I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. In my estimation, 2004 was a pretty lousy year for superhero comic books from the big two publishers, DC and Marvel. Sales were in their extended descent, leading writers, artists, and editors to consistently resort to the desperation of cheap sensationalism. DC was building their major event comic for the year around the rape and murder of a character who belonged to a more innocent time, and Marvel was operating with a similarly … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. When I started reading superhero comics, I was enamored with the history I did not witness. Immediately deciding to Make Mine Marvel, I had an endless excitement for studying that publisher’s previously traveled terrain. It helped that it was easy to digest, with fewer than twenty years of stories when I started pulling together the necessary change to purchase their monthly, ongoing adventures. They also had a pure mastery of genial grandstanding in their self-promotion, … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Silver Surfer by Stan Lee and John Byrne

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. When I committed to superhero comic books in the early nineteen-eighties, I was immediately enraptured by the connectivity of the Marvel universe. While the storytelling practice has reached levels of pure tedium these days, marked by supposed “event series” that pile as many costumed figures as possible into plots as hopelessly ensnarled as the wires behind a media obsessive’s entertainment center, there was still a frisson of excitement to be had back then when … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 by Frank Miller and Herb Trimpe

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. As I remember it, I figured out right away that Howard the Duck wasn’t for kids. The first issue hit spinner racks when I was a mere five years old. At first glance, it bore a resemblance to the material I was excitedly reading at the time. Still, I somehow knew it was a comic for adults. I suspect that was attributable to the fact that adults were reading and talking … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. I believe I’ve used this space before to expound of my youthful susceptibility to Marvel Annuals, the double-sized bonus issues of the publisher’s most popular titles that arrived every summer. In addition, I was easily enticed by a cover that offered a series of seemingly unrelated incidents that offered a preview of what was inside, effectively promising that the events of the issue in question couldn’t be contained within a single image, … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Avengers Annual #10 by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. In my dull snobbery, enhanced by an equally misguided tendency to dismiss anything viewed as too girly from my pop culture consideration, I was an unlikely reader for a series featuring She-Hulk, the unfortunately named cousin to Marvel’s signature green goliath hero. Introduced in a comic book with a 1980 cover date, She-Hulk was the titanic alter ego of Jessica Walters, previously unmentioned cousin of Bruce Banner. When her relative happened to be … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. I had just begun my delirious jaunt into the magical land of superhero comics when the SPECIAL DOUBLE-SIZE 100TH ISSUE! of Marvel Team-Up hit newsstands, way back when that was actually a place a person could buy comic books. I wasn’t buying any Spider-Man comics yet, nor was X-Men part of my monthly habit, which theoretically have made me interested in this issue, given that it was written by the scribe … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up #100 by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. To be a youthful fan of superhero comics during the nineteen-eighties, one needed — absolutely needed — to adore the X-Men. Writer Chris Claremont took the granules of Stan Lee’s original conceit for the team, with the maligned mutants standing in for every beset group of people in American culture, and spun it into a fair representation of the sensation of being perpetually outcast that comes with adolescences, especially for those … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Uncanny X-Men #153 by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. Though the two major comic book publishers, Marvel and DC, currently operate with as much animosity towards one another as at any time during their decades-long competition, I’m under the impression, perhaps inaccurately, that the schism doesn’t extend to the fan base. Maybe because the two of them are in a nearly perpetual state of reboot, readers feel free to shift back and forth freely between the lines, opting for whatever … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Legends by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. I’ll begin with the occasionally necessary caveat that I can sometimes abuse the term “youth” in this space. I was hardly a kid when Joss Whedon made his first venture into writing comic books, a form for which he clearly had plenty of affection. Indeed, it was my relative decrepitude that originally steered me clear of Whedon’s superlative television series Buffy the Vampire, believing that surely I, a distinguished fellow in … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Fray by Joss Whedon and Karl Moline