24 Pages

And Justice for Some Justice League America  #100  Writer: Gerard Jones Penciller: Chuck Wojtkiewicz Inker: Bob Dvorak Colorist: Gene D'Angelo * When one thinks of the Justice League, one thinks of the most recognizable DC heroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman. And for two decades, that was the team, give or take a few members. But since the 1980s, the team has been more often comprised of one or two of the heavy hitters and a cast of lesser-knowns. It started in the mid-1980s with the "Detroit" era, in which Aquaman and Martian Manhunter headed up a group of newcomers including Vibe and Vixen. In 1987, following Crisis on Infinite Earths , a new team emerged. The soft reboots of Superman and Wonder Woman led to a team that was anchored by Batman and Martian Manhunter. They were joined by a colorful array of B-listers such as Booster Gold, Dr. Light, and Mister Miracle. A bit later they were joined by a second team in their own title, Jus...

A Ray(ner) of Light Green Lantern  #62  Writer: Ron Marz Penciller: Daryl Banks and Joe St. Pierre Inker: Romeo Tanghal Colorist: Steve Mattsson * Much more so than their Marvel counterparts, DC superheroes have a foundation of legacy. Because several of their Silver Age heroes - Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom - were updates of Golden Age ones, the fictional universe gained a sense of history and lineage, a connection that was made explicit with the Justice League / Justice Society team-ups of the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s this was furthered by the company's decision to have the grown children of the Justice Society become a team (Infinity Inc.) and the sidekicks of the Justice League grow into the New Teen Titans. The problem was that the Silver Age heroes became way more popular and iconic than their predecsssors, and that made it difficult to continue the cycle of having a younger generation come in and take over.  But credit where credit is due, DC went...

  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 ...

In the Heart of the Beast, Part 2 X-Men Adventures (Season II) #10 Writer: Ralph Macchio Penciller: Paul Borges Inker: James Pascoe Colorist: Joe Agostinelli * As we learned in part 1 of this essay, 1992's  X-Men: The Animated Series had distilled 30 years of drastic personality changes into an ideal version of the Beast – smart, funny, kind, disciplined. But there was one aspect of the character remained extremely unsettled: His love life. A season two spotlight episode of X-Men: The Animated Series is an encapsulation  of the Beast’s miserable romantic history, which is perhaps even more convoluted and confusing than his personality issues. First airing January 15, 1994, “Beauty and the Beast" was based on an idea by Julia Lewald and written by Stephane J. Mathison. The story finds Beast working at a clinic to give sight to a blind woman named Carly Crocker. In working together, they have developed a strong mutual attraction, but of course Carly doesn’t know exactly wha...

In the Heart of the Beast, Part 1   X-Men Adventures (Season II) #10 Writer: Ralph Macchio            Penciller: Paul Borges Inker: James Pascoe Colorist: Joe Agostinelli   * This year marks the 50th anniversary of Fantastic Four #1, and the birth of the modern Marvel universe. Most of the most recognizable Marvel characters debuted within a couple of years of that landmark issue. And most of those characters have had stories told about them for every single month since. That adds up to a staggering number of tales. Even more staggering is that we're meant to believe all of it actually happened, despite the fact that most of the characters have barely aged, and that different writers and editors have had vastly different interpretations of the characters. The result is that superheroes have the most convoluted backstories in all of fiction, and yes I'm including soap operas characters in that. This means that reading superhe...

Look Out Your Window, I Can See His Light Starman #0  Writer: James Robinson Penciller: Tony Harris Inker: Wade Von Grawbadger Colorist: Gregory Wright * In September 1994, which was the beginning of my senior year of high school, I wrote a journal entry in which I boldly declared, "Superhero comics are dead."  My argument was that all that was interesting about superheroes had already been done and that there was nothing new to be done in the genre. I declared that all of the most interesting and innovative comic books were non-superhero titles: Tales of the Beanworld , A Distant Soil , Scud the Disposable Assassin , Atomic City Tales , etc.  Ah, the brashness of youth. And though I didn’t state them in that particular one-page handwritten treatise, I realize now there were a trio of reasons I had taken on this attitude. One was the diminished quality of the books Marvel (and Image, and Malibu, and…) were producing. Another was that I was genuinely excited by indie...