2.11.24

It’s the time of year when I get sentimental about comic books.

The winter of 1993 was when I rediscovered comics and turned a passing interest into a passion that remains with me to this day. I bought whatever I could afford back then to sample and see what stuck.

One of the issues I bought back then was Fantastic Four #376. I’d read a couple previous issues and like the Paul Smith art. Tom DeFalco’s writing was fairly meh, and the series wouldn’t hold my interest much longer.

Anyway, this issue was polybagged with a cassette tape in a cardboard slipcase and a free issue of Dirt. Dirt was an edgy, kewl magazine for extreme ‘90s teen boys. Spike Jonze was involved with it somehow.

But whatever.

The real prize was that cassette. It was a sampler with a couple good songs and others that were forgettable. How forgettable? Well, I can’t tell you what they are now, can I?

What I do remember is that there was a Jesus Jones song (The Devil You Know, maybe?), along with two others I absolutely loved (and still do): Sleeping Satellite by Tasmin Archer and tonight’s song, World Without Love by World Party.

World Without Love is a song with an interesting history. It was written by Paul McCartney (with a Lennon-McCartney credit) when he was 16, and it was originally recorded by Peter and Gordon in 1964.

I don’t particularly care for the original version. It’s way too perky and cloying. It also feels like Peter and Gordon are stumbling over themselves to get the words out.

World Party’s version is altogether different. It’s slow, contemplative, sung by someone who’s been let down one time too many by a world much crueler than it ought to be.

Thirty-one years later, Dirt magazine is long gone. I sold that issue of Fantastic Four about 15 years ago. And the sampler cassette broke and got tossed in the recycling.

But the song — and the feelings it evokes — remain.

I don’t care what they say

I won’t stay in a world without love