COVER N. 594 - FRANCE
Postmark: Bureau Philatélique 69 - Lyon Bellecour 07.06.2025
Posted on the 7th June; Received on the 11th June 2025
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Batman and Super Girl... oh, I hear another of my childhood memories coming up....
Un grand Merci Eric!
There were things that I wasn’t especially keen of, when I was a kid, just six or seven years old.
I still remember my mother calling me frantically from the balcony to get back home for it was bath time, something I considered the last of my priorities whenever I was out on the street playing with my friends.
Cowboys and Indians or Super heroes and villains we were and it is well known, Matt Dillon (not the actor; the real one, the one in the comics strips) Cisco Kid or Batman never took a bath or even a shower… at least I have no recollection of ever seeing a square of a comic strip of any of these monuments showing them wasting time with their mothers scrubbing the hell out of their backs and heads….
Another of the dreaded wastes of time (not to mention dignity) was the regular visit to the barber, with my father, in order to get the hair cut.
Not that I had already made my mind about letting my hair grow to keep pace with time and fashion, as I would some years later. What annoyed me most, was the itching sensation on the back of my neck I was always left with after the barber had finished his job and talcum powered it to quench the burning sensation caused by the razor on my tender child skin.
One day my father called me: “Pedrito, let’s go to the barber’s”.
Knowing there was absolutely no point in refusing the invitation, I put on my most fastidious face and went along down the stairs into the street with him.
At the end of the street we took a left turn….
Usually we would turn right, whenever going to the barber’s…
My father noticed my amused look, and told me we would go to another barber, this time.
And so we walked for a while longer. My father was a keen walker and I got this habit from him, I guess, as I too am quite fond of getting from here to there by putting one foot ahead of the other in sequence….
After a while we reached our destination.
Both barber chairs were taken, so we would have to wait for our turn.
The barber looked at me: “Do you like to read comics?”; “Yes, sure.” I answered him.
“While you wait, pick any of those and enjoy it” said he pointing to a pile of comic magazines on a table.
I was flabbergasted. Boy, this was even better than the library where my father and I would sometimes go, to get books to read.
When finally my turn came, I did not even noticed that my hair was being cut and, in the end, I did not feel the dreaded itching either, for I was anticipating the moment I would arrive in the room I shared with my sister and lay on my bed reading the second hand SuperMan comic that my father bought from the barber to offer me.
From that day on, visiting that Barber, Mr. Buchinho, If I still remember his name correctly, not to have my hair cut, but to buy another of the second hand magazines he sold, would be one of my permanent aims in life.
Batman, Superman, Archeiro Verde (the Green Hornet) Flash in their Brazilian issues and especially Mundo de Aventuras, a Portuguese magazine that published many of the King Features Syndicate strips, would be piled on my bedside table and inside the drawers where I kept my most precious treasures.
All the coins I managed to collect would be converted into comic magazines, and I was such a good customer of Mr. Buchinho, that he even, now and then, offered me the odd magazine, free of charge.
One day, my father, for Christmas, gave me an illustrated book with the history of Buffalo Bill. Classy thing it was, half text and half illustrations. I absolutely loved it. There were three more in the collection David Crocket, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson. For my birthday, I got the first from my parents and the second from a friend. But there was one still left, and I simply had to have it. More: I knew where to get it. There was one available at the local bookshop, downtown just a couple of kilometres from where I lived.
But I had no money. I had to gather 20 Escudos, an exorbitant sum for my standards…..
Close to my school, the owner of a shop (I can’t remember what was sold there) had a card overhanging the door where it was stated that comics were bought and sold.
I reunited all my magazines, my most precious treasure, and put them into several plastic bags. Sweating from the effort of walking from home to the shop with the added weight, I came to this shop and asked the owner how much he would be willing to offer me for all my books.
I was counting on 50 Escudos, for there were much more than a hundred magazines there and if he would sell them at the price I had payed for them - 2,5 escudos each - he would have a decent profit.
He looked at me, passed and enquiring look through my plastic bags and said “20 escudos”.
I was being robbed, but he had hit the magic button…. I took the banknote with the effigy of Saint Anthony on it and ran as fast as I could to the book shop downtown.
That night, Superman was dead and Kit Carson was the name of the Kryptonite.
DC Comics, the publisher that holds the rights to Batman and Super Girl (and a number of other icons of the comics universe) was founded in 1935 as National Allied Publications.
Batman appeared for the first time in a DC comics magazine in 1939, fathered by Bob Kane (drawings) and Bill Finger (text).
The first story of Super Girl, the cousin of Super Man, conceived by Otto Binder (text) and Al Plastino (drawings) was published in 1959.
La Poste issued a Collector's four stamp set (Letrre Verte 20 g) dedicated to DC Comics heroes on 19MAY2025. Further to Batman and SuperGirl, the set comprises stamps illustrated with Wonder Woman and SuperMan.
