Posted By Dan Greenfield on May 11, 2025 | 15 comments

A wonderful remembrance, by Chris Franklin...

Based on the cover of Wow Comics #10 (February 1943), original art by Marc Swayze.

By CHRIS FRANKLIN

You can blame all of this on my Mom.

Chances are I wouldn’t be writing about comics and comic-related merchandise here at 13th Dimension, podcasting about such things on the Fire and Water Podcast Network, or providing illustrations for various toys, and related magazines and books over the years without the influence and encouragement of my mother. Of course, none of us would be ANYWHERE without our mothers, but you get my drift.

Christmas 1979 was, like most of my childhood, full of superhero toys. That year Mom (and/or Santa) brought me Remco’s Energized Superman, Batman and Hulk, plus the Mego 12 ½” Spider-Man.

From a VERY early age, my mother (Brenda Hamm Franklin) encouraged my love of superheroes. For years, I was never quite sure why. Maybe it was because at age 2 I was involved in a botched dental procedure that severely traumatized me, and she just wanted to lavish me with the things that brought me comfort? Either way, after heavily gravitating to the four-color heroes on TV (Batman ’66, The Adventures of Superman, Spider-Man ’67, Super Friends), my Mom made sure I was supplied with comics and merchandise featuring those characters.

She began buying comics regularly for me when I was 2 1/2 or 3, long before I could read. But she’d take the time to read them to me, explaining some of the way-out concepts, including the parallel worlds of Earth-One and Two, which I understood, no problem. Dr. Seuss and the lot were quickly left behind in favor of Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Denny O’Neil.

Parallel Earths? No problem! My Mom explained it all to me, and I got it. My Dad recognized some of these Golden Age heroes as well. All-Star Comics #74 (Sept/Oct 1978) cover by Joe Staton and Dick Giordano.

This isn’t to say my Dad didn’t encourage me to read via comics either. He definitely did, and in fact told me the night before my first day of kindergarten that if I went to school, I’d learn how to read my comics myself. I came home after the first day upset, and emphatically announced to the family, “I didn’t learn to read nothing!” My Dad occasionally got in on the reading too, and he recognized the Golden Age Green Lantern and Flash (Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, respectively) as the versions he read in the handful of hand-me-down comics he had as a boy.

Mom never missed a thrill-packed episode of the amazing Adventures of Superman.

My Mom never really said much about any comics she owned as a child, but I assumed she had some at one point, because every kid did back then. She did tell me she was a huge fan of the George Reeves Adventures of Superman TV series as a girl, with it debuting on TV when she was only 9 years old. She took me to our local theater to see most of the Christopher Reeve Superman films (and Supergirl), partially due to that connection, my love for the character, and her having a huge celebrity crush on Reeve. It didn’t hurt that he also starred in her personal favorite film, Somewhere in Time.

I’d seen the house ads but had no idea what Who’s Who #1 looked like before finding it in my stocking Christmas morning of 1984. Cover by George Perez.

For most of the ’80s, Mom was the manager of our town’s Hallmark store. Before coming home, she’d often stop at the drugstore in the same strip mall and pick me up some comics she’d thought I would like. She knew the characters I followed so if she saw any comic with them on it, she’d buy them. Ironically enough, they were purchased from my future mother-in-law, although none of us knew that at the time!

Some of my favorite comics came to me this way, despite having a pharmacy up the street from our house where I picked my own books. Christmas of 1984 I awoke to find a copy of Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #1 in my stocking. Mom obviously saw Aquaman on the cover and deemed it a worthy stocking stuffer. I loved that series and still do, and it directly led to me commenting on the Fire and Water Podcast about the Who’s Who series, which then dovetailed into meeting some of my best friends, and helping found the network based around it.

My Mom made sure that my first true “collectible” pieces would stay preserved. I have since collected every glass from the two DC Pepsi series.

My need to collect and preserve superhero merchandise also goes back to my mother. In 1978, when a cousin gifted me a set of Pepsi glasses featuring Superman and Batman he picked up from Pizza Hut, my Mom convinced me to put them in her China cabinet and not drink from them. This ensured their survival and place in my collection today, and my lack of lead poisoning!

When Batmania returned in 1989, I was 14 years old, and far too old to “play” with toys. My Dad scoffed a bit when I scooped up everything with a yellow oval and black bat I could find, but my Mom was fully behind my new designation as a “toy collector.” She began actively searching for things she knew I didn’t have. This continued on to new and old products at antique stores and flea markets. There was always something waiting for me that she’d found in her travels. Far from the stereotypical mother who throws out everything!

