The single-issue story definitely helped this process along when I was growing up. There aren’t too many of those today, as readers have gotten older and simultaneously more demanding that every comic be a compelling starting point for new readers, but also continue to reflect everything that has come before it. The done-in-one story (or is it one-and-done? The debate rages.) is largely looked upon as filler, or an interlude, or at worst, a waste — easily skipped over as the main serial will pick-up its next six to eleven part story next month. I love a great serial, don’t get me wrong. The cliffhangers. The continuing subplots. The ability to look back from the end to see the clues laid months ago at the beginning. These are all awesome aspects of storytelling you can’t get in a single 20 pages — to the same degree anyway. But as a kid, nothing made me more happy than having a single book I could read again and again and again, and enjoy a little bit differently each time, without having to track down part 3 of 4, or worry about how Superman managed to be here AND in Justice League of America the same month. He just was.

See how easy that is?

I have a few of these books littered throughout my collection. They often are the single issues I see on a rack or in a drawer at a comic shop and just can’t help myself from buying again. Yes, I know I have two copies already — the ripped up original from when I was 9 and the one adult-me bought to replace it in my “formal collection” — but this one is near mint, people. And how often am I going to be able to relive that flicker of joy that I got from buying it the first time. If even an infinitesimal spark remains, it’s worth experiencing. I just can’t explain the compulsion any other way. So came across my path Detective Comics #526 the other day.

An extra-sized comic (cover-price $1.50!) from May 1983, this issue was billed largely on the cover as Batman’s 500th appearance in Detective Comics, as the Dark Knight made his intellectual debut in the title’s 27th issue way back in 1939. Not quite a round year anniversary, this story stood out at the time, however, due to its gold ink cover accent and square bound size, not to mention featuring the headshots of pretty much every major Batman villain to date swirling around Batman and his crime-fighting colleagues. Good enough for me. And the cover, pretty cleverly designed from my now-art director’s standpoint as well, lived up to its promise. Upon opening, the reader was treated immediately to a congregation of every major criminal the Bat-family had put away in these 500 issues, and a foreboding title, “All My Enemies Against Me!” Seeing these purveyors of purloinment lined up across a theatre stage was a young reader’s dream, as I could finally have one place to count off and name all the baddies that previously remained scattered throughout my memory and piles of books.

And immediately there was controversy! Talia al Ghul was in love with Batman and wouldn’t go along with the Joker’s plans, no matter how many times she’d tricked the Dark Knight in the past. And Catwoman too had recently moved over to the side of the angels, quickly scooting out on her invite to mistakenly fued with Talia later on. Two ladies vying for Batman’s affections! Even the young homosexual in me was a little bit impressed. Or maybe jealous. And frankly confused. If I were Batman, the choice would clearly be the one wearing the outfit and motif that most closely resembled my own. Catwoman was a no-brainer, Bruce. Let’s be honest.

Batgirl’s arrival on the scene to shake-up a constantly brooding Dick Grayson — we were long past the golly-gee portion of Robin’s adventures — was another high-point for me, as the dominoed daredoll was treated with some rare respect in the Batbooks here by prolific writer Gerry Conway. Previously written as having been easily thrown off the trail of the boys’ secret identities, Babs here all but rolled her eyes at Dick’s surprise. She is, after all, a detective. And as the two of them cycled off to track down the parents of young circus trapeze artist Jason Todd (there’s a plot clue in there for the savvy Bat-fan), you could feel that both Robin and Batgirl were not only equals to each other, but growing closer to living up to the example set forth by their mentor himself, the Batman. It was a unique time for all of these characters, long before the family expanded and sons and daughters took turns seeing who could frown the hardest. You feel as if they’re a true family, but one just about to go their separate ways, leaving a significant hole to fill in Batman’s home and methodology.

