This is a positive thread to make Comics General better.

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I have an old Baxter milk crate,old enough to fit Lps anyhow.. I love it as well, my last name and all. Do you have a double maybe of the milk jar?

By milk jar I take it you mean the quarter pint bottle:

I only have the one but Baxter's bottles should not be that difficult to find. There should be a few milk bottle dealers at the antique shows in your area. Here's a good website picturing Baxter's and other Ontario milk bottles:

Ontario Milk Bottles

Also, do you have a Nessbit Orange Soda bottle? From up east....

Several. Which one do you like the best?

Very nice, your MAN must keep busy dusting.

No dusting. There are doors on all the display cabinets to eliminate any need for dusting! Here are a couple of pictures that I asked The WOMAN to take of the bottle pantry this morning:

Very good set up.I believe I like the short Nesbitts best.Oldest?No idea was Californian.My father said he only ever saw them in Nova Scotia.

West Coast Avengers Venom Bomb is the bomb!Read it....NOW!

I have an old Baxter milk crate,old enough to fit Lps anyhow.. I love it as well, my last name and all. Do you have a double maybe of the milk jar?

 

By milk jar I take it you mean the quarter pint bottle. I only have the one but Baxter's bottles should not be that difficult to find. There should be a few milk bottle dealers at the antique shows in your area. Here's a good website picturing Baxter's and other Ontario milk bottles:

 

Ontario Milk Bottles

 

Also, do you have a Nessbit Orange Soda bottle? From up east....

 

Several. Which one do you like the best?

 

 

 

 

Very nice, your MAN must keep busy dusting.

 

No dusting. There are doors on all the display cabinets to eliminate any need for dusting! Here are a couple of pictures that I asked The WOMAN to take of the bottle pantry this morning:

 

 

 

 

need a baby huey glass ??

No, I have one of those. I'd like an Andy Panda or Mighty Mouse glass though!

I only have a bunch of Mickey and Minnie glasses...and a cool clear glass round piggy bank with Mickey on one side and Minnie on the other...

Hepcat...or any one...do you have a Stubby (brand) Soda bottle? Frightening I wish I could upload...oh,and looking,nice McDonalds Peter Pan and Fantasia and some Nesquick..

Hello,do you have the old plastic McDonalds Looney Toons Mugs?

Hepcat...or any one...do you have a Stubby (brand) Soda bottle?

Several. Here's a quick shot:

The ten ounce one on the right is the one I remember being sold from ice water coolers circa 1960 in London, Ontario.

Nifty.I have the one second from left.My grandpa gave it to me!

Silver Age comics were a fabulous value proposition compared to the comics published these days. They were packed with enough features and other stuff to keep a young fellow engrossed in the pages for a full half hour anyway. Let's take Brave and the Bold 40 as an example:

My copy has a subscription crease and I'd really like to upgrade it but it's another one of those less highly prized titles that are so very difficult to find in high grade.

Nonetheless, the issue features Joe Kubert art throughout and a cover with a fellow I'll call Gorgo Jr. hatching from an egg! You're telling me that Fantastic Four 1 beats that? Ffffttttttt!!!!

Flipping it open reveals DC's explanation for the price increase to twelve cents.

Don't remind me! Comics should cost a dime I say. The splash page showcases not Gorgo Jr. but the villain of the story:

It seems that Cave Carson is exploring a newly discovered cavern overseas with the other two members of his team, big titted blond geologist Christie Madison, and muscular Bulldozer Smith. All of a sudden they're surprised by a fellow piloting a giant crystal:

Returning to the surface, they fail to recognize Shierra Hall who has cleverly disguised herself with a black hairdo. I did though! They do, however, learn that a collector of old books by the name of Zenod may be responsible for reckless crystal driving. After all, anybody who collects old books must have something wrong with him, right? It seems that Zenod got a hold of a manuscript written by ancient sorcerer Kardok.

Not bothering with details like getting a search warrant, they break into Zenod's house and search it. There they learn that Kardok buried three crystals, which would leave whoever found them with enormous power!

Cave and colleagues decide that Zenod must be stopped. After all, you can't trust a collector of old books with crystals, now can you? So in hot pursuit of Zenod they stumble upon Gorgo Jr.

A short interlude here while we examine DC's other offerings. Hmmmmm, this Space Ranger fellow seems to be a regular hero, even if he doesn't have his feet planted as firmly on present day earth as Cave Carson. And Peter Puptent here deserves his own title:

Hmmmmm. And this Batman Giant would appear to offer plenty of reading for a quarter but it's all reprints of stuff available at the barber shop. I'll pass on that for now.

