keep watching the skies

There it is – the first comic I distinctly remember owning, Gold Key’s UFO and Outer Space #14 from June 1978. I say distinctly because I do remember reading and owning other comics prior to that one, mostly Disney stuff with dollops of Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman folded over the years into a hazy mnemonic stew of disassociated panels and captions. (I used to have a coverless copy of this comic for years in the antique school desk my parents set up for me in the front porch, but I only remembered it recently when I came across another copy in the local comic shop’s back issue bins.) However, it was this repositioning (and reprinting, without regard for subsequent historical events) of the 1960’s UFO and Flying Saucers series to capitalize on the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that got me to thinking about comics as something separate from other forms of kid lit, and as a hobby in and of themselves. (Oh, for access to a working time machine….)

Yo, Earth-joik, the sign sez 'permit parking only!' Whassamatta, you can't read Lunarish?
The bagged three-pack the comic was in, along with another set which included this issue of Captain America (which may or may not have sparked my brother’s interest in Cap) was given to me by my father, who stole it from my uncle. I can’t recall the exact circumstances behind this petty theft. My father’s younger brother is what a charitable soul might call a character, meaning that he was the type of guy who would spin donuts in the police station parking lot while shouting “Cops eat shit” out the driver side window of his van or would get arrested by federal air marshals for using a hand puppet to lewdly proposition flight attendants while waiting for the plane to take off. There were several incidents during my childhood where my father would be called up to his parents house to “deal” with my uncle for whatever reason, and on that particular occasion he returned with spoils lifted from his wayward brother’s lair.

I suppose I could have snagged the Cap comics for myself and passed the Gold Key stuff onto my brother (who was two, and thus easy to manipulate), but like many a child of that era, I was utterly fascinated with the ubiquitous “phenomena” (a catch-all term encompassing various occult, paranormal, and other related topics) culture that was all the rage at the time. Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, Krillian photography – the whole pantheon of Fortean hobbyhorses found ample room to trot in the cultural flood plains cleared and fertilized by the countercultural surge of the 1960’s, and young Andrew’s childhood imagination was captivated by the lot of it.

Excerpt from Wally Wood's lost masterpiece, Andy Kaufman Versus The Martians.
My mother enabled such behavior by buying me various books on the subject. One particular one that both terrified and thrilled me was a British catalogue of the paranormal titled simply Phenomena. I flipped through it repeatedly (the articles on cattle mutilation and spontaneous human combustion were particular favorites) until the binding gave out, then shortly after accidentally left it out during a summer rainstorm, ruining it entirely. A couple years back I located a discarded library copy on Half.com for a princely sum of twenty-five cents, and took advantage of the low cost opportunity to revisit some childhood memories.

Just like a Vorgiblian... They'll tell you you're the only one for them, but no sooner than the anal probe is removed, they're reaching for their saucer keys and heading toward the door.
Of course, I’ve traveled quite a ways intellectually and philosophically in the past twenty-nine years. What had once been a gateway – both the comic and the book -- into a mysterious realm of the unknown now reads like the text for a remedial course in bullshit detection. Unreliable witnesses (read: “drunk hillbillies”)? Check. Unsourced stories or, even better, stories sourced to people or agencies behind the Iron Curtain? Check. Ample use of weasel words? Check. Selective application of scientific principles and theories? Check. Use of leading or misleading phrasing to hedge around Occam’s Razor? Check.

"Goddamn Z'yzzvxx told me he was using protection!"
Contrary to Thomas Wolfe, you can occasionally go home again. The only problem is that it is difficult to ignore the busted toilet, stained wallpaper, and torn linoleum upon your arrival.

The Unitarian Bible is weird.

The Rezillos – Flying Saucer Attack (from Can’t Stand the Rezillos, 1978) - So the world's being annihilated; there's no reason to be all po' faced or mopey about it.

Toyah Wilcox - Danced (from Sheep Farming in Barnet, 1979) - Or for those who've seen Urgh! A Music War, "Ashtar Command Jazzercize With Toyah."