Enter young (red-haired) Jason Todd, who discovers the entrance to the Batcave, finds a spare costume in a dusty old trunk, and stows away inside the Batmobile as Batman, Talia and Catwoman speed away to track down Killer Croc. In the course of events, Jason hears Croc is responsible for the deaths of his parents earlier in the issue, and newly orphaned, flies into action alongside the original orphaned warrior himself. By the end of this issue (Phew! A lot happened here!), you can see Bruce and Jason walking the grounds of Wayne Manor, a new partner in the making just as his previous one is about ready to spread his wings and leave the nest.

Exactly thirty years later, I can recall every panel, every word of this comic like Watchtower bell-ringers know the Bible. I know this book to such a degree that it even begs the question why I needed to buy another (or any) copy. It’s all right up here in my head, and probably will be until the day I die. And it doesn’t much matter that it was Batman’s 500th appearance, or the first time we got to see Jason Todd in costume. It was so many things and none of them. Maybe it was just the time of my life I read it. Or maybe I was just more open to the experience it promised me than I would be today, amid a flush of other books and comics and papers begging for my attention. In any event, I feel blessed to have the memory of such a unique experience and that it remains today as an important one to me.

I have no doubt my time writing for The Idler will remain much like that as well. Before starting my column here, I was a frequent tweeter, sure, but hadn’t been offered the very generous opportunity to share my words with such a distinguished audience, alongside such a brilliant group of authors. It’s an experience that has opened my eyes to things I never thought about, forced me to be prolific, motivated me to expand my skills, and led me to meet and partner with some absolutely amazing people. So, thanks, everyone, for the memories, and may they live on here in perpetuity for us all to revisit and reclaim just a little bit of that spark every time we do.

And for those who want to read more from me, I will be easily found at Comicosity.com, taking with me the mantra I have since ingrained in my writing (and living) this past year and some months: refusing to apologize for the things we enjoy. May it always be so.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

It is surprising that we often feel very strongly about the need to defend and justify our beliefs about these underappreciated cultural works. In doing so we are not only defending the things in question but also our own tastes and in some way our validity as social and cultural commentators. It matters to many of us that our friends and colleagues respect our opinions and understand why we believe what we do. Which is why this column is about my appreciation of All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder. The often-delayed Frank Miller and Jim Lee ten issue series is almost universally despised by both critics and comic book readers alike but I have a strange affinity for the story. Reviewers generally praise Lee’s artwork but despise Miller’s storytelling. I, on the other hand, appreciate both creators’ work, and find that the two mesh together to create something unique and exciting, the likes of which I have never seen. The narrative showcases a nearly psychopathic Batman who seems to be teetering on the brink of sanity as he drags a twelve year old Dick Grayson into his war against crime. There is nothing likable about this Dark Knight, he’s extremely violent, overly profane, masochistic, and bordering on sadistic. He is not a good guy and may not be a hero. He is a deeply troubled man who tortures criminals, kidnaps little boys, seems to be devoid of empathy, and is only concerned about himself. He is a highly unsavory character who displays many of humanity’s worst traits and is a role model for no one.

The logical question to ask at this point is; if this Batman is truly so unpleasant why do I like the story so much? In truth it is because this version of the Dark Knight has little to no redeeming qualities or social value. To my mind this Batman is the logical extension of many of the Caped Crusader’s traits taken to the highest degree. Batman has often been portrayed as disturbed, violent, arrogant, and pompous. These characteristics were soft-pedaled or muted by other more desirable qualities in past stories. This book enhances the Dark Knight’s core self and displays how unbecoming such a hero truly would be. I read it as a commentary on society in a post-September 11th world (the first issue was published in 2005.) The narrative asks the reader to consider what price is he/she willing to pay for security and what amount of freedom is he/she willing to sacrifice in the process. I find the effort to be bold and rather forward thinking. It follows the tradition of Miller’s own Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen in presenting the negative aspects of superheroes but it does it at an intensity never before seen in a story featuring one of the comic industry’s best known characters. I can understand why some readers are repulsed by the effort but I believe that such feelings are the point of the story. We should be repulsed, the idea that a mentally unstable billionaire dresses as a bat and violently fights crime would bother many of us if these events happened in the real world. I understand that Batman is fantasy and that escapist literature provides an avenue to flee reality for awhile but isn’t Miller’s notion of a maximized Batman something worth considering?

