I Took My Copy of The Incredible Hulk #181 to School!
I made my first poor financial decision when I was in the fourth grade and took my copy of The Incredible Hulk #181 to school. Nowadays, a decent copy with no folds or wrinkles or pages missing can be worth thousands of dollars. Back when I bought it off the comic book rack at our local Kwik Shop, it was just another 25 cent Hulk comic book. It was kind of a fun issue because it was a three-way fight between Hulk, Wendigo (a Canadian combination of Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman), and a new Canadian superhero called Wolverine. I think Wolverine was sent to contain the fight between Hulk and Wendigo, but Wolverine just made the situation worse. I don’t remember for sure. It’s probably been 40 years since I’ve last read this comic book.
I was already into comic books then, especially Marvel, almost exclusively Marvel. Marvel Comics were far and away superior to any other comic book company back then, even DC. Yeah, Marvel has plummeted, but back in the early 1970s, Marvel was doing some crazy stuff, and a lot of it was pretty good.
I had brought a lot of comic books to school that day, and I was passing out a bunch of stuff that I had bought that week. Spider-Man, Daredevil, Captain America, Avengers, Fantastic Four, and… Man-Thing. I even took my Incredible Hulk #181 with the first full-issue appearance of Wolverine. I probably lost thousands of dollars just because of the minor reading damage my comic sustained from that. Nobody knew that particular comic book would end up being worth a lot of money. Wolverine seemed like a second-rate (maybe third-rate) character. Even when he joined the X-Men later in the decade, nobody thought anything of it because it was a new version of the X-Men and the old team sucked (at least the sales sucked). It was probably close to five years before that new team became ‘X-Men-level’ popular.
It wasn’t the Hulk comic with Wolverine that got the attention that day, though. It was my Giant-Size Man-Thing.
Man-Thing was one of those crazy Marvel titles from the 1970s. Man-Thing was a swamp creature (who of course was a former human), kind of similar to DC’s Swamp Thing, but I don’t want to get into the differences because there are probably only maybe three people in the whole world who care about that now (back in the 1970s more people cared about that). I’m pretty sure Swamp Thing was first, but nobody ever bragged about having a Giant-Size Swamp Thing.
Since fourth grade was over 50 years ago, my memory of this quick incident probably isn’t that clear. My teacher Ms. Tyler was young and blonde, and she was going to get married over the summer and come back with a new last name. That’s all I remember about her. That and she was very interested in my Giant-Size Man-Thing.
When Ms. Tyler heard me announce that I had a Giant-Size Man-Thing if anybody wanted to see it, she bolted to my table to see what I was talking about. She looked really concerned. She probably thought I was going to do something inappropriate. I think she laughed when she saw the comic book (I might be making that part up), but she grabbed it and flipped through the pages and gave it back to me. For a while, I wondered why she chose my Giant-Size Man-Thing to inspect instead of the other comics.
Sometime in high school, I suddenly understood. Maybe I should have figured it out sooner. I’ve always been a bit naive. People have called me a late bloomer. Sometimes I say stuff and don’t know the interpreted double meanings behind what I say. Now that I seem to be more aware of such things, I’m careful not to discuss my Giant-Size Man-Thing in public. With today’s sensitivities, if I speak publicly about my Giant-Size Man-Thing and people don’t know the context, I can get either arrested or propositioned.
I know that teachers need to be aware of what’s going on in their classrooms, so it was good that Ms. Tyler was keeping up when she heard me talking about my Giant-Size Man-Thing. I confiscated far worse when I was a teacher, but I never had to deal with a Giant-Size Man-Thing. By the time I became a teacher, Man-Thing no longer had his own comic book.
Some people think that I was foolish to sell my copy of The Incredible Hulk #181 in 2006. It was a decent copy (despite my taking it to school in fourth grade). Even though I would have gotten a lot more for it if I hadn’t taken it to school that day in fourth grade, I’m happy with the price that I sold it for, and I needed the money. Yes, the comic is worth a lot more now than it was in 2006, but I don’t need the money now like I did back then. I still have my Giant-Size Man-Thing, though. It’s not worth nearly as much money, but maybe it should be. It’s a better comic book, with better art, better story, and more pages.
Looking back, I can’t believe that I was so cavalier with my comic books. I can’t believe that I took them to school and let my classmates read them. Nowadays, I’m careful with all my comic books, especially those from the 1960s and 1970s. I’m very careful with my old Giant-Size Man-Thing. And if I ever get another copy of The Incredible Hulk #181, I’ll be very careful with that too.
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For more Dysfunctional Literacy, see…
A Kid Threw Up at the Comic Book Show
Harry The Dirty Dog vs. Dirty, The Hairy Dog
Dysfunctional Literacy 