PROPHET ALPHA AKA: ADRIAN MURPHY

This journey for me started in 1983 in Chicago Illinois riding my falling apart BIG WHEEL, trying to keep up with the other neighborhood kids on regular bikes. One day during one of the weekends of one of our riding excursions through the alleyways of the dirty, gritty, metropolis, my friends and I came across a recently burned down comic book store and noticed that the entrance through the alley still allowed access to the charred yet in ways salvageable commodities for an 8 years old kids in the city. So we explored through everything and though things had been completely turned over and spread about, if you dug to the bottom of the many piles of books you could find some water damaged and smoke damaged complete books that were at that time period bronze age and silver age comics. For me, this was like gold. Before this experience, I had only grabbed a comic infrequently, because I could not read, I only looked at them for the art and pictures. But at this time, I was being teased for my illiteracy by many of the school kids, and threatened to be put in a learning disabilities program by administrators. My mom was raising me and my sister on her own, so my school failures were just another log in the fire of being poor and black in Chicago. So, this burned down discovery, was in ways my own self-taught entry into literacy, which lead me to where I am today writing this blog story. I still have those books from 1983 and I’ve upgraded to better copies. Not soon after my burned down comic book treasure find, my mom had made the decision that she could no longer adequately provide for me and my older sister together and since I was harder to manage and more at risk, made arrangements with my Father for me to move away with him to Ann Arbor Michigan. Why this is important is because I carried my learning disabilities with me to a new more richly suburban community in the shadow of the University of Michigan, The Wolverines. “Wolverine” was important to me, because in that burned down comic store one of my most praised finds was What If # 31, What If Wolverine Had Killed the Hulk. Now back to my journey. I was now living and going to a new and more progressive in education household and school district, and my reading was not at the same level at the grades I had been passed up to by the Chicago school system. I could read, but for some reason I had mental blocks at that time for anything that wasn’t comic books. So one day while the other kids were outside during recess and I had to stay inside and do reading lessons with Mrs. Northrop and Student Teacher, Son from UOM, and she was asking me about my reading troubles. So, after many basic reading lessons and my resistant reading to Scholastics books. Her son had one day out of the blue brought me a handful of about 30—40 comics books and comics that were at that time current bronze and recently silver books, but weren’t thought of in the value that they have now. And He said, read all these and write me one-page summary of everything that happened in each book. He not knowing of my Burned down comic experience, and my only interest in anything written had to be in comic book form, so I accepted the challenge and within the month time-frame gave him and his Mom my teacher Mrs. Northrop a whole 40 page book report on each specific book and referenced each comic number and page. This blew her mind, and she called my Dad and grandparent to inform them that she didn’t believe I had a learning disability, but I lack interest in anything that was not a comic book. He continued to bring me stacks of books each month to number in the low hundreds after all was said and done. After the first Summer School experience I was allowed to visit my mom back in Chicago and at this time my friends I left behind had graduated to Comic book stores and the art of collecting as a hobby. I had only had a handful of books at this point, the burned down assortment, and about 100, books that were at my Dad’s house in Ann Arbor, so I knew they would be safe.... Over the Summer I think it was the Year that Secret Wars had been released, my friends took me to a Comic Book Store that went by the name “Comics 4 Heroes” on Foster Ave in Chicago, It was at that point where I saw my 1st Daredevil #1, and Giant Size X-men #1, they were probably in the low Hundred Dollar range at that point, but it may as well been a $1million for the finances of a 10 years old. But between the money I took from my Mom's Purse every payday, and the money I would get helping people take groceries to shoppers’ cars for .50-$1 or selling Sundays papers I stole from the Vending Machine after buying only one. I always had $5 or 6 bucks to buy a couple comics, and that went a long way.So naturally I bought the 1st Secret Wars #1 as my 1st Grail Comic, it had been out a couple months, so at that time the book was about $4 because it was a hot book at that time, and it had a series of action figures that myself and my friends would “acquire” from local Woolworths, or other Markets. I bounced around for about 2 summers leaving my collection of comic in Chicago, and Maintaining the Books that I had in Ann Arbor, “Thinking back that collection would be worth a couple thousand bucks today.” Until around the summer of 86’, I had convinced my mom that I did not want to go back to Ann Arbor and wanted to stay in Chicago with her and my sister. My Father reluctantly agreed, and I probably did not notice that I hurt his feelings..TO BE CONTINUED...