The other reason that I like All-Star Batman & Robin so much is in many ways the opposite of my above way of thinking. This Batman story takes place in the same universe as Miller’s most notable Batman stories: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again. When combined these stories create a dense narrative that presents the Dark Knight at the beginning of his career and at the end. This progression is fascinating and allows the reader to see how the Batman from The Dark Knight Returns was created and how he changed. It provides insight into numerous plot points and story details that were before unexplored. Miller has created a sinister universe in which not only Batman has become a super-enhanced version of himself but so too have other heroes like Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow. Like Batman, these characters’ core qualities are maintained but are taken to their furthest logical extent. All-Star Batman & Robin rewards readers that follow along closely and connect the dots from previous stories. The narrative also contains numerous Easter eggs from throughout DC Comics history and encourages the reader to consider Batman’s mythos and how the character has progressed since 1939 when he began as a hardcore vigilante.

So, that’s my overall spiel. I doubt I’ve convinced many of you because I imagine a large number of readers find the story to be too distasteful to stick with and also because I didn’t give any concrete examples from the book. The problem is that I don’t think I have room to fit any good illustrations into this column. To remedy this I am going to use future columns to review individual issues of All-Star Batman & Robin and give tangible examples of why I think the narrative is so good. Imagine me as the guy at the party who is trying his best to convince you to rethink something you have written off as inferior. Feel free to argue with me, I’d like the input and relish the challenge. Hopefully the hors d’oeuvres are good, the beer is plentiful, and I don’t have spinach in my teeth.

—

Jeffrey Johnson is an avid reader of comic books, watcher of television and film, and an annoying fount of 1980s and 1990s trivia. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and has written numerous journal articles and book chapter about popular culture. His latest book is entitled Super-History: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present. He currently lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Sound familiar? It should, but it’s not what you think.

Five years after completing his epic run on the Justice League of America, writer Grant Morrison set out to reimagine Marvel Comics’ Avengers in the DC Universe with 2005’s mega-series event Seven Soldiers. Seven 4-issue series, each starring a different character in a solo tale, were bookended by two specials that tied them all together — without ever having any of the heroes meet each other. In a distinctly post-(post-)modern take on the super-hero team, Morrison gave each protagonist an individual and specific role to play in the defeat of a common foe, but maintained each hero as a solitary, often self-conflicted figure. Long gone is the round table of Arthurian legend that most Golden and Silver Age teams found themselves encircling at times of crisis. These seven heroes — The Shining Knight, Bulleteer, The Guardian, Frankenstein, Zatanna, Klarion the Witch Boy, and Mister Miracle — all play an integral part in the defeat of invading hordes of fairies from our own future, descendants of the very culture they wish to strip apart and destroy. Nevertheless, their conflicts of character reflect a millennial vision for super-heroics as much as the Avengers themselves reflected a post-1950s mentality of the Cuban Missile Crisis era, when patriotic teamwork and the dangers of nuclear power drew heroes together, not apart.

An underlying theme to nearly every character is that self-questioning that heroes rarely had, even in the much more introspective era of the Marvel hero forty years earlier. Klarion the Witch Boy lives in an underground village, deeply hidden from the rest of the world since its inhabitants left the 13 colonies with a single word (“Croatoan”) marking their departure. Part of a society not unlike that of Logan’s Run, where men and women practice Salem witchcraft only until reaching a certain age, Klarion begins his journey wistful for any sort of meaning when everyone’s ultimate fate — to be killed and become a mindless slave zombie — is predetermined. But once he finds his way to the great blue rafters of legend, and out unto the streets of New York City, his own sense of power grows exponentially and leads to a greater coup than the boy could have even dreamed.

