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"Heroes" Returns

 


In November 2020, I began a project called "Heroes for the '90s!" with a mission of creating "a body of essays will present a vivid picture of superhero comics at [Marvel and DC] in the 1990s," as I wrote in my introduction to the series. I found as I began writing that not only were the essays a snapshot of the comics industry of the time, they were an account of my formative years as both a fan and a human being. 

I had planned to write 38 total essays, but by the time I got to #25, marking the first half of the decade, another project callled for my attention. Ironically, it was inspired directly by essay #12. I ended up putting "Heroes for the '90s!" on hiatus, and instead spent the rest of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 working on a biography of Marvel comics writer and editor Mark Gruenwald (due out next year, hopefully, from University Press of Mississippi).

I hoped to finish "Heroes for the '90s!" in the fall of 2022, but then another opportunity arose and I had to once again push the project to the backburner. Now, 28 months after the last essay, I'm finally ready to see this through to the end. Coming your way starting next Thursday are 10 essays, covering 1995 to 1999. 

(Now if you're good with arthimatic you probably realized that 25 plus 10 is not 38. In returning to my original plan, I discovered there were three books/topics that I no longer cared to write about.)

If you'd like to catch up on the first 25 essays, start here. And I hope you'll come along with me as I complete my journey from a 12-year-old neophyte who lived for the weekly trip to Metropolis Comics to a jaded 22-year-old ready to leave superhero comics behind. 

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