Old Towne Mall and the origin of my obsessions

"I've tried to avoid all this, but I can't" - Bruce Wayne, Batman (1989)

My life was changed because my mother liked Donald Duck.

I was a poor, black kid in the 70's living in Compton, California. I have no memory of where it started, but it's likeliest that I either saw Adam West Batman and George Reeves  Superon on TV and then found the comics, or found the comics first and then saw the shows on TV. Either way, by the time my conscious memories kick in I was a fan of DC Comics.

While I'm not sure how I found out about it (in those days, I seem to remember looking through the yellow pages for any mention of the word Comic Book), but there was a comic book shop inside a mall in nearby Torrance. I begged enough that one Saturday, my mom gave in and took me.

The memory of walking into that place is both vivid, and clouded by about 40 years of nostalgia. Up to that point, I had only seen comics on the spinner rack at the grocery store across the street. Walking in and seeing this long, narrow room filled with comics from top to bottom took my breath away. I couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 years old, but I knew somewhere inside that this was where I belonged.

I remember some specifics about the place. There were treasury sized books on the racks, reprints of some of the key Golden Age books like Action Comics #1 or Detective Comics #27, so that places it in the mid to late 70's. In the back room I found back issues of the Steve Ditko Hawk and Dove run, which amazed me because it never occurred to me that there were comics printed before I was born!

My mom patiently waited for me to completely freak out, pick out a couple of things and check out.  While we were checking out she looked at the wall (Wall books, way back then!) and saw an issue of, if I'm right, Walt Disney's Comics & Stories with Donald Duck on the cover, likely a Carl Barks issue. Again, my recollection is spotty, but as I put together the rest of the details after a lifetime of collecting, it makes sense based on the rest of the conversation.

My mom noticed the book and said, "Oh! I used to have that book when I was a kid!"

My reaction to finding out my Mom read comics when she was a kid was silent amazement.

"How much is it?" she asked the clerk.

I don't know exactly what amount the clerk mentioned, but it was clearly a lot more than my mother expected. She reacted, as my mother often did, with a distinct tone that indicated in no uncertain terms that she had diagnosed the clerk as clinically insane.

"What? Why is it so much?"

The clerk explained to my mother and I that, older comics were often valuable to collectors. That, yes, she had only paid a dime for it in the 50's, but that now it was worth much, much more.

My mother looked down at me, and said the words that would save me a lifetime of heartache.

"If they're gonna be worth that much, I'm never throwing any of yours out!"

And with one notable exception, she never did.