This Let Science Serve You page tells me nothing:

I'd rather read Peter Puptent. Ahhhh, but here's a great splash page with Gorgo Jr. front and center:

But, but, but, Cave kills Gorgo Jr. by unleashing an underground river on the poor fellow!

Bad man! Here he could have been spending some quality time feeling out Christie but he instead opts to kill perhaps the sole surviving member of an endangered species.

Zenod in the meantime tries to get away from his stalkers by fleeing back to the surface with the second crystal.

Undeterred, Cave and company follow in the mole machine. Zenod desperately tries to shake off his stalkers by setting an oil derrick aflame and forcing them into a railroad maintenance shed where he hopes they will do a slow burn thus saving countless other endangered species.

Looking over another couple of DC's offerings in the meantime, I'm more intrigued by the Challengers of the Unknown. This Blackhawk quasi military outfit never actually appealed to me.

The Science Says You're Wrong feature page is actually pretty good:

I'll pass over this Journey to the End of the Earth page and read it later. (Not a bad story of Greeks discovering the New World though!)

Another splash page. Hmmmm, rock monsters, eh?

So Cave and crew escape their fiery trap; they always do.

And down they go to menace poor Zenod again. He unleashes the previously mentioned rock monsters on them with the third crystal:

They defeat the rock monsters though. Cave even finds the time to rig up a booby trap in the mole machine and thus captures Zenod in the act of grand theft mole machine!

What's this? Hmmmmm, a Superman Annual. I'll give that one a pass for the same reason that I gave the Batman a pass. In fact, I'm sick of seeing all these full page ads for Annuals! I want to see what's coming in the next issue of Showcase!

Toy soldiers? No. I like the ad for the Civil War set better. Where would I get $1.25 anyway?

And I'm not going to get sucked in for a coin catalogue either. I've never seen a coin anything like that one in my pocket change. But now it seems unreal that we all actually had honest to goodness silver coinage in our pockets before governments made sure that no vestigial trace of intrinsic value remained in currencies.

Hmmmm, nice pic though on the inside back cover! A lot of my favourites!

And the back cover?

Yes, those Revolutionary War soldiers look interesting alright! I just happen to be far short the $1.98 price right now. I mean in Canada that was almost 1.2 ounces of silver at the time!

No interest whatsoever in that Frontier Cabin though. I was only four years old at the time the whole Davy Crockett thing hit big in the U.S. and none of that frontier hero stuff resonated with me. I was all about super heroes and outer space and monsters.

Brilliant my friend.Thank you.

My own first exposure to comics was from the comic section of the Saturday London Free Press in the late fifties. The Uncle Remus and his Tales of Brer Rabbit strip may have been the very first to capture my attention:

I'm still a fan of the Uncle Remus characters after all these years and I have dozens of copies of the strip in my collection today.

The first comic books I can remember reading in the spring and summer of 1959 featured Felix's Nephews Inky & Dinky. I recall my buddy and I from across the street thought that Dinky was a very cool name! They were of course rather beat up and I have no clue as to the actual issue(s) but here's one from my collection today:

The first comics I can recall buying were the Cicero's Cat 1 and 2 in the summer of 1959. I bought them at Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road in London, Ontario and I very clearly remember my father initially telling me to take #2 back because he thought I already had a copy!

Though I was already familiar with Superman and Batman comics from the barber shop or wherever, the first superhero comics I distinctly remember reading were the Adventures of the Fly in early 1961. I remember reading them at Lamont & Perkins drugstore a block away on Wortley Road before they chased me out, at which point I'd head for Tyler & Zettel's pharmacy a few blocks away. I believe they only stocked Archie, Dell and Classics Illustrated comics in these drug stores which is why the Fly was the first superhero to catch my attention. I'm not sure which issue of the Adventures of the Fly first captured my attention but it may have been #11 or #12:

Bethlehem copy

In any event, I very clearly remember seeing these ads in Adventures of the Fly 13 heralding the introduction of Fly Girl and the Jaguar:

I also read through the Adventures of the Jaguar 1 when it first hit the newstand:

It included this dandy ad for the mysterious Fly Girl:

A copy of Space Adventures belonging to the older brother of a buddy of mine featuring the powerful Captain Atom further whetted my appetite for the pajama brigade. The memory of these pages featuring a Nikita Kruschev like character has never left me:

The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in the spring of 1962 which a buddy on a farm outside of London had. I still remember how it filled me with a sense of awe and wonder at the time.

