Based on the cover date, I assume that sometime in December 1972 I went with my mom to what is now known as the Merrick “Bank Plaza” Post Office. It’s quite possible that she was sending our Christmas cards, or buying stamps for them. As she parked, I asked if I could go to Merrick Stationery, a half block away.

I wanted to buy a comic book.

I’d never bought a comic book before.

I’d bought Mad Magazines at various newsstands around town, Peanuts paperbacks at Modell’s (mentioned in my Ed’s Glass Works entry from Sept 2010), but never a comic book. I did own some comic books that I didn’t buy, and weren’t bought for me, either. (A subject for another entry.) I’d casually read some comic books at Camp Trexler, the barber shop, and at friends’ houses.

So there I was, part of the incoming 7th grade at Brookside Junior High; I’d probably been watching the Spider-man TV cartoon for years.

I’m gonna buy a comic book!

Merrick Stationery had a nice display for their comic books, to my mind. Right inside the door a six foot long, multi-shelf magazine rack with the books lined up front with maybe only a half inch of their spine showing. No real full covers shown. No rickety, squeaky spinner rack, but somehow it was fine. It was neat and organized. I still like how it was done, considering the comic books were just cheap, pulp entertainment, not collectors’ items. It was easy to find the comic book you wanted.

I bought the Spider-man comic book, and went to the car.

Took the comic book home.

It didn’t excite me.

I was not hooked.

I didn’t buy another comic book for a few months, and only did so because I wanted to be able to participate in the lending at Camp Trexler.

Years later, I learned that the story, “The Deadly Designs of the Disruptor!” in Amazing Spider-man 117, was part one of a two part re-working of a story from 1968.

It was part one of a two part story, and I wasn’t interested in reading part two.

The day Spider-man failed.