BY GLEN MASON
VIRGINIA BEACH — There was once a college sophomore returning from summer vacation in Miami, where he had caught the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars before heading back home to Virginia.
That student was me, and, yes, this was a long time ago in a city not all that far, far away.
Lucas’s film spoke to me, a comic book geek and athlete who used to spend quality time with my nephew as an excuse to spend Saturday mornings at the Chrysler Museum relishing rereleased, grainy, 16-millimeter films of Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon in old Republic serials.
I was ready to continue my own adventure. So when I returned to Norfolk State University, I was stunned by the unfortunate fact that my scholarship was for two years, not four, as I had believed.
It was not what was called a full ride. Holy stupidity, Batman. Read the fine print.
After I found this out, I went to a university staff confidant to ask what I could do?
“College is the poorest time of your life,” he told me.
Without a job, I needed a Plan B. I retreated to the library to wallow in self-pity. While heading to the newspaper employment section, I noticed in the local pages that three intrepid young entrepreneurs were opening the first comic book shop in town.
They were going to call it Trilogy, and it became an answer to my prayers.
They looked too young to have any back stock. Where could they get a bunch of old books for rabid collectors who can’t find pulp treasures? How could they help a kid improve his vocabulary by reading The Fantastic Four?
I went home to our attic, where prized comic books were kept safely out of reach from Momma.
She once threw out Spidey No. 1 because she was, as she put it, “cleaning up and thought you were done with it.” Then Avengers No. 4 went missing. The attic became a haven for my collection. She couldn’t get up that ladder.
I tracked the Trilogy partners down, and they said they were interested in inspecting more than 2,000 comics I’d transported to them in a washing machine box.
Some of my comics dated back to 1947. There was a bunch of Silver Age stuff. There were Superman and Batman books. There was Avengers 1-25, except, of course, for the mysteriously missing No. 4 – the modern reappearance of Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America. There was X-Men No. 1 and Tales of Suspense with the first Iron Man story.
At the end of the day, to make a long origin story short, Trilogy’s proprietors bought a chunk of their back stock, and I received enough money from the sale to pay my tuition, rent and take my future wife on four fantastic dates.
While I studied at Norfolk State, the owners even let me come in on Wednesdays – new comic book day – and pick up my subscriptions to new books.
They covered the cost until I graduated.
Were it not for me helping Trilogy get its start — and them helping me with mine — I may have had a different career. Or one delayed.
The author, an avid comic book collector, is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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