A copy of Justice League of America 8 that I read at summer camp a couple of months later that same year clinched the deal:

When I got home from summer camp, I marched right down to Les' Variety on the corner to check out the comics on the spinner rack. The first superhero comic I bought was Justice League 14.

I eventually succeeding in trading for all but a couple of the issues of Justice League down to issue #4:

The other superhero comics I bought off the spinner rack at Les' Variety as part of that first batch included Detective 307 and Batman 150:

An Adventures of the Jaguar and a Superboy or a World's Finest were also part of that first batch which soon ended up in the trash when my older sister convinced my mother that comics would surely corrupt me. And of course she was right. They have!

But my appetite for more comics had already been whetted by DC house ads such as these (although I haven't a clue as to where I first saw them):

Within a few months I was back to buying comics again and here I am today!

Hepcat,your posts like above are so fantastic and cool,they not only make comics general a better place,but enrich the entire place in my opinion!Thanks so much for the great stories and pictures and tales of you buying comics in the lovely town of London Ontario....I really look forward to more!You are indeed a true Hepcat,awesome guy and all.around cool feline.

I would also like to throw out there that board member Gunnz is a super awesome cool guy.You rock man,really,and roll!!Peace and joy and love to all,

Happy Collecting!

Hepcat,your posts like above are so fantastic and cool,they not only make comics general a better place,but enrich the entire place in my opinion!Thanks so much for the great stories and pictures and tales of you buying comics in the lovely town of London Ontario....I really look forward to more!

Alright then!

There was a classic New York style candy store on Richmond Street in downtown London, Ontario directly across the street from St. Peter's School where I was obligated by my parents to attend extracurricular language classes between 4:00 and 5:30 Saturday afternoons. Davis Variety was its name. It had the obligatory lunch counter which the fellow worked himself. I was never drawn to get anything at the lunch counter though (not that I would have had the money anyway of course). Unlike the lunch counters at the downtown Metropolitan, Kresge and Woolworths stores, it was pretty spartan and dingy and just didn't appeal to me. Mr. Davis himself was almost a comic book caricature of the old guy working a hot grill and his lunch counter never seemed to have any customers on Saturday afternoons. He probably got the bulk of his business frying up breakfast and lunch for the teachers at St. Peter's. And of course everybody smoked and read newspapers in those days including the teachers and the respective bishops, priests and staff at the adjacent St. Peter's Basilica and St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral.

The Davis Variety had most everything else to tempt a young boy with a quarter or two in his pocket though. It was one of the very few stores I knew that stocked Black Cat Bubble Gum which was licorice flavoured and was somehow chewier than Bazooka or even Dubble Bubble. I remember happily chewing on Black Cat and blowing black bubbles for hours!

I also very clearly remember buying baseball cards at Davis Variety every so often:

The wooden magazine rack was located on the other side of the store from the lunch counter and was thus well situated to sneak a peak at the insides of the titty mags. There would of course have been something wrong with any little boy who wouldn't glance at pictures of bare naked ladies given a chance. In fact, I'm sure that the priests from St. Peter's and St. Paul's, if not the bishops themselves, would have been taking the occasional peak as well.

It was at the Davis Variety's magazine rack though where I first encountered Green Lantern 26, 28 and 29 and the excitement I felt seeing those issues for the first time is still seared in my mind to this very day. In fact, I'm sure those comics are the reason why I still remember Davis' so vividly.

While St. Peter's and St. Paul's cathedrals are still there, 1979 was the last year for St. Peter's School and the Davis Variety has also been gone for decades. I have a vague recollection of getting a chocolate milkshake that really wasn't very good at Davis' but sadly I never got to sample a cheeseburger. You never know what you've got till it's gone.

Bittersweet memories eh?The corner store that I used to buy comic books with my Papa before the drive in on weekends is now a vacuum store and the drive in long gone....still have a few of the old beat up comic books though!

Keep it 100

Superb memory sharing hepcat !!

Is it not great?Hoping for more soon!

PS hi gang,good to see you!!

I found some really good pictures of the London, Ontario that was during my formative years. Unfortunately the only thing they lack is me!

Here's a picture of the Arena Dairy Bar on York Street sometime in the fifties:

Sadly I have no memory of this old time dairy bar but it must have been located right by the old London Arena a few blocks away from our house. I have really fond memories of going to the London Arena for the Labatt Brewing Company's employee Xmas party with cake, ice cream, cookies, a magician and finally Santa Claus with a specially wrapped present for each and every kid in attendance!

