DROOM!

In addition to having a very cool cover, this comic, TALES TO ASTONISH #9 is also one of the first comics I can recall reading. The very first comic I ever read was FANTASTIC FOUR #4. The second comic book that I can recall reading was a Jesse Marsh Four Color Comics issue of JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS from Dell Comics. I really liked that one, because I thought the tharks in the story were a passable version of triceratops.

But this book somehow ended up in my hands when I was probably five years old or so. My parents didn't sell comic books in their grocery store and they wouldn't open their first bookstore for a couple of more years. So my mom must have bought me this issue at the used book shop down the street from their grocery store.

The book contains all three of the guys who served as the core of the bullpen in these very early days of what would soon be Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby is there, as is Steve Ditko, and Don Heck makes an appearance. The issue is pretty good, and strangely it's Don Heck who gets to do the giant lizard story and not Kirby or Ditko who generally did all of the giant monster stories in these books. Interestingly, the big lizard is named "Droom", the same as what is now considered to be Marvel's first Silver Age superhero, a cat named Doctor Droom who was kind of like Dr. Strange and created by Jack Kirby. As I've recounted here before, Doctor Droom appeared in one of my favorite pre-hero Marvel titles, AMAZING ADVENTURES.

DROOM! THE LIVING LIZARD! (As opposed to a dead one.)