“Heroes, Villains, and Me” is a periodic article on Geeky KOOL by Larry Litle about the world of comic books and my reaction to it. “Heroes, Villains, and Me” is not a comic book review article. I will write about current events, speculation and rumors, or my own wacky thoughts about the world of comic books.
Merry Christmas to all of our readers on Geeky KOOL! I love this season. To celebrate the season, I decided to talk about Christmas and comic books. When I started thinking about writing this, I had no idea where I would go. You can see below that my ADD kicked in and I went all over the place.
The first thing I thought about was all of the comic Christmas specials from years past. What I recall about the Christmas specials is that the stories were not really very good. They were often pressed to tell a seasonal story. Superman,Batman, X-Men, or Spiderman saving Santa and delivering presents is a cute idea but the stories never seemed to well thought out or told. Even as a kid reading these stories, I remember thinking that I wasted my money on those comics.
I was really hoping that I could tell you about a fun comic from years gone by that I loved. But I refuse to fabricate a lie just because I want to write about it. I will post chapters from my fantasy novel when I want to tell fiction on Geeky KOOL.
I then remembered that I used to receive comics for Christmas from various people. Everyone knew that Larry loved comic books. As a kid, I used to receive an assortment of comics. Some of them were new from the comic racks in December and some were pre-owed issues. Either way, I always enjoyed receiving them. I can’t you about a single issue I received that way. I am sure I got some good comics but none are jumping out at me at the moment.
There was a time in the not so distant past that I would receive a gift certificate to comic shops. I always enjoyed going shopping and picking out comics after Christmas. After a while, people found this to be a bit impersonal so they stopped getting gift certificates.
Then my mind started wandering to the many gifts of Christmas past. Some of my favorite toys and presents were super hero related. My all time favorite gift was the Millennium Falcon for my Star Wars action figures, which isn’t comic related but still very geeky and KOOL But very close to that was my Spiderman race car set with a loop track. I know, I know. Spiderman doesn’t need a race car and it wasn’t the infamous Spidey Buggy from the 70s (very short lived). I also adored an Incredible Hulk action figure from the 70s that I received.
Probably the biggest let down at Christmas was comic related. It was a Spiderman action figure. This action figure had the coolest commercial or at least I thought so. Spiderman could actually climb the wall. That was so KOOL! He would web bad guys and capture them, just like the comic. It was almost like you were actually hanging with Spiderman himself.
I had been asking for this action figure for months. It was at the top of my Christmas list. If I got this toy and nothing else, then I would have been happy. This toy taught me the hard lesson not to get my hopes up just because the commercial made it look KOOL.
If only the commercials showed the full story. This action figure had limitations that I didn’t realize. I was made of hard plastic and no part of the body would bend. He has one are stuck straight up so you could pull the string to the top of a door handle or dresser drawer. The other hand was down by his side. For him to hit a bad guy, then you had to make him horizontal make like he was flying. And the web was the most disappointing. It was a frail plastic “net” that you could throw over bad guys but it ripped in less than a week.
A week after Christmas that year, I was very disappointed in the one toy that I had to have. It wasn’t much fun to play with. It was twice as big as most of my action figures. I felt similar to Ralphie from a Christmas Story when he realized that he had been duped by the Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring. I guess we all probably have those stories where our childhood innocence was taken by marketing of a bad product..
Well, those are my random Christmas Thoughts about comics and comic related toys. Please feel free to leave us your stories about Christmas and comics or Christmas disappointments.
Have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
Stay Geeky My Friends!
