24 Pages

My Secret Origin What If...? #9 Writer: Roy Thomas Penciller: Rich Buckler Inker: Sam Delarosa Colorist: Evelyn Stein * I bought the book that started my 30-year obsession with comics when I was 12 years old, but my fascination with superheroes and cartooning goes back much further. By all accounts my first pop culture love was Sesame Street . Now before I get lost trying to trace Super Grover to Watchmen , I’ll instead say that it might actually have been Sesame Street’s sister show, the Electric Company – which stopped production of its initial run the year I was born, but lived on in reruns long enough for me to watch as a preschooler – that actually sparked the fire. The Electric Company not only featured the superhero Letterman, but also the ongoing “Spidey Super Stories” segment, introducing me to my favorite super-hero, Spider-Man. When I was around six years old, I would meet him in person at a toy store in Decatur, a high point of my young life. One of my most vivid and happ...

Riddle Me This What do you think of when you hear the words “Superhero comics in the 1990s”? Holographic covers? Gritted teeth? Improbably large guns? Polybags? Exclusive trading cards? Superman’s “death”? Image Comics? Foil-embossed covers? Marvel’s bankruptcy? Wizard Magazine ? Cross-hatching? Pouches? All of the above? We rarely know what’s going to define a certain period of time while we’re still the midst of it.  Trends in fashion, music, graphic design, TV, etc. are kind of like a plant or a child. They’re changing every day, but you don’t notice it happening. Only later can we really take stock of what went on before. One of the stranger aspects of entering middle age is seeing eras you lived through – and remember well – gain an identity.  It has been really weird for me to witness the 1990s boiled down to its defining aspects. There were certain things we knew at the time would be part of the story: grunge music, flannel shirts, the swing revival. Others have come as...