Wooden Block Origins: Forbidden Planet
Where do we become the people we always were?
We are, in the end, the stories we tell and the stories we are told. I don’t know how I’m doing on that first part; my intention has always been to always get better at it and die empty, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a raconteur. That second part, though? I have always been surrounded by great stories. I want to tell you about the Children’s Museum of Manhattan and the Met and the Paley Center and every branch of the New York Public Library, the Village East and the Beautiful Bay and Arnie’s Place and the Forbes, every spot from Books of Wonder to Dinosaur Hill where my imagination took root. Let’s start with the two words that always let me know something new was around the corner, that my little world was about to change forever: Forbidden Planet.
That’s the original location on 12th Street, vacated now some twenty-seven years. Forbidden Planet was the sort of omnibus nerd shop that many stores think they’re heading towards but which few ever actually achieve. There were comics, manga, paperbacks, games, models, t-shirts, toys, trading cards, and the sort of weird stuff that I’m sure would get you burned at the stake during the Satanic Panic 80s. Just off the top of my head I know our copies of The Pool of Fire, The TARDIS Inside Out, and The Godzilla Book were purchased here. The place was massive, especially by New York standards, so if you wanted something specific geeky and it wasn’t in here then you were better off taking your butt to London or Tokyo in search of it. (I’ve heard the London outpost of Forbidden Planet is likewise fantastic, and it’s still on my list of somedays.)
And it was right down the street from my school. Do you want your child to have realistic expectations for how wild and wonderous and beautiful and brilliant this world can be? Then don’t bring them into a place that gives them a direct injection of every single piece of fantasy or science-fiction iconography the second they walk in the door. I didn’t know what any of these things were but my brain immediately wanted to construct the world where they all lived.
(Shout-out to Slotjaw for preserving all of this footage! There’s seven parts to it and it’s a brilliant look back at New York and the store in specific.)
There are of course a thousand different memories that this footage conjures up. Walking in I had that immediate sense that I had to take off my backpack and put it on the counter, because no large bags were allowed in the store. (You don’t realize the little things you do on a regular basis until they’re not part of your life anymore.) Past the collected Sandman and the new Image issues and everything Dark Horse was putting out, all these things for the big kids that looked terrifying and at once alluring. It would be years before I properly met the Master of Dreams but he already lived in the back of my head. Evenings with Star Trek, both TOS and TNG, made me curious about every science fiction novel in the place, to the point where I would pick up Foundation way before I was ready for it. But the real treasures of this place lay downstairs. Down in one of Manhattan’s more generous basements was most of the reason why this newsletter exists in the first place.
I recognize some of these faces; for a child the staff of a store like this one were wizards and gatekeepers of a larger world. They brought forth creatures who I couldn’t see anywhere else. It was Zoids and it was Robotix and it was Britons and it was a thousand different characters who came to me without the weight of backstory. As wonderful as the nostalgia for Late 80s and Early 90s properties are—and I am and will continue to be a sucker for all things Ninja Turtles—most of them don’t exactly inspire the imagination to zoom off and away. Everything had a long theme song so you knew the right way to exist within its universe. The stories were drilled into the heads of American kids, so even something as inconsequential as Spiral Zone had rules and regulations. Comics had a little bit more leeway with what-if premises, and that’s probably why I came to love Uncanny X-Men so much during this time. But the toy-line cartoon hegemony? Even if you threw all your characters together like I did it still felt like the backstory of each one could weigh down the proceedings. There was a “right” way to play, and where’s the fun in that?
Down in the basement? Anything went. If these models and monsters had backstories then they existed across an ocean in a pre-internet age. It would be years until I understood who Gamera was; at Forbidden Planet he was just Rocket Turtle. Who was that robot dragon? He was cool, that’s who he was. Most of these toys had instructions in French or Japanese, a full barrier to understanding what they really were or were supposed to be. Like Pastuso becoming Paddington, each of these toys took on a new identity in a new land based on their appearance and demeanor.
This was my first attempt at storytelling. “Who’s this guy?” became an important question, because each treasure liberated from Altair IV would join the mighty battles on my bedroom floor. Each monster, robot, automobile, soldier, or mighty spaceship could turn the tide. I wouldn’t call them kaiju until my second Ultraman phase (and god help the child who has multiple Ultraman phases), but I did know that some Big Japanese Monsters were going to be good guys and help out Madmardigan and Lifeline and Tasha Yar, and others were going to be the bad guys presenting a unified front alongside Godzilla. This battle would take up all of my time on a Saturday between soccer practice and the WPIX Afternoon Movie, so it was an important decision.
I could rely somewhat on the examples of my parents and the expertise of my older brother, but in the end what and who these acquisitions would be were the decisions of my own brain. Telling stories for the amusement of my brother and me went on for a while, even after he marched downtown to high school and I got to see glimpses of the rarified grown-up world of teenagerdom. But the clashes between monsters and the mayhem upon well-trod carpet started to become something else. I wanted to dream my own stories and my own worlds, the kind that would probably never get an action figure line but would be all my own. (I’d go back and tell that kid about 3-D printing. It’d blow his mind.) My first fledgling attempts at writing came from these afternoons with the motley we had purchased from Forbidden Planet, from outgrowing it or at least wanting to add my own stamp to the battle map.
You can only speak in the language that is given to you. The first thoughts of a child are in the words that they hear around them. Everything grows from that linguistic foundation. It’s the same with ideas. We have to start somewhere, and that somewhere where we start eventually becomes the basis for everywhere we go. If I started making up stories because these monsters were not enough, then Forbidden Planet was my first language. I could not have asked for a better place to learn how to speak.
Forbidden Planet is still there, albeit in a shrunken and transmogrified form. A New York City that thinks it still deserves hostage rents has driven it out of one home or another in that same neighborhood for going on thirty years. I stopped in at the new location a while back, and I found a totally okay comic book shop. When I tried to go downstairs I found that there is no downstairs in this location. No lavish dedicated spot for the newest in battery-powered model kits, no giant stack of Alf stuffed animals, no famously-banned Jason Takes Manhattan poster to scare the bejesus out of a grade schooler. It’s a different store, but I know that there’s still some kid who’s way too young for some of this stuff discovering it for the first time.
It’s a different time. Superhero movies are now global homework for pop culture, international audiences forced to give a damn who Adam Warlock is before spending a fun night at the theater. Damn near everything has that same vise-grip lock on backstories. There’s very little room for “what’s that?” But that is where the best stories take root. Thank you to Forbidden Planet, however and wherever it still exists. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to start. May so many others find that place where their language grows.