Michelle Nolan is a lifelong fan and collector of comic books, with an enormous collection of vintage periodicals — and a professional career as an author and newspaper writer.
When Michelle Nolan was 8 years old, her father gave her a dime to buy her first comic book during a day trip to the beach in Santa Cruz, California.
Nolan had read comic books before but had never actually bought or owned one. She picked out “Mystery in Space #32,” a science fiction title published by DC Comics.
“I was fascinated by the storytelling and the words,” said Nolan, now 77. “The vocabulary in these comics was immense; it was so much better than the schoolbooks (I had).”
That first comic would lead Nolan to a lifetime of comic book collecting and fandom, greatly influencing her life in ways both small and profound. She now has a collection of roughly 25,000 comic books, with another 25,000 pieces of literature including vintage books, dime-store novels and pulp magazines.
‘The vocabulary in these comics was immense …
so much better than the schoolbooks (I had).’
Nolan has been nationally recognized as part of what’s called “First Fandom” — the first generation of devoted comic book collectors and enthusiasts that emerged in the 1950s and 60s.
Professionally, Nolan spent her life as a writer, penning four major books on pop culture and contributing to more than 100 others. She spent the last 25 years as a prominent Bellingham Herald freelance reporter, mostly covering sports. All told, Nolan estimates she’s written more than 12,000 newspaper and magazine articles in her career.
In looking back on her life of comics and columns, Nolan seems certain of one thing:
“I grew up at just the right time,” she said.
Getting started
Born in San Jose, California, in 1948, Michelle Nolan was the oldest of three children.
Her paternal grandfather, a Prohibition-era bootlegger, died in a 1930s gang war in Harlan County, Kentucky. Her father wound up in California, Nolan said, because her grandfather drove her father and uncle there and warned them never to return to Kentucky.
Nolan’s father was a professional boxer before being drafted into the U.S. Navy prior to World War II. Stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawai‘i, he emerged from a church service on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, to see Japanese planes flying so low overhead he could see pilots’ faces.
One plane attempted to take aim at Nolan’s father, causing him to dive behind a bush and instinctively throw an orange in self-defense. He was originally stationed aboard the USS Arizona, but well before the attack was transferred to the USS Argonne. All of the men in the Arizona unit he had served with died.
Nolan’s father’s actions that day ultimately earned him several decorations for valor, but he was forever haunted by the attack. When he returned to speak at Pearl for a 30th-anniversary ceremony in 1971, he cried at the beginning of his speech; Nolan said it was the first time her mother had ever seen him cry.
Nolan’s parents were intelligent, loving and strict, she said. They seemed to instill in her a natural confidence in her own academic abilities that she was never hesitant to assert: Nolan once took a scientifically outdated test answer to her school principal and demanded she be given credit for being right.
He obliged.
Words and pictures
Growing up, Nolan said she was considered exceptional with words, whether it was reading, writing or speaking. She began perusing her father’s news magazines by the second grade, and at age 10, was given an adult library card so she could read more advanced books on her interests.
One of Nolan’s biggest comic paydays came from selling
a 1942 copy of Archie Comics #1 for $8,000 ….
“I didn’t create my gifts,” Nolan said of her aptitude for language. “My gifts were given to me through my parents and God, and it was up to me to make the most of it.”
After obtaining her first comic book at age 8, Nolan’s interest exploded. She bought old comics for a nickel apiece at secondhand stores, becoming hooked on stories about Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman, as well as Archie Comics and others. Nolan’s mother provided her storage space in a closet with which to build her collection.
Doing so in a curated way back then was tough, Nolan said, as comic book stores didn’t exist. Instead, comics were haphazardly distributed among news racks in places like grocery stores and pharmacies.
Nolan responded accordingly with her first jobs, which included sweeping the floor of a local newsstand and restocking paperback racks at a drug store. The latter gave her first dibs at fresh editions before any other child, and she insisted on being paid in comic books instead of cash.
“I built quite the collection without spending a huge amount of money,” Nolan said.
As she grew older, that didn’t always hold true.
During her senior year of high school, an open campus lunch policy allowed Nolan to visit nearby antique shops to search for old comics. One day, the owner of a shop presented her with a copy of Action Comics #13 from 1939, featuring Superman’s fourth-ever cover appearance. The cost was steep: $10 — now about $100, adjusted for inflation.
“That was a lot of money for a high school kid in 1966,” Nolan said.
Though she initially lacked the full amount, Nolan collected enough spare change from classmates to buy the comic at day’s end. When her father discovered how much the comic cost, he was furious. But by the time Nolan traded it for another comic years later, Action #13 would be worth hundreds of dollars.