The London Arena also featured roller skating and wrestling with grapplers such as Whipper Billy Watson, Johnny Valentine, D*ck "the Bulldog" Brower and Sweet Daddy Siki in the fifties and sixties. I also attended a concert by Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention in the London Arena in 1972.

Robb's Dairy Bar was located two very short blocks away from where my card collecting buddy Tony lived. Drat, but it closed sometime in the late fifties and I don't remember ever seeing it.

One of the things that I do remember from those early years and sorely miss is milk delivery in returnable refillable bottles!

I remember Borden's, Silverwood Dairy, London Pure Milk Company and Mark Ayres Dairy delivery vehicles prowling London's leafy streets:

My home town dairy, Silverwood, grew by acquisition to become the largest dairy in Canada by the late sixties and still provided home delivery service in certain markets well into the seventies(eighties?).

Both Silverwood Dairy and the London Pure Milk Company still had horse drawn milk wagons wending their way along London streets until sometime in the mid-sixties. It was back in 1963-64 that my mother and I saw that the train car being backed into the Labatt Breweries plant had somehow collided with a Silverwood's horse much to the detriment of the latter. Her uncharitable comment at the time was that Labatt didn't want people to drink milk.

Here are a couple of pictures of Silverwood's milk wagons:

Here's a picture of a more modern sixties state-of-the-art London Pure Milk Company wagon:

We also had home bread delivery from London's own Lewis Bakeries for a while when we lived in Manor Park on the edge of London in the fifties. Many a housewife's household budget was blown succumbing to the pastry temptations proferred that day by the bread man! Best of all though my buddy Dave had a job helping the Jackson's Bakeries bread man make his deliveries Saturday mornings. Talk about a marriage made in heaven! All the delivery man had to do was drive since he had a young boy doing most of the work for him, and Dave got to ride around in a very cool bread delivery truck and run to each house on the route carrying bread in a basket! I'll have to ask Dave whether he received anything more than free tarts and other pastries for his efforts....

I also have a hazy memory of having journeyed to the beach with my mother and sister on the London & Port Stanley Railway one summer day in 1957(?). It would have been on an interurban car like this beautifully restored one that's part of the collection of the Hallton County Radial Railway Museum:

I have a distinct memory of having boarding the train for the return journey but looking longingly at Mackie's across the road and wishing we could get some chips:

"Potatoes? Potatoes you can have at home!" would have been my mother's response. To this very day though any trip to Port Stanley isn't complete for me without getting an orangeade and a plate of perch, hot dog, fries, popcorn, ice cream cone or whatever else at Mackie's. Here it is these days:

On the extreme right hand side of this picture of the main Richmond Street and Dundas Street intersection of London from 1960 or so the United Cigar Store sign is visible. I bought many of my comics in that store.

Look at the riot of neon in this picture looking west along Dundas Street circa 1960!

Here's a picture of the Kresge store in downtown London circa 1952, the year of my birth:

That was the store where I first saw a Marx Great Garloo in 1961 and discovered the Aurora monster model kits a year or so later. Just beyond it the Metropolitan(Met) store can be seen. The Met's lunch counter did such a thriving business that they had a satellite take-out counter at the front of the store where office workers could quickly grab a hamburger, hot dog, French fries, coffee, donut, etc. to go. Across the street to the left in the picture was a Woolworth store. Directly to the right of the camera man was a Zellers store.

My mother used to take me in tow and haunt them all. I lived for hitting her up for a steel bowl of ice cream at one of the lunch counters after she was fully shopped out.

And here's a picture from the fifties of Cowan Hardware on Dundas Street where I used to go to admire toys and model kits.

Cowan's was also where I raced my Monogram Ferrari slot cars after a slot car track was installed upstairs in 1965(?). Good times! Just out of the picture was the Ontario Conservatory of Music where I lugged my accordion on the bus for my weekly lessons. Not entirely good times.

Finally here's a great shot of the Victoria Theater circa 1956 which was just off Dundas on a side street.

The Victoria was a classic grindhouse with a balcony from which kids would fling flattened popcorn boxes onto the poor unfortunates below. This of course would prompt warnings from chagrined ushers that throwing objects from the balcony was strictly forbidden.

The Hyland was my neighbourhood theatre in London where in the early sixties I used to take in Saturday matinee double features with a cartoon for $0.20:

Here it is these days: