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  Strangers ‘Til We Meet Strangers #8  Writer: Steve Englehart Pencillers: Rick Hoberg and Steve Skroce Inker: Tim Burgard Colorist: Rick Schmitz and Psychodelic Prisms *  In July 1993, comic companies released over 600 new books. That shattered the previous monthly release record set in the medium’s 1950s heyday, when the comic book industry was at its most popular and diverse (in terms of genres of comics).  In 1993, most of those 600 books featured superheroes.  This cornucopia was directly attributable to the new companies and new universes I talked about in essay #19 , but also to Marvel’s response to that competition, which was that they flooded the market with titles in order to monopolize rack space. See, most comic stores had enough space to display about 200 new books per month. That meant all of those other 400 books would have to be special-ordered or not ordered at all. Companies couldn’t rely on customers discovering their books in the sh...

The Best Fastest Man Alive Flash #80 Writer: Mark Waid Penciller: Mike Wieringo Inker: Jose Marzan, Jr. Colorist: Gina Going * One of the best things to come out of DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths was the decision to have Wally West – the former Kid Flash – take over the mantle of the Flash. Wally became a Flash for the 1990s and early 2000s. He was a shining example of DC’s commitment to telling a multi-generational superhero saga, allowing its characters to grow and evolve along with its audience. Like most of their best innovations of the 1980s and 1990s, DC eventually tied all of that to a rock and drowned it in a river. And so Wally West has had a rough go of it in the past 15 years. With 2006’s Infinite Crisis , he was shuffled off to an alternate reality, and DC tried to pass the Flash torch again, this time to Bart Allen. But his series proved unpopular, and Wally returned for a couple of years. Then 2009’s Flash: Rebirth found Wally sidelined by the unnecessary return of ...