Three of the many costumes Mom made over the years: Batman for me in 1983 and 1996, and Catwoman for herself in 1992.

Mom also created many superhero costumes for me over the years. Just for play I had a Superman cape, complete with yellow “S” shield, a Flash mask, and a Robin tunic. She made me a homemade Batman suit for Halloween in 1983 and again in 1996. By this time, I was in college studying art, married to my wife Cindy, and working at the local comics shop. Over the following decades I have worn that costume many times, including several occasions where I trick-or-treated with my own kids, who dressed as various other superheroes. While working as the pet department manager of our local Walmart in the early ’90s, she created and wore her own costume for their Halloween party that year. And who did she dress up as? Who else but Catwoman?

Less than six months before she passed, my Mom took the time to pose in front of the actual screen-used Batcycle, on display outside of a museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

My mom passed away at the far too-young age of 57 in December of 2000, from complications of a nerve disorder. Unfortunately, she never got to know her grandkids, the first of which, our son, was born less than a year later. In 2006, my grandmother passed away, and my uncle set about divvying up my grandparents’ belongings among the remaining family members.

My sister Rhonda and her husband were looking through my grandfather’s tools in his old work shed and found an item that was curiously out of place in one of the old metal toolboxes. A wristwatch, minus the band, with some kind of superhero on it. My sister contacted me, knowing I’d be interested.

The actual 1948 wristwatch found in my grandfather’s old toolbox.

When I got to my grandparents’ house and saw the watch, despite the years of muck and grime that had accumulated on the face, I recognized the character immediately. SHAZAM! It was Mary Marvel. Twin sister of Billy Batson (aka Captain Marvel), and possessor of the power of Shazam herself! I knew there was a bevy of Marvel Family merchandise produced in the 1940s, when Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family’s popularity rivaled and often surpassed Superman. This was a vintage 1940s Mary Marvel wristwatch that somehow had been languishing in my grandfather’s old toolbox for nearly 60 years. But why would my late grandfather have a Mary Marvel watch, with no band, in his toolbox?

From Heritage Auctions, the Mary Marvel watch in its original packaging.

My conclusion was it had to have belonged to my Mom. Now why did she never mention it, or any particular affection for Mary Marvel before, in all our various conversations about comics and superheroes?

Well, when my Mom was 5, she contracted pneumonia and went into a coma for quite some time. When she finally came out of that coma, she had to relearn how to properly walk and talk and had lost most of her memories of the previous five years. The Mary Marvel watch hails from Fawcett Publications and “Marvel Importing Company” in 1948, the very year my mother turned 5 years old. Perhaps the watch stopped working, and my grandfather planned to repair it, but in the unimaginable drama of a child at death’s door, the silly timepiece was forgotten by everyone involved, especially my mother, who could no longer recall it.

My Mom as a young girl.

But maybe, just maybe, there was some kernel left in my Mom’s mind of that watch, and maybe even a deeper association with comics characters than I previously knew. Perhaps that’s why she was so willing to encourage my obsession with these power fantasy characters. I’ll never know for sure. My uncle didn’t remember the watch, which didn’t surprise me. He’s since passed on as well. So, there’s no one to ask what this watch really meant, or why it was there, hidden in a toolbox, inside a work shed for decades, completely forgotten.

Mom, Dad, myself and sister Rhonda, Christmas 1979.

I’ve cleaned up the watch as best I can, and it sits in a case in our living room, along with other vintage super hero treasures, some of which my mother bought me as both a child and an adult. Of all the things I own, of my Megos, my Super Powers figures, and my comics, it’s the most precious to me. Because it speaks to a connection my mother and I had, in a way neither of us were aware of when she was alive. Something we shared that went even deeper than either of us ever knew. When I see her again in whatever reality exists beyond this one, maybe I’ll ask her about it, and she’ll remember. Until then, I keep it close.

Happy Mother’s Day.

—

MORE

— FRANCO FRIDAYS: My Mom — The All-Time Best Version of WONDER WOMAN. Click here.

— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite COMIC BOOK MOMS. Click here.

— GOODBYE, MOM: Thank You For Everything — Including All the MEGOS. Click here.

—

13th Dimension contributor Chris Franklin is a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, and podcaster, who co-hosts and produces several shows on the Fire and Water Podcast Network, including JLUCast. Check out his illustrative and design work at chrisfranklincreative.com.