Dinosaour and Blood Age of The Earth

As a kid I loved reading comic books. I purchased most of my collection at a little market store called Fannin’s, just down the street from my house. Mr. Fannin sold comic books without the covers—for a penny apiece! I once asked him how he acquired his unusual inventory. He told me that the owner of the local drug store tore the fronts off comic books that didn’t sell, sending the covers back to the publisher, and—horrors of horrors—threw away the denuded comic books. Fannin somehow fi gured out a way to retrieve the discarded comic books and sold them for next to nothing at his store. Fannin’s resourcefulness was a bonanza for me. Fond memories abound of afternoons spent scouring the campus grounds of West Virginia University Institute of Technology (where my father taught) collecting soda bottles that I would later exchange for a stack of comic books at Fannin’s Market. Because the comic books cost only a penny, I wasn’t all that discriminating in my selection of titles. As a result, I wound up with all sorts of comics in my coverless collection, including books published by Gold Key Comics that were part of a Rip ....