The Unknown Knowns Read Online Free Page B

nations and kingdoms and then pasted all this onto a papier-mâché ball.
    Jean never got to see any of this. She would have laughed. I invite her to laugh now as loudly as she wants. Let everyone laugh at my private world. Who cares? I have no secrets anymore. The newspapers have made sure of that, and the subcommittee is telling the world all it wants to know about Jim Rath, prisoner, pariah, domestic terrorist.
    The walls of the storage unit were arrayed floor to ceiling with acid-free archival boxes. These I had alphabetized clockwise around the perimeter of the room using gummed labels and a Sharpie.
    In the extreme upper left corner you would have found my second most valuable item on earth, Action Comics No. 99 (the one with Trick-Shot Shultz using Superman’s forehead as a golf tee; F; $445). In the same box I kept the premiere issue of Atoman (featuring Wild Bill Hickok; VG; $280). Then there was The Beyond No. 17 (“You have called us forth by playing the Lyre of Doom! We are ready to do your evil bidding, master!”; NM!!!; $330).
    Nearby, I kept one of the most trenchant meditations on male insecurity ever. This was The Cat No. 4 (“All my life, humans have hurt me—hounded me! Today, all mankind will fall—beneath the hooves of the Man-Bull!”; VG; only worth $5, but to me it’s priceless).
    Dead ahead, midway up the shelves, was a complete series of Mr. District Attorney, including the prescient issue No. 5 (“Exposing the cruelest racket in the world—‘The Counterfeit Medicine Mob!’”; G; $60). Next to that was Nyoka the Jungle Girl No. 27 (NM; $280). Skip a few boxes, and you’d find Plastic Man No. 39 (VG; $136). “Who dares follow Plastic Man down the stairway to madness?” I can’t tell you how many times I answered that question in the affirmative.
    I had a real oddity from 1952. The virulently anti-McCarthyite issue of Shock SuspenStories (Jingoistic he-man says: “Give it to him, the dirty Red!”; Modern woman says: “Stop it! Please! What you’re doing is wrong! Act like Americans!”; VG; $205). My collection also included several well-preserved issues of Rulah, Jungle Goddess . Why so many comics about feral women? Feel free to write your own report on this topic and e-mail it to the Pentagon.
    I’ll wrap up our tour on the bottom shelf, where you’d find one of my most prized possessions shielded from insidious forces and mildew in a doubled plastic sleeve. Wonder Woman No. 26 (“The Golden Women and the White Star!”; G; $260). If this had been Superman, the price would be double. But that’s the Neanderthal world of comics collecting for you! You should see the meatheads who do the appraising.
    I tugged a length of kite string to snap on the overhead bulb and then pulled down the garage door behind me. My task wassecret—I was looking for the so-called lost issue of Namora (No. 4, 1948). Suppressed by the Comics Council, halted by the publisher, this was one of only five copies extant on our planet, or any other planet that I know of. Now, thanks to your government trying to protect our vital interests, there are only four. Taking out insurgents one rare, collectible comic at a time!
    Namora, if you don’t know, was the cousin of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Like Namor, she was fathered by a land dweller but raised in Atlantis, where she joined the ruling elite. In the late forties they handed Namora her own series, but it was discontinued under suspicious circumstances after only three issues.
    I removed the apocryphal issue No. 4 from its plastic sleeve and laid it out on my felt desktop, using long surgical tweezers to turn the pages. It looked so frail, the images so quaint, with their one-piece bathing suits and USO hairdos. Who would ever consider this a threat to American values? What could be so dangerous about a half-aquatic heroine with shapely legs and somewhat