Karl Kesel is selling his back pages, his memories, his stash. The Spideys, 1- thru-100. The Daredevils, the Caps and that sparkling

. Just about everything from the ’60s but his

.

After 40 years, he is letting the Marvels of his childhood go because, at the golden age of 53, Karl and his wife, Myrna, suddenly have their hands full.

With a 15-week-old baby.

The child of heroin users.

Their precious son, Isaac .¤.¤. and the adoption fees and medical bills that arrived with him.

Thus, the comics must go.

“I don’t necessarily feel like I’m putting away childish things,” says Kesel, a longtime writer and artist. “I may be putting away my childish things. But I’m embracing Isaac’s.

“I think I’m getting another childhood here.”

And adding to those tales that astonish.

***

It was two years ago, Karl says, when his wife arrived with those chilling words, “We need to talk.”

Myrna Kesel was 48 and trapped with second thoughts. She had never gotten pregnant in this, the second marriage for both of them. Regret was at her throat.

Karl surprised her. “We can adopt,” he suggested.

“It wasn’t a long discussion,” Myrna tells me.

But it was the launch of a lengthy process. The Kesels called

in Portland, drawn by the agency’s openness in facilitating adoptions for all kinds of families.

They filled out the forms, describing their wants and warts. The agency extended those histories to birth mothers for review.

“It’s a little like match.com,” Myrna says. Both families — the one that can’t keep the baby and the one shopping for cribs and car seats — have their dream scenarios.

In the beginning, the Kesels’ didn’t include a child affected by drug, alcohol or mental illness.

As those children are 40 percent of the agency’s clients, the Kesels were warned that would mean a longer wait.

“I certainly didn’t know it would take two years,” Karl says.

“You’re not just waiting those two years,” Myrna adds. “It’s all the years you waited before that. I tried to get pregnant in my first marriage. It’s all those months of nothing showing up. For me, it has been a 20-year wait.”

The Kesels attended meetings with other waiting families. They spoke to doctors. Somewhere along the line, they realized they could handle a baby exposed to drugs in the womb.

In midwinter, they received a screening call.

A 22-year-old couple, due in the spring, was looking for a better home than they could ever hope to provide. The expectant mother had done her best to quit heroin when she discovered she was pregnant.

“A little outside your comfort zone,” the agency’s Katie Niemeyer said. “Do you want to be presented anyway?”

Yes. They did.

Months passed. On May 10, Myrna, who does interior artwork for the McMenamins’ pubs and restaurants, had just returned from

when her cell phone rang.

Niemeyer was on the line with “follow-up” on the baby who would be dealing with heroin and methadone withdrawal.

Cosmo and Zevon, the Kesels’ Welsh corgis, were barking. So was Karl: “Haven’t those parents chosen someone yet?”

“Funny you should ask,” Niemeyer said. “They’ve chosen you.

“And the baby is already born. The parents want to meet you tomorrow.”

The Kesels sat down that tearful night with the baby book, searching for a name.

When they realized that Isaac means “he who laughs” —

when God promised them a 90-year-old woman would bear a son — Myrna says, “That sealed the deal.”

***

Isaac’s birth parents did their best. To shake the heroin. To provide for the baby as best they could.

“They entrusted him to us,” Myrna says. “Which is very empowering. We thought our age was a factor against us, but they liked that we were older.”

They also appreciated that Karl Kesel has spent the past 30 years scripting and inking comics.

That reminded the birth father “of his dad and the fun he had growing up,” Myrna says. “He really liked the idea of their son running around like Superman at a comics convention.”

What is also true, however, is that the good choices on adoption don’t cancel out the bad choices with drugs. That’s why Isaac spent the first five weeks of his life in painful withdrawal from heroin and methadone.

In the first three weeks, Karl and Myrna rarely left his side at Portland Providence Medical Center, even though the hospital really wasn’t set up to accommodate them.

“Most drug babies are going into the foster-care system,” Karl says, “so the parents aren’t around.”

Myrna was on maternity leave, Karl juggling work assignments. “We pretty much held Isaac all the time,” Myrna says. “What calmed him the most was to be held.”

They brought Isaac home to Northeast Portland in early June.

“He is very happy, very alert and very responsive,” Karl says. “We have every reason to believe he’ll be a perfectly normal kid.”

They aren’t sure which portion of Isaac’s $67,000 medical bill will be picked up by Myrna’s insurance, but the comics are being sold to cover the cost — $25,000 — of the adoption.

“That’s money we don’t have in the bank,” Karl said.

The books are listed on

, an L.A.-based website. On Sept. 1-2, a number of other local artists will host a benefit at

to help defray the family’s expenses.

Karl bought many of those comics at The Sweet Shop in Victor, N.Y. The stories frame his childhood and brought him to the drawing board.

“It’s so touching to me that he’s willing to sacrifice something he loves so much to help us have a family,” Myrna says. “It’s a big deal, to let all those comics go.”

It’s a fair trade, Karl thinks. An investment in the miracle that continues to unfold, and the baby who screeches with delight each time his father sings to him.

“He makes his pterodactyl noises,” Karl says.

“When he’s happy,” Myrna adds. “He’s found his voice.”

His inheritance.

His laugh.

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