One of Nolan’s biggest comic paydays came from selling a 1942 copy of Archie Comics #1 for $8,000 about 16 years ago. Still, she said she’s has never seen her investment in comic books as a financial one: her collection is based primarily on personal interest and passion.
To the moon
Nolan’s earliest foray into newspapers was in 1950. Her maternal grandparents, living in Mount Vernon, sent her photo to the Seattle Times for a cutest baby contest. She won.
In the sixth grade, Nolan worked as a courier for the San José Mercury News, which became yet another job for comic book funding. Her writing career began in high school: she served as an editor on her high school newspaper before winning a city-wide journalism competition as a senior. The honor got her professional work in the San José Weekly.
While getting her bachelor’s degree at San José State University, Nolan wrote for the paper she’d delivered for as a child. In July 1969, several of her interests collided in a historic way.
After serving as personal assistant to comic book dealer Phil Seuling for a New York City comic convention, Nolan and a friend had the opportunity to drive to Florida.
There, Nolan got a tour of Cape Canaveral and met several astronauts so she could write an article for the Mercury News. She then witnessed the launch of Apollo 11 — the first manned mission to land on the moon.
“I’ll never forget that rocket taking off early in the morning of July 16,” Nolan said. “I was in tears.”
Space exploration had been a fascination of Nolan’s since childhood, when she kept a scrapbook tracking the space race. Decades later, she would meet additional astronauts through comic book conventions: Richard Gordon — command module pilot of Apollo 12 — and Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon.
Over the years, Nolan’s interest in sci-fi introduced her to authors like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. She met all of them over the years and came to be friendly with Bradbury at conventions.
A regular Lois Lane
Comic books also motivated Nolan’s sense of independence as a young woman, leading her to obtain both her driver’s license and first car. With these, she could now drive around the Bay Area looking for comics and meet other collectors.
After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, Nolan also earned a master’s certificate in teaching from San José State. Education was a backup career she never had to seriously entertain, though she still did substitute teaching, mentoring and even softball coaching at various times.
Nolan’s career in Bay Area newspapers included publications in Redwood City and Palo Alto, and she had stints as a reporter, editor and executive before leaving in the mid-1970s. Nolan then spent two years in Olympia writing for what’s now The Olympian, before returning to the Bay Area for several more decades.
In California, Nolan mainly wrote features and covered sports — including the area’s professional franchises at a time when some male reporters still believed women had no place doing so. In 1986, while penning a 5,000-word feature about a local TV station’s intention to show every episode of the “Adventures of Superman” over a Labor Day weekend, Nolan met Noel Neill — the actress who played Lois Lane — and told her how the character inspired her career in journalism.
Writing, long and short
After freelancing stints for the San Francisco Examiner and San Mateo County Times in the mid-to-late 1990s, Nolan moved to Bellingham in 2000 and began freelancing for the Bellingham Herald. Over the years she covered almost every kind of story for the paper, she said, with the exception of breaking news and crime.
Nolan also became an author during her time in Bellingham, penning “Love on the Racks: A History of American Romance Comics,” in 2008. Her second book, “Ball Tales, a Study of Baseball, Basketball and Football Fiction from the 1930s to the 1960s,” arrived in 2010. “Archie’s Rivals in Teen Comics, 1940s-1970s” and “Baseball and Football Pulp Fiction, Six Publishers, with a Directory of Stories, 1935-1957,” followed in 2020.
Nolan also contributed to numerous comic book industry publications over the years, including the official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. In the 2020-21 edition, she was honored with an Overstreet Advisor of the Year Award.
She served as a columnist, including for Comics Buyer’s Guide, Comic Book Marketplace and Alter Ego magazine. In 2014 Nolan received perhaps her greatest honor at San Diego Comic-Con, when she was surprised with an Inkpot Award for “comic fan services,” recognizing her life’s passion.
“I was very shocked,” Nolan said. “There were pictures of me in tears.”
Last year, after covering the fall sports season for the Bellingham Herald, Nolan was told the paper could no longer pay her to freelance. Although newly out of work after a quarter-century of local sportswriting, Nolan is hopeful that — like a comic book superhero — her next exciting story arc is just around the corner.
“I’ve been told I’m the oldest (sports) writer in the state,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m certainly one of the oldest. I don’t want to quit.”
— By Matt Benoit
Also read in Salish Current:
• “Keeper of archival treasures has ‘the coolest job’” Oct. 16, 2023