Billy Barrett (on left) & Lewis Forro

Two young comic collectors having their picture made in the self-photo booth at K-Mart near Montgomery Crossroads & White Bluff Road. Billy sold his DC collection to Lewis and went on to live a normal life. Lewis continued on with his life long obsession of collecting comic books.

When I got to Billy's house and thumbed through the DC comics I was pleased with with the 60 or so comics he had. They dated back to the early 1960s and I had never seen any of them before. I enjoyed reading the Superman stories with the bottle city of Kandor, the retarded albino Bizarro Supermans and the different colors of kryptonite that affected Superman in a different way depending on the color. I remember wondering that since Krypton was just one planet thousands of light years from Earth when it exploded, how did so much of it find its way across the gulfs of outer space to land on Earth? Even though I enjoyed the stories and wasn't a confirmed Marvel collector until later in 1965 and still open to persuasion, for whatever reasons these comics didn't drive me to start collecting new DC comics. The only DC title I ever seriously collected was The Metal Men and I don't remember how I got hooked on them. I don't recall Billy having any of those. None of these DC comics I got from Billy survived the 1960s. I don't remember what I did with them. Maybe Mom, like many mothers in those days, threw them out when she figured I was tired of them.

Today, I still have a few vague fragmentary memories from some of these stories. So, in recent years when DC started doing reprints in their hardcover Archive lines of World's Finest and The Man Of Tomorrow which had the Action and Superman titles, I started buying them to see if I could locate and rekindle some old memories. No luck. DC cancelled those Archive books before I came across any stories I remembered. I was especially curious about 2 stories I can remember. In one story, Superman and Batman had a contest to prove who was the better detective. Superman was so obsessed with winning that he started neglecting more important duties that were way beyond what Batman could do. So, to serve the greater good, Batman deliberately allowed Superman to win without letting Superman know Batman had taken a dive. In another story Superman and Batman were rounding up some bank robbers. A bullet bounced off Superman's chest and seriously wounded Batman. Batman developed an inferiority complex which led him to give up being Batman, so Superman had to figure a way to restore Batman's confidence. I don't remember how Supes did it. If anybody knows which 2 issues these stories appeared in, please let me know.

David Miller, like Roy Davis and Bill Carter lived in Paradise Park and so was within easy bicycle range. David had a nice Fantastic Four collection but he was devoted to it (he liked Crystal the Inhuman a lot) and had no interest in selling. When I pressed the point he told me I already had enough comic books. He eventually boxed up his comics and put them in storage and that's the last I saw of them. I re-established contact with David 33 years later through an internet high school reunion website and asked him about his Fantastic Four comics. He said he had sold them years ago. I guess he sold them to someone he figured didn't have enough comics already.

Under questioning, Bill Carter admitted he thought he had an Incredible Hulk comic. It sounded like #1 from 1962 to me by his description. I badgered him into searching for it in his attic. He reported back and said he couldn't find it and he wasn't going to try again since it was to hot in his attic to spend much time up there. Bill was still a great guy anyway. We took judo classes together at the YMCA and spent lots of time comparing notes on our favorite science fiction writers. He preferred Arthur C. Clarke and I was a Ray Bradbury man.

The Amazing Spider-Man #1, 1963 & Stange Tales #88, 1961

David Davenport sold me both of these for $6.00 in 1968 at Bartlett Junior High. They were the best $6.00 investment I ever made.

With David Davenport I had some luck. I remember that like me, David liked reading Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. He especially liked Tarzan and I remember him having some of those 1960s Ballantine Books Tarzan paperbacks. Naturally the subject of comic books came up and David assured me that he used to have a large collection of old Marvel comics but had since disposed of it. I remember him bragging about his former copy of Fantastic Four Annual #1 that was so nice it looked like "it had been pressed between glass." I did make a trip to his house and found 1 mangled issue of Strange Tales with the Thing and the Torch. I don't remember which one and I got rid of it somewhere along the line since it was to beat up to keep in my collection. Later however, David came through me for me. Apparently he still had some contacts with comic collectors he had known when he still had his collection. He showed up at school with 2 comics, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 in solid Very Good condition and Strange Tales #88 in rougher shape. I paid David his asking price of $6.00 for both of them without making a fuss. I knew a good deal when I saw it. In 1968 Spider-Man #1 was about $12.00 on any mail order dealer's price list. When I read the Strange Tales #88 book I remembered having read it years before at my grandmothers house in Birmingham, Alabama. That stoked some pleasant memories and I still consider Strange Tales #88 to be one of my favorite pre-Marvel monster books. I still have both those books today.

I finally hit some real paydirt when I met Billy Eitel. I had seen Billy around school but didn't know him. But he got wind of me being a comic book collector and one day approached me in the Bartlett library and asked me if I collected comics. He was pleased to hear about some of the Marvel comics I was able to rattle off and we quickly became friends. I never went to his house but he visited me at least once. I remember he was thrilled to see my copy of Fantastic Four #19 which he had never seen before. I don't think we exchanged any books as we both wanted to keep what we had.

After graduating from Bartlett after the 9th grade Billy and I both started at H.V. Jenkins High School. One day in 1970 while sitting in class Billy said he wanted to sell his comics collection to me. He only wanted $40.00 for everything. I remember thinking to myself, "I'm robbing this guy blind."

Tales Of Suspense #16, 1961

I never met anybody who lived in Savannah that had a nice condition pre-Marvel comic like this. I got this from an out-of-town flea market dealer set up at Oglethorpe Mall. The same dealer bought the Marvel collection I bought from Billy Eitel.

Billy Eitel's Marvel collection

Billy sold me all his Marvel comics for $40.00 circa 1970. I ran this ad in The Rocket's Blast Comic-Collector #85, 1971 but no one wanted to pay my high prices.

I may have added some of Billy's books to my collection, I don't remember. I did want to sell most of Billy's books since most of them were duplicates of mine in no better condition and in those days I didn't see any reason to have more than 1 copy of a book. I gave all the Marvel Western comics like Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt Outlaw to my cousins who were visiting from Birmingham. I think I sold The Incredible Hulk #6 and a few other rare books to dealers I saw in the leading comic book advertising fanzine of that time, The Rocket's Blast Comic-Collector aka RB&CC. A little later I ran an ad in RB&CC #85 in 1971 to sell the rest of the collection. I was greedy and priced the books to high so none of them sold. So, I just put them away in storage. Then sometime later I was walking through Savannah's only big mall which had opened in 1969, Oglethorpe Mall on Abercorn Expressway. There was a collectibles show going on with out of town dealers set up inside the mall. One of them had comic books for sale and I think had a sign up asking to buy old comic books. On impulse I decided this was a good way to unload the rest of Billy's collection. I went home and got most of the books and came back to the mall and sold them for 10 cents each I think. I was questioning the low price and the dealer explained to me there was a lot of overhead in his business. He had to pay for the space he had at the mall and burn gasoline to lug his merchandise around the country. He did have 2 relatively high grade pre-Marvel monster books to my surprise which I bought. The only one I remember is Tales Of Suspense #16. The price was $15.00 per book. I think he gave me a small discount to offset the low price he was paying for my comics.

So, all I had left now of Billy's collection was his Amazing Spider-Man run which I at least had the sense to hold back and not sell for a dime each like the others. Sometime about 1972 after I had started at Armstrong State College I paid the college library to put the Spider-Man comics into 2 bound leather volumes. I think it costs $20.00 per volume. I still have those volumes today. They have served me as well as reading copies and to remind me of those innocent, happy days when you could still buy 1960s Marvel comics for about a dime each.