Hooked!
It happened to me the way it happens to a lot of other people out there that first get hooked on it….at a young age.
It all started for me back in 1969 when my Father brought the stuff back with him from the road. My Father was a truck driver and what he brought back was….COMIC BOOKS! At first I started out with the kid stuff. Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse, Andy Panda, Uncle Scrooge, but within a few years I moved up to the more mature stuff. That’s right I’m talking about SUPERHERO COMICS!
I had gone on a shopping trip with my Mother to the local drug store. I went to the spinner rack to get my weekly fill of kids comics, when suddenly, I spun the spinner and on a cover of one of the books there he was, a man in a bright red suit with a lighting bolt in the center of his chest trying to rip off his mask while a crowd watched behind him. It was a new discovery for me, a character called “The Flash.” I took the book home with me that day, read it and I was instantly hooked on super heroes. I would still occasionally pick up a random Woody Woodpecker or Richie Rich here or there, but for the most part, my new pals were Superman, Flash and Green Lantern.
It wasn’t long before I met other kids who were also hooked on comics, but back then you kinda had to keep your love of comics on the lowdown for fear the local bully would find out and pound you or worse yet, be labeled a nerd for life! I first began trading comics with a kid up the block. He introduced me to Marvel comics and I introduced him to DC! He shared his love of The Avengers with me while I told him about the exploits of the Justice League of America.
One day my friend Steven came over and told me about a place he went to called “The Complete Paperbacker.” He said it was run by this old couple and they had boxes upon boxes of old comics there. The old couple took in the comics, but didn’t pay that much attention to them as they mostly just cared about old books. The old lady would take a pencil and judge what grade she felt the comics were in and mark on the back in a small corner ” .10,” “.15,” “.25″. I couldn’t believe it! I begged my Mom to take me there and drop me off for a while and sure enough my pal Steven was right. On the left side of the store in a roped off area were tons of old DC comics (I was not aware of the term “Silver Age” back then.) and behind the counter were tons of Marvel. She said the Marvels were more popular, so she kept them behind the counter. I didn’t care though I was a DC man and when it came to “The Complete Paperbacker,” I was hooked!
I would ride my bike up to the used bookshop once or twice a week and came home with lots of comics. When it came to comics I had no prejudice. I read everything from DC I could get my hands on. Sgt. Rock, Metamorpho, Teen Titans, Enemy Ace, Metal Men, Sugar and Spike, Hawk and Dove, even Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis comics. When I wasn’t getting old comics from the Paperbacker, my Mother would take me to the local liquor stores to pick up my weekly allowance of new titles which I would then swap with my pals!
Finally around 1982, I encountered my first comic shop California Comics. I walked in and they had every title I could imagine. Marvel, DC and kids comics were all there, but they also had tons of other comics I wasn’t familiar with. Starslayer, Jon Sable Freelance, Cerebus, E-Man and so many more soon joined my ever expanding comic book collection. It was a whole new world of Independent comics and (you guessed it!) I was hooked!
In 1984, I attended my first ever comic convention held by Creation Entertainment in an area of the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. There was so many dealers selling so many things. Buttons, T-Shirts, Toys, old Sci-Fi movies and of course Comics! There were not only dealers, but artists there as well trying to sell their own self-published titles (I still remember a young Jim Valentino peddling his creator owned title “Normal-Man” there.). There were also celebrities there. The actress who played that green skinned lady on an episode of “Star Trek,” The guy who had a minor part in Star Wars and then there were the big guns Jimmy Doohan, George Takei and the biggest star of them all Stan “The Man” Lee who greeted me with a hardy handshake and a loud “Excelsior!” After that experience when it came to comic conventions I was hooked!
As the years passed, comics came and went (especially in the 90′s, but we’ll get to that decade in a later blog). Comic book stores came and went too. Eventually I came across one where the staff was friendly and knowledgeable, the store was clean and the Manager (who also happened to BE the staff back then) was awesome. It was a tiny comic store in a tiny strip mall on Paramount Blvd. called Metropolis Comics.
Eventually this tiny store moved over to Firestone Blvd. in Downey where it shared a building with a music store. It was there that I became so hooked on the place that I ended up working there and would over time, eventually become Store Manager. After awhile the staff packed up the store and moved it where it is today on Bellflower Blvd. in good ol’ Bellflower, Ca. Over the years staff members have come and gone, we’ve had lots of comic creators come by and visit, we’ve changed owners, we’ve even just recently gone global as we’ve just opened an online store (www.metrohero.com).
Once in a while I’ll think of my Father and how he used to bring comics home for me from the road and just how something that small and simple changed my life forever. So thanks Dad, thanks for getting me hooked (and for not bringing me home a football or catcher’s mitt). 
John “The Bear” Berry
