something of a pop culture nut myself i went nuts last night when after dinner at n.'s and t.'s house i was holding in my very hands fantastic four #48 comic book. the silver surfer makes his first appearance in this book. i've lost touch with comic books since i was a kid but n. loves them still and collects them. n. and i also share a love of horror and exploitation films, but when i asked him if i could see his collection of comics i didn't know how deep his collection was.

so there i was holding vintage original books, smelling the old pulp and marveling at an art form that was once derided and poo-poo'ed, like a kid given the keys to willy wonka's chocolate factory. it was amazing. n. also owns an original e. c. comic which were published in the 1940s to the 1950s and were often ghoulish tales of moral retribution. often the bad guys got it at the end in a horrible twist of the story. they were gruesome and shocking enough to freak out parents, school officials and clergy to the point of slapping down a comics code that made many publishers weary of gore and death for many, many decades. back in the late '80s i owned several re-published e. c. comics but never had i seen an original.

at any rate, i loved comic books and still have a great affection for them. n. i think goes beyond love and embraces comic books like a faith. that's hardly a criticism. when i asked how much the fantastic four #48 was worth, which sounds rather gouache but money is simply money and things are only worth what we're willing to pay for them, i understood how deep his love of the art runs. i simply sat there in wonder and glory holding the book and looking at the panel with the very first appearance of the silver surfer.

and another thing, i was looking at the ads in the vintage books, how they were laid-out and the crap that was being shilled. i still love that stuff, the ads and the crap in and of themselves. as a writer i've long been drawn not to just what is considered the high arts but to, and i might be quite obvious by saying it, to the low arts too. advertising, television, b-movies, pulp novels, pornography, and tattoos are all exciting and rich veins to mine. when i discovered the poet thom gunn i was overjoyed to read that he also made no distinction between the high and the low. i found a brother in arms, so to speak.

trash culture, as it is affectionately known, of course has its adherents. and that artists and writers have long explored its varied terrain. after all, what is the work of joseph cornell but the vision of one person's love of trash. perhaps it was no accident then that when we got home and turned the t.v. on a documentary on lowbrow art, or pop surrealism, was just starting. personally i like the phrase pop surrealism a bit better since it seems more evocative of the movement. but whatever. perhaps pop is what is in the air and water, or maybe it's simply because my own rader is attuned to its frequencies. again, whatever. i'm too old and cranky to join a movement. but fuck i think pop surrealism is something worth exploring as one vein among many. one poet i've been read much of lately i think is doing something akin to pop surrealism is kevin opstedal. whether he'd think so is another matter entirely.

but i've started to meander. and not for the first time. last night i was a kid holding the books i remembered loving as a rabid young reader. at the end of the evening i thanked n. for a wonderful tour of his collection to join my own family and my own obsessions as a man and poet.