Justice League of America (JLA) 29 Page 10 by Sekowsky/Sachs

It’s the summer of 1964; I was 8. My extended family decided to take our first and only trip to Mexico. We are going to drive to Saltillo and Monterey from Houston. At the time, that was a twelve hour drive (now it’s about 8 ).

There were 9 of us in a six seat, 1959 Plymouth station wagon (see Additional Images). My dad had retrofitted the car with seat belts, but only six.

Front row: Dad, little sister (almost 4), Mom
Middle row: Aunt Margaret, cousin Carter, Granny
The luggage area (no third row): me, my brother, cousin Katie.

The luggage was in a long wooden box on top of the car and covered in a tarp.

Do you have the vision?

Oh, yeah. No A/C. Windows to circulate air and damp towels were all we had.

Great trip and I could tell about it for a long time, but let’s skip to the end.

We’ve run out of time, but, more importantly, we’ve run out of cash! This is important because credit cards could not be used to buy gas. Yes, we were nearly stranded! Seriously. I had a couple of dollars and Granny had no more than five. We both gave that to my dad. We thought/hoped that that would be enough to get us to Brownsville where the gas credit cards would work!

We made it and stopped at a HoJo (Howard Johnson’s was the only real national chain at the time. They all had restaurants and we stopped for a meal.)

After eating, my brother and I started to explore. We found a comic book vending machine! I’d never seen one before and saw only one other also at a HoJo somewhere between Houston and Knoxville, TN.)

The machine sold comics for 15 cents. In it was JLA 29 with so many characters on the cover. It was too cool! I ran back and asked my dad for 15 cents of my money; he didn’t need it now that credit cards worked.

Bill and I bought that comic and studied it harder than we ever studied anything in school. I loved it.

It started a life long hobby.

When I started collecting, I never thought I'd find a page from that first comic and then in short order, I found six. Kathy and I had gone to NYC and that Sunday the Comic Art Con in Secaucus. While there I saw 5(!) pages from that comic. One really stuck with me, but it was expensive. Time passed and my wonder wife bought that page for me!


P.S. Latter Kathy had a 3D Shadow Box made of the cover of this comic. Check it out by clicking the image below:
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P.P.S. Still later, she hired Scott Shaw! to do a version of the JLA 29 cover using his characters Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew and the Justa Lotta Animals. Click to see it in all its glory.


P.P.P.S. I saw one more comic book vending machine. It was somewhere between Houston and Knoxville, TN. I bought DD #1 from it. Sadly, I didn't think it could really be a first issue and didn't take care of it. Sigh... :)

P.P.P.P.S. Don Mangus on FB provided a picture and write-up. It's not the same type of machine as the one that I used, but it's similar. See the Additional Images.

P.P.P.P.P.S. The page previous to this is on the CAF in the gallery of Arnie Grieves, you can see it here.