Before putting on the helmet of the Manhattan Guardian, Jake Jordan was a broken man, having left the police force in a shooting scandal that claimed the innocent life of a young boy. With no job or way to support his fiancée, Jake was plummeted into a deep depression until the city’s greatest newspaper offered to make him its trademark super-hero/reporter. And Jake isn’t alone in his self-doubt, as two other protagonists — Zatanna and Mister Miracle — each spend a considerable amount of time engaged in the ultimate post-millennial activity, therapy. The daughter of one of the greatest sorcerers of our time, the powerful-in-her-own-right Zatanna can’t seem to raise her own self-esteem, much to the chagrin of her much less famous group therapy peers. And Shilo Norman, the escape artist known on every stage as Mister Miracle, would feel better about his fame and recognize his true power if he wasn’t undermined at every turn by the dark god DeSaad masquerading as his empathetic psychiatrist. These heroes, riddled by a psychosis only cured through glorious super-human action, may represent an even greater accomplishment to modern day readers than their heroes of old, for it is not only their physical enemies that each must overcome, but one’s own inner demons as well. Shades of Iron Man famously facing his own hazy alcoholic self in the mirror, their ultimate revelations become cathartic for all those who have ever overcome the life trap themselves and risen to fight again.

The Shining Knight’s journey too, while representing the complete opposite of doubt and shame, runs a road rarely taken in comic book form. Today, DC Comics’ most prominent transgender character, Sir Ystin is initially depicted as a girl masquerading as a man to earn his seat at the actual Round Table aside Galahad and the others. That said, his “truth” never seems as revelatory as one would presume, and to later creators’ credit, he stands as one of the most well-rounded depictions of the LGBT community in comics today. An honorable hero with bravery to spare, the Shining Knight isn’t confused about his gender identity as much as earning his place among the heroes of old, one battle at a time. It is in that sense that he has unsure footing along the path, refreshing in contrast to the lovely Bulleteer, the accidental hero who quite literally stumbles into her own destiny without desire or drive.

Truly, the monster Frankenstein may be the only hero who has no compunction about who and what he truly represents. A genuine product of mad science, armed with a sword and body parts from a dozen soldiers of legend, Frankenstein cuts a swath across the invading fairies, the king Melmoth and the queen Gloriana herself in the far flung future. He drags them back through time to face justice at the hands of S.H.A.D.E., the federal agency his own Bride operates. He is brute force, but not without the heart of a poet, and in that sense, poses a curious counterpart to his forbearer (and literary descendent, technically), the Incredible Hulk. Subject of the original science fiction novel, Frankenstein is precisely the hero our twenty-first century needs, despite his Victorian origins — a self-assured man visibly stitched together from many cultures and influences, a true melting pot of backgrounds while remaining stridently individualistic in nature. There is no cure for his condition, as Bruce Banner may seek, for he always already was the monster, just like the rest of us — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Ultimately, for a tale broken into seven pieces and centered on the conceit of never meeting, Seven Soldiers is a deeply interwoven narrative, with details and motivations overlapping with increasing frequency as the series reaches its conclusion. Morrison layers time on space, different sets of soldiers upon those at the story’s lead, until you feel like an entirely new universe is being born right inside your hands. One of the few instances of a rich chronicle that implies deeper meanings and history without alienating one’s understanding of the current story, these vignettes and bookends all stand as a testament to the new century super-hero tale. Gone is the formulaic (ironic given the initial inspiration for the series) concept of the strongman figure in a cape, and in its place is a wicked boy and his cat, a self-aware monster with a broken heart, a young woman who grew up in lights on the stage, the embodiment of life housed in a celebrity performer, a good man down on his luck, the unwilling beauty queen, and a young champion choosing to not be confined by his own gender identity. Together they represent everything our culture needs to avenge on today’s terms. It’s about time our heroes caught up.

