Bill and I Fall Asleep Reading Uncle Scrooge

When I was a kid in the 1960s, it was hard to find comic books.  I didn't get a regular allowance until junior high, and when I did manage to earn a quarter or a dime, Schneider's Drug Store would be out of my favorite titles. I depended mostly on gifts from my uncles, or hand-me-downs from my cousin or the big kid down the street.

So one of my fondest childhood memories is of the summer of 1971 -- a few weeks before my Aunt Mavis took us to see The Time Machine.  My boyfriend Bill, my brother, and I went to the Denkmann Elementary School Carnival, and  I won a whole box of Disney comics that somebody donated-- Donald Duck, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Uncle Scrooge --  over 20 in all.

In those days new comics cost 15 cents, so that was quite a score!

I could do without the Donald Ducks, with Donald being forced to sit on a chair at the Bon Ton while Daisy tried on hats, and the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories were uneven, but each of the Uncle Scrooges was a gem.

In each issue Uncle Scrooge traveled to a far-flung corner of the world with Donald and his grand-nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) to manage his various business enterprises or acquire more wealth.

They are captured by the Harpies while searching for the Golden Fleece.
They rocket to a solid gold moon created by a Venusian explorer.
They find the Mines of King Solomon.
They visit the kingdom of Tralla-La in Tibet.

History, astronomy, mythology, chest-pounding adventure, either before or at the same moment that I was discovering Treasure Island, King Solomon's Mines, Coral Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the books in the Green Library!

It was a male-only world, with no damsels in distress to be rescued and no girls waiting back home at the adventure's end.  Uncle Scrooge is elderly, his life nearly over, and he has never expressed the slightest interest in a woman.

But my memory has another layer:

I did not read the comics alone.

Bill invited me to stay over at his house so he could "help me" read, squeezed into his small bed in the room down the hall from his big brother Mike.

I read long into the night, long after Bill loosened his grip on a comic, his eyelids fluttered shut, and he began to snore. Once he shifted position until we were pressed together, his soft chest rising and falling, his lips parted slightly, his face illuminated in the golden light of his cowboy lamp.

When I was ready to sleep, I lay against his chest, and he put his arm around me.

I had slept over with Bill many times before, and I would sleep over again, but that was the only time we slept in each other's arms.

Kon-Tiki: 6 Guys on a Boat

Boys growing up in the 1960s were encouraged to read High Adventure, tales of exploration and conquest: Robert Peary's expedition to the North Pole; Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole; Edmund Hilary's ascent of Mount Everest; Stanley Livingston's trek into Darkest Africa.  

All of this was somehow supposed to prepare us for a future confined to small square offices by day and small square houses by night.

The only tale of High Adventure that I actually liked was Kon-Tiki, about Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's quest to prove that Polynesia was settled by the early Incas -- or could have been.

So he and five companions built a raft of balsa wood, the only material available to the native peoples, and set out from Callao, Peru on April 28, 1947.  Four months and 4,000 miles later, they ran aground on Raroia, near Tahiti.  To international acclaim.

Who cares that contemporary anthropology disputed his theory?  He had been on a High Adventure.  Every boy I knew read the book, named his toy boat Kon-Tiki, and planned extravagant sailing adventures.  Mine started down the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida, and then followed the Gulf Stream to Europe.

I especially liked reading about six guys together on a small raft, their bodies nude and bronze in the sun, helping each other, rescuing each other, learning to care for each other.

Many more recent expeditions have attempted to recreate the journey, such as the Tangaroa in 2006, with Heyerdahl's grandson Olaf in the crew.

Naturally the 2012 movie ruined it!  What is this obsession for making every movie scream "Gay people don not exist!"   I know heterosexuals hate us, but still, can't they leave one moment of our childhood alone? 

Thor Heyerdahl was married to women three times, but he wasn't married in 1947, and there was no mooning over half-naked babes.  This was a gay men's adventure, like Donald Duck and his nephews seeking out the Seven Cities of Cibola.

See also: Donald Duck's Double Life.

More Riverdale Beefcake

The second season of Riverdale has a convoluted plotline about a serial killer named the Black Hood, a sort of Zodiac stalking the town's "sinners," who has a special bond with Betty Cooper.

Plus a drug named Jingle Jangle, which, like all drugs on tv, is the brainchild of a single archvillain, the mysterious Sugarman.

Plus there are increasing tensions with the Southside, which is full of drugs and crime, but not because of economic deprivation (in Riverdale the two social classes are upper-middle and rich).  Because of the machinations of two gangs, the rowdy Southside Serpents and the uber-evil Ghoulies.

Kevin Keller's plot arc involves going cruising at night in the park, in spite of the dangers.  Why doesn't he just go on Grindr?  "Because the guys there aren't real," he explains.  Then he rejects a three-way relationship with Moose and Midge, and starts dating a bad boy, Betty's long-lost brother Chic.

But, like Season 1, the cast is full of beefcake actors who aren't shy about hanging out shirtless.

1. Jordon Connor as a baby-faced Southside Serpent with the unlikely name of Sweet Pea (the Popeye character was actually Swee Pea).

2. Model Tommy Martinez as Malachi, leader or at least spokesman of the Ghoulies.

3. Graham Phillips as Nick St. Clair, one of Veronica's New York buddies -- they used to go clubbing.  Wait, she's 16.  Where were all these clubs she was getting into?

Anyway, he comes for an extended visit,  gets a suite at the Five Seasons, and uses a date rape drug to incapacitate Cheryl Blossom after she's been throwing herself at him all night.  Couldn't he just ask?

4. Mark Brandon as Nick's dad has been a very busy character actor since the 1980s (his first credited role is on Mama's Family in 1983), and wrote a book on Winning Auditions.   He looks very much like the Mark Brandon who posed nude in Advocate Men in 1990.

5. Drew Ray Tanner as Fangs Fogarty, a member of the Southside Serpents (he appears as a bully in the Little Archie series).  He starts dating Kevin.

6. Moses Thiessen (left) as Ben, Miss Grundy's newest jailbait conquest.  They make out during a piano lesson, and then the Black Hood kills her.

7. Spanish actor Stephan Miers as Andre, the Lodges' personal assistant.













8. Hart Denton as Chic, Alice Cooper's long-lost son (maybe), who breezes into town with blackmail on his mind (Betty Cooper's mother is not named in the comics.)  He starts dating Kevin, too.

See also: Riverdale: Archie's Pals and Gals.