Our First Cool Comics Guest and an Awesome Prize!

Hey Gosneyholics, my name is Kevin G. Summers and I’m your guest host on this very special 26^th Episode of Cool Comics in My Collection. I’ve been quietly following Ed’s blog since the beginning, so when the opportunity came up to show off a few comics from my own collection, I jumped at the chance.

Who the heck am I? I’m an author, just like Ed, and I’ve been collecting comics for more than 30 years. Some of my books are Legendarium (co-authored with Michael Bunker) and The Man Who Shot John Wilkes Booth. I also wrote the Star Trek Deep Space Nine story Isolation Ward 4, which was nominated for the 2002 Nebula Awards.

Audiobook Giveaway

I’m giving away an audiobook of my novelette The Paladin, which is my take on what would really happen if a teenager decided to become a superhero. This is the book summary: Devastated by the loss of his older brother, teenaged Jared Weiss dons a mask and cape in pursuit of vengeance. He becomes The Paladin. Unfortunately, the real world isn’t like a comic book, and wherever The Paladin goes, disaster is never far behind. Will Jared be able to avenge his brother before he winds up in a grave beside him? The audiobook also includes the short story No. 38, a coming of age tale that includes a famous comic as the McGuffin. All you have to do to enter the giveaway is leave a comment on this blog post.

Without further ado, here are some cool comics from MY collection:
 

Cool comics in my collection #1: Batman From the 30’s to the 70’s
OK, this technically isn’t a comic book, it’s a collection of long out of print Batman & Robin stories. My parents bought me this book when I was a little kid, a baby, and there’s sloppy coloring on the black & white pages to prove it. There literally isn’t a time in my life when I don’t remember having this book. It was my first exposure to comics and I must have read each story a hundred times. Those campy old Batman tales are my favorites… like the one where Batman and Robin went back in time and met Native American versions of themselves. I don’t care that they don’t fit the mold of the current dark and gritty version of the character, they were fun and they made me want to read more comics. This book was the gateway drug that made me a fan for life and it holds a cherished place on my shelf. You can probably find one on eBay, but I wouldn’t sell you mine.

Cool comics in my collection #2: Tales of the Teen Titans #44
This was the very first comic I ever bought. Dick Grayson/Robin was my favorite character and my comic collection began with this, the issue where Grayson became Nightwing. I picked it up from a spinner rack in a 7-11 near George Mason University, where my mother was taking classes at the time. I loved the book, and I went back and got the rest of the run. Some of those early Wolfman/Perez issues are worth more than this one, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that this book is in poor condition. The staples are loose and the pages yellowed because of how many times it’s been read. But my copy is signed by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. When Marv looked at the book he told me how much he loves to see well-loved books like this.

Cool comics in my collection #3: Jonah Hex Spectacular
I’m gonna be straight up with you and tell you that it was the modern Jonah Hex series that got me into the character. It was a great series, 10,000x better than the movie, and I loved the character. I started looking into back issues and, eventually, I assembled quite a collection of Jonah Hex comics. This one, however, is special. First of all, it’s rare, but that’s not why I like it. This story ends with an aged Jonah Hex being gunned down, his body stolen, stuffed and used in a Wild West Review! And if you’re familiar with the groundbreaking Kingdom Come series by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, you might just find out what happened to Jonah’s remains.

Cool comics in my collection #4: Have Gun, Will Travel #1
The numbering scheme with these Dell TV Comics is a train wreck, the stories and the art are childish and beneath the TV show, but I have a special place in my collection for these old comics. I love Have Gun, Will Travel and the adventures of Paladin. I was first introduced to the character when the kids from Stand By Me sung his theme song while they were walking on the train tracks, and it still holds up as one of the best TV westerns ever made. I have the full set, but the first issue has the best cover of the lot. The cover price is 10 FREAKIN’ CENTS, and you can bet I paid a lot more than that for this issue on eBay. It’s probably the oldest book in my collection, and one of the coolest.

Cool comics in my collection #5: The Unwritten #1
This book isn’t all that old… you could probably find one on eBay for cover price. I’m including it here because it is absolutely brilliant and, in my opinion, one of the finest examples of comics as literature. The Unwritten is a metaphysical story that was a huge part of the inspiration for my novel, Legendarium. Readers of Harry Potter (and strangely Winnie-the-Pooh) will find the characters oddly familiar as they traverse basically every genre from the classics to fables to choose your own adventure. This is a great series and I go back and reread it every couple of years.

Cool comics in my collection #6: The Escapists #1
This is weird. Do you remember Michael Chabon’s excellent novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay? If you’re into old comics, you should read that book. It won the Pulitzer in 2001 and introduced a new golden-aged superhero called The Escapist. That’s not what this mini-series was about. The Escapists was a mini-series about some modern comic creators that purchase that rights to The Escapist and attempt to publish a new book about the character. The book is a labor of love and a lot of things go wrong. This is a strange story that doesn’t fit easily into the superhero genre, but it’s the kind of book that sticks with you. I liked it enough to include on this list.

Cool comics in my collection #7: Tiny Titans #46
This was a comic for little kids that included a page where young fans could send in their drawings of the Tiny Titans. My daughter sent in a picture when she was 6 and they printed it. Remember that scene in It’s A Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart has a big stack of newspapers with his brother on the front cover? This proud Papa has about 20 copies of this issue.

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