1970s Children’s Christian Group - Bring Along a Friend

In Regina my mom had me take part in a Christian group for kids. There were prizes to be won with that group, but only (or at least mostly) if you brought along a friend.  Even as a kid I didn’t feel quite right about bringing along a friend to a church group for prizes. In fact, one of the few times I did so the friend’s father got angry that he went with me (I don’t know if they were atheists or different religion/different sect of Christianity but I understand more clearly as an adult that the friend’s parents probably did have different views on religion and that it wasn’t appropriate to bring him along).

Luckily my mom, the most religious person in the family agreed with my concerns and in fact managed to get some of the prizes for me by complaining to the head of that group.  Later a new session was starting and a new woman showed up.  We expressed our concerns to her and she said that things were going to be different, no bring along a friend business. So I went to the first part of the new sessions and at the beginning one of the first things she said was “And bring along a friend...”  I never went back.

The whole thing seems even more sinister as an adult even though I still have some Christian views. Using kids to get other kids in in cases where adults might not easily be able to access a particular family.

Joker: Superhero Comic or Not

Back in the 1970s, probably in Regina but maybe in Lethbridge I was at someone’s place and they offered to let me look at comics. I asked if there were any superhero comics and they said no.  I looked through them and… well, sin the most literal sense they were right. However, there was a super-villain comic, The Joker who actually had his own series in the 1970s.  And he was fighting a hero in that issue (the Creeper).  So I ended up reading that one. I did find it odd though that the owner didn’t consider the Joker to be a superhero title, apparently because it focused on the villain.  As for the series, it’s not spectacular, and it’s odd that a series came out with a non-lethal Joker at a time when the Joker started to become more lethal in Batman-featured titles. Still, it’s a fun little series that might have lasted a few more years had it not gotten caught in the so-called DC Implosion.

My First Experiences with Earth-2

Note: this refers to the traditional DC Comics version and to a much lesser degree the current one, not the TV show of the same name.

One of the reasons why DC abandoned its parallel Earth model back in the 1980s was they felt it was too confusing.  I admit I was a bit confused at first, when I was 6 in 1977.  I think at first when I read about the Earth-2 heroes the Justice Society (Earth-2 was the world the 1940s hereoes lived at the time) I thought it was the same characters in different costumes, or something like that; regardless I didn’t get it at first.  And then there were backups with the Earth-2 Green Lantern in the Green Lantern comic at the time and I misread “The Original Green Lantern in Chains” as “The Original reen Lantern Change” and thought the old version was becoming the new.  But then I read a Justice League comic teaming the Justice League and Justice Society comic and I finally understood the concept of parallel Earths and never had trouble since understanding the concept; ! I think I was 7 at the time.  Of course, once I understood what parallel Earths were, grasping Earth-3, Earth-S, Earth-X etc. wasn’t that difficult; it was just a case of figuring out the nature of the heroes of that Earth.

Since then DC has changed their history multiple times, removed parallel Earths, brought them back, created new worlds also called Earth-2 (one a reworked Earth-3, another pretty close to the old one, and now a radically different one only loosely based on the old Earth-2).  Frequent history changes and parallel Earths that do and don’t exist according to current policy and keep changing the nature when they do exist? That's much less confusing than the old parallel Earth model!