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Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

Since I believe I know most, if not all, of the comic book tropes, it bothers me when I find something that I can’t completely wrap my head around. Some of Grant Morrison’s stories do this to me. The Invisibles — I’m still trying to grasp many of the stories’ imbedded concepts. Arkham Asylum — I think I understand it but then I wonder if I’m missing something. Final Crisis — don’t even get me started on this one. This confounds me because All-Star Superman and Morrison’s Doom Patrol are two of my favorite comic book runs ever. It irritates me that I can’t completely follow all of Morrison’s storytelling, especially since I agree with him that narrative is a powerful force that is widely underappreciated.

The other reason that I would like to better follow all of Morrison’s references and motivations is he wrote a comic book story that to this day still deeply resonates with me. It’s Animal Man #5, “The Coyote Gospel,” a heartbreaking tale of heroism and loss, the like of which rarely finds its way into superhero comics. The story features a Wile E. Coyote stand-in named Crafty (get it?) who serves as the story’s messianic figure. If you start with the elevator pitch of “Wile E. Coyote is Christ” you’ve already got a bizarre and amazing idea but Morrison adds heroism and sorrow to the mix. He somehow makes the reader care about the coyote savior while at the same time making us question ourselves and the world around us. A pretty mean feat for a “funny book” about a guy who received animal powers from aliens.

In “The Coyote Gospel,” Crafty comes from a Warner Brothers-like cartoon world where life is poor, nasty, brutish, and long. The land’s animated denizens are continually battling each other with Acme-type weapons and cartoonish methods. This causes only pain and strife though none of the cartoons question their lives. One day Crafty rebels against this system of violence and appears before his god. Appropriately, Crafty’s god is the artist who created him and presumably writes and draws the coyote’s adventures. The creator sends Crafty into the comic book version of the reader’s world and declares that the cartoon coyote has been sentenced to Hell. As long as Crafty suffers in this other existence the creator promises to allow peace to flourish in the cartoon world. Crafty is given a new body and suffers pain and humiliation again and again but he seemingly cannot die. The former cartoon coyote agonizes so his people (read animals) will not. He bears his world’s pain and sacrifices himself in order to fight misery and injustice. In the end, a conservative Christian, who believes that he is slaying the devil, kills Crafty. The coyote cries as he holds a crucifixion pose and dies in the middle of a four-way intersection, which looks suspiciously like a cross. The story ends with a giant hand using a huge paintbrush to fill in the artistic details. The artist god has killed Crafty and the pact that kept the animal’s world safe is now broken.

I read this story about once a year and it always manages to touch me and force me to ponder life, death, selflessness, and the nature of God. Not bad for a comic book tale featuring a Wile E. Coyote look-alike and a yellow and orange clad superhero. Maybe I want too much but I wonder if more of Morrison’s stories could touch me this way if I better understood them. All-Star Superman did. I reveled in connecting the dots between DC One Million and the twelve issue series. I loved the numerous winks to Silver Age stories and issue number six broke my heart. This makes me ponder if I should work harder to understand Morrison’s writing and do the necessary research to better connect with the author. Something about that idea leaves me cold though. If I have to studying in order to understanding Morrison’s work, will the benefit be the same? Will I feel it as deeply as I do with Animal Man #5? Maybe sometimes our histories and interests coincide with an author’s imagination and we cannot force this connection. Perhaps, it is something unique when a writer and a reader share a narrative bond and these moments should be treasured for their rarity. I probably will never completely understand Grant Morrison’s stories but maybe that’s a good thing.

—

Jeffrey Johnson is an avid reader of comic books, watcher of television and film, and an annoying fount of 1980s and 1990s trivia. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Michigan State University and has written numerous journal articles and book chapter about popular culture. His latest book is entitled Super-History: Comic Book Superheroes and American Society, 