More Packrat Love
The last few posts have had me thinking more about the things I fell in love with as a child that turned me into the lovable dork I am today. I think I am going to make this a regular column, posting whenever I get around to scanning some new gem from my treasure chest. In this installment, X-Men # 162, the first superhero comic I ever read.
I didn’t buy this comic. It was my older brother Johnny’s. I’m not sure where he got it, whether he bought it or swiped it or bartered for it. Johnny was a natural barterer. With him passed on almost a dozen years now, I guess I’ll never know exactly how he came across it, but I do know that like many things, he grew bored with it and passed it on to me. I remember it sitting in my nightstand for months before I read it. It was 1982, and I was 9 years old.
But when I did, I read it about a thousand times. Really, the photo doesn’t do justice to just how beat up this comic is. The back gives a better impression of the abuse it suffered before I learned to take care of my comics:
Still, this battered and beat up book is worth more to me than any mint-condition, mylar-sealed, autographed edition could ever be. This book opened a whole new world to me.
In the story, Wolverine is trapped on Broodworld, an alien planet dominated by a species that looks like giant reptillian killer bees. The brood lay their eggs in human hosts, who are comsumed when the eggs hatch. The new hatchling retains the special abilities of the host body, so the X-Men, with their mutant powers, were kidnapped and each implanted with the eggs of a brood queen.
Wolverine’s healing power, combined with his metal skeleton, saves him alone from this fate, though the process drives him nearly insane as he runs through the alien jungle, fleeing the brood as he battles the egg within. The issue ends with him triumphant, but knowing that his friends will not be so lucky. He resolves to kill them all himself before the eggs within them hatch.
Cliffhanger.
Words fail when I try to describe for you how this book captured my imagination. The nonstop action, the nonstop awesome, the triumph followed by the hopelessness of inevitable doom for his friends. It was beautiful, despite the fact that Wolverine spends the whole book covered in blood and monster guts.
The first superhero comic I ever bought myself was X-Men # 167, which closed out the brood storyline. I spent the next seven years hunting through back-issue bins and saving my allowance in order to get hold of issues # 163 – # 166 so that I could read the story as a whole. It was incredibly satisfying when I finally did.
These days, I have a collection of s different sort going, a collection of the different versions and imprints of The Painted Man from all over the world. Germany and Spain publish next month, but so far I have copies from the UK, Japan, Poland, and the US.
You can see them all below on my shelf where I keep 2 of each edition, guarded by the Jardir figure I have been customizing:
As you can see, including the ARCs, there are eleven printed editions, so far. Poland split the book in two, and Japan in three:
Showing how I squander my time, here’s them in a clock formation, in the order in which they were published (except for the last two, which I now realize should be reversed. The PM paperback published after the WM hardback):
I know this is quite unreltated to your post and am sorry if you feel cheated. I must have read your book 10 times now in the week I have owned it and love it… having said that I saw a flaw glaring right at me, what about the rest of the world… what about the technology of old? Wouldn’t it be funny to have Arlen (I’ll always call him Arlen no matter what he calls himself) find a mobile phone and do something funny with it because he has no clue what it is, or on a more story related area what if Arlen found a gun, figures out how it works and wards it’s bullets. I realise you’ve tried to set it in a world free of modern day devices and because of this the human struggle seems even more pronounced. Arlen mentions machines of old that could do the work of 20 men, why not try building one? You may have already written in these ideas or you may have already thought of them, decided they don’t fit with the story and forgotten them. I look forward to the desert spear with eagerness and have fantasies of Arlen facing off the Krasians single handedly, fighting demon lords and taking the fight down into the core. Can’t wait
P.S-where is the core?
Hi David,
I don’t feel cheated. I can’t imagine ever feeling so when someone tells me they read and enjoyed my work.
I don’t know that The lack of technology from the old world is a “flaw”, per se. Think of most of the modern machines and conveniences we enjoy today. They are made from precision parts that are themselves made by machines. The machines that make those parts are also made from parts made by machines, and on and on. For someone starting from more or less technological scratch, building, say, an internal combustion engine would be a monumental task requiring far more expended time and energy than the engine could ever save, if it could be built at all.
However, with that said, you can definitely expect technology to play an increasing role in the series as the new spirit of the human race takes hold, and some of those ancient seeds of knowledge, guarded through the centuries, find fertile ground once more. I think you’ll find the results quite satisfying.
I’m planning to title one of my future books “The Core”. Maybe I’ll tell everyone where it is then. 8o)
I remember playing that Atari video game and thinking it was the most sophisticated video tech I’d ever seen. Then again, so was Pong when it first hit. *sigh*.
I just made a video for the painted man using pictures from your site, I’m posting onto youtube now but the original music got taken off it so the music doesnt fit with the order and timing so well, check it out (my user name on youtube is Davnios and the is called The Painted Man Ad)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPmBYbWQtaw
In case anyone wants to check it out but can’t be bothered to search
In a perfect world I’d like to get some feedback on it so feel free to be mean 🙂
Dude, that is so awesome!
without any quarters in these pictures, I’m having a hard timke visualizing how big the books are.