PAUL McCARTNEY turns 84!
By PAUL KUPPERBERG
Of course Paul was my favorite!
I don’t remember being particularly interested in music before I saw the Beatles in their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. If it wasn’t in a comic book or cartoon or on a TV sitcom, I wasn’t into it.
And the only reason I happened to be watching the Sullivan show, which was on past my bedtime as an 8-year-old at the time, was because it was my younger brother Lewis’ birthday and we were celebrating at my grandmother’s house, where I had gone to hide in her bedroom from whatever fresh abuse my older brother Alan was inflicting upon me.
But there I was, laying on my stomach on the floor, looking up at the little black-and-white TV on its wheeled stand, and all of a sudden, I heard this!
Maybe I just hadn’t heard the right music before. My father liked classical and my mother’s taste ran toward Ferrante & Teicher and the 101 Strings, and the few records we had in the house were Allan Sherman and Mickey Katz comedy albums and a few Broadway cast recordings.
But when “All My Loving” came bursting through even the tinny speaker of that circa-1960 TV set, I got it. It was like a switch being flipped in my brain. This was the music I wanted to hear! And then, during their second number, “Till There Was You,” the camera picked up close-ups of each of them individually, super-imposing their names on the screen (including, famously, the apology, “Sorry, girls: he’s married” under John’s).
And the guy singing lead vocals on this magical music I’d just discovered was “Paul.”
Well!
Needless to say, I was hooked, and I don’t think I moved through the rest of the show, riveted by the numbers that followed (“She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”), and remained hooked ever since.
The Beatles, along with Batman and Bond…James Bond, were the “Three-Bs” that obsessed the country in the mid-1960s, and I was consumed by them all. But unlike Batman and Bond who existed on paper and the screen, the Beatles were, quite literally, in the air, carried by radio waves and picked up by the pocket-size transistor radio I got for my ninth birthday that June (a Regency, made by Texas Instruments), and transmitted straight into my brain via a monaural earphone.
No doubt my fondness for McCartney — born 84 years ago, on June 18, 1942 — began because of our shared name, but as I got older and began to recognize how talented he was, I grew into a fan of his work. John Lennon and George Harrison may have written deeper music, Ringo Starr may have been more of a showman, but there was just something so extraordinarily likable about Paul and his music.
It took years to realize, but the break-up of the Beatles, while a hard pill to swallow (I couldn’t rewatch 1970’s Let It Be for decades), meant that individually those four mop tops from Liverpool would now be producing four times the amount of music they had as a group.
Lennon went on to write great music for a series of amazing and legendary albums before his death in 1980, as did Harrison before he died in 2001. Ringo, never known for his writing, nonetheless stayed on stage, recording, performing, and touring to this very day, now age 85.
And McCartney is still on the road and in the studio, having just released his 27th post-Beatles album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. His sound is still unmistakable, and maybe his voice isn’t as strong as it once was, but he hasn’t lost an ounce of the joy and magic that’s marked his music for the last six decades.
Happy birthday, Sir Paul and keep rockin’, baby!
Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE BEATLES COMIC BOOK COVERS. In chronological order, by publication date:
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The Beatles (September-November 1964, Dell). Licensing behemoth Dell Comics had this giant-size special on the stands by July 1964, a 72-page extravaganza featuring short bios of the boys and a 64-page “secret origin” story with art by Joe Sinnott. The square-bound publication was authorized by NEMS Enterprises Ltd., the management company run by Brian Epstein.
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My Little Margie #54 (November 1964, Charlton). Charlton Comics, best known for following trends, jumped on the Beatles bandwagon with this cover and the Beatlemania story it spotlighted, both with art by Jon D’Agostino, for My Little Margie, itself a licensed title based on a 1950s TV sitcom starring Gale Storm and Charles Farrell.
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Teen Confessions #31 (December 1964, Charlton). Cora realized that Al, the older man she’s dating, isn’t for her when she finds out he doesn’t like the Beatles in “Too Young to be Old.” Cover and story illustrated by Dick Giordano, scripted by Joe Gill.
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Laugh #166 (January 1965, Archie). The Beatles make a cover appearance with the Archie gang, art by Harry Lucey and Mario Acquaviva. (Soon to be a Facsimile Edition.)
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Girls’ Romances #109 (June 1965, DC). Penny — who looks an awful lot like Ann-Margret — fantasizes that the Beatles fall in love with her “When My Dreams Come True.” Cover and interior art by Gene Colan.
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Summer Love #46 (October 1965, Charlton). Besieged by their floating heads, one young girl finds “The Beatles Were My Downfall.” Art by Pat Masulli and Dick Giordano.
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Heart Throbs #101 (April/May 1966, DC). DC got in on the Beatles action with “Secret Life, Secret Love.” Cover by Werner Roth and John Rosenberger, story by Roth and Bernard Sachs.
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Summer Love #47 (October 1966, Charlton). Pat Masulli and Dick Giordano cover “The Beatles Saved My Romance,” based on the story inside by Joe Gill, Hal Grauer, and Vince Colletta.
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Tippy’s Friends Go-Go and Animal #8 (March 1968, Tower). Tower Comics was only around for a few years, but they joined the Hit Parade with this photo cover, surrounded by art by Samm Schwartz.
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Beatles: Yellow Submarine (February 1969). A 64-page adaptation of the Beatles’ animated film, cover artist unknown, but probably pick-up art from the interiors by Jose Delbo.
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Batman #222 (June 1970, DC). Not the actual Beatles but an incredible simulation that plays with the weird “Paul is Dead” rumor/urban legend. Cover by Neal Adams, interior story by Frank Robbins, Irv Novick, and Dick Giordano.
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Spoof #3 (January 1973, Marvel). Politics and rock come together on this Marie Severin cover for one of Marvel’s short-lived humor titles.
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Marvel Super Special #4: The Beatles Story (1978, Marvel). A magazine-size combination of photo features and a 39-page “The Story of the Beatles,” by David Anthony Kraft, George Perez, and Klaus Janson. Cover designed by Perez and painted by Tom Palmer.
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MORE
— BATMAN MEETS THE BEATLES: He Came in Through the Bat-Room Window. Click here.
— YELLOW SUBMARINE: The Voyage From Screen to Page. Click here.
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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life.
Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/
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