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Comic Fandom Archive
Finding The “Inner Bud” ––Part 2––
Getting To Know The Owner Of Bud Plant Comic Art!
he mission was clear: get bookseller Bud Plant out of his “business mode,” and find out about the “inner fan”— how he got involved in this hobby, what kind of comics he collected as a youth, and what kind of involvement he had in comics fandom. Last time, we found out that he was a cardcarrying member of the MMMS (Merry Marvel Marching Society) in the mid-1960s, when he was in junior high school. Not long after, he heard about fandom and began collecting EC comics, and building up a collection of Quality comics. Now let’s find out how his involvement in fandom led him to open his first comics store, and how he discovered what would become his life’s work…
BILL: Okay, I think we have a pretty good idea of the kind of comics that interested you and pulled you into the hobby. What about fanzines? Did they interest you at all? BUD: Absolutely yes! Speaking of Marty Arbunich and Bill DuBay, I liked Yancy Street Journal. It was great. It was such a quality fanzine to me because it was printed really well. Another one that was a must-have was On the Drawing Board [later The Comic Reader]. It was the only thing that told you about what comics were coming out. Eventually, DC started putting pages in their comics—around 1968 or ’69— with comics news, but they were more or less “hype pages.” The Rocket’s BlastComicollector was a must-
by Bill Schelly [Interview conducted by telephone on June 26, 2004. Transcribed by Brian K. Morris; edited by Jeffrey Kipper.] (Top left:) Bud with the staff of Bud Plant Comic Art, circa 1980. (Left:) The cover of a very early Bud Plant catalog, from 1972. Except where noted, all art and photos accompanying this article were supplied by Bud. [©2005 the respective copyright holders.]
have. Everybody got a subscription to RB-CC and we would all search through it for the comics we wanted. BILL: Was there anything you were getting that had “the good artists” then? BUD: Yes. The very early days of Squa Tront and Spa Fon were filled with “the good artists.” Those were killer fanzines. Later on, I was selling both of them. To me, those were the absolute best zines coming out. Also, Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine was a really great magazine. I remember getting Star-Studded Comics [chuckles] and being a little bit underwhelmed by it. I figured that I would rather buy professional comics than spend 75¢ on amateur strips. But I got a couple issues of Star-Studded. BILL: As good as it was, Star-Studded never sold quite as well as Alter Ego or Squa Tront, for exactly the reasons you cited. Amateur strips, no matter how well done, just appealed to a smaller sub-set of fans than zines with good articles and art about pro comics. BUD: Also, I was buying a fair amount of fanzines, but I had to pick and choose because even at 25¢ to 75¢ apiece… that was a chunk of money. You could buy a few comics for that. BILL: When did comic book conventions come into the picture for you? BUD: The first convention I ever went to was for sciencefiction fans. It was Bay Con in 1968 in Berkeley. There was a little bit of comic book stuff going on in there. It was there that I started dealing comics. John Barrett, Jim, Tom, and I shared an eight-foot table, and we were selling comics in the dealers’ room. This is when I first got serious about the business end of comics. It’s probably a terrible comparison, but working and dealing in comics was sort-of like being a drug addict. I mean, a lot of drug addicts go out and sell stuff in order to support their habit [laughs], and that is exactly what we were doing. I didn’t want to get into the business or anything, but The Basil Wolverton “Lena the Hyena” cover of Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine #12 (1970). Repro’d from Bill Schelly’s 1995 book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, updated and republished in 2003. [Art ©2005 the respective copyright holders.]