buying less and less as the decade progressed. Fortunately for my
voracious reading habit, this era was also the birth of the new
hardcover format as Marvel began its Fireside books and Russ Cochran
began to reprint the complete 1950s EC library.
In the mid-1980s, there began a renaissance wherein modern comic books
again explored sophisticated adult themes. New additions to my
collection included ALPHA FLIGHT, ANIMAL MAN, AZTEC ACE, COYOTE,
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, HAWKWORLD, LOVE AND ROCKETS, MS. TREE,
SCOUT, TALES OF THE BEANWORLD, and THE NEW MUTANTS.
I stopped buying standard stapled comic books (often now referred to
as "floppies") on December 31, 1999. Today, all I save are collected
editions and prefer full-color hard covers with their higher grade
paper, wider palette coloring, and enhanced durability, as well as
their capacity to be stored using vertical wall space, but the same
altered state thrill still remains half a century later.
- - - - -
TODD TAMANEND CLARK
Poet/Composer/Multi-Instrumentalist/Cultural Historian
The Monongahela River, Turtle Island
http://www.myspace.com/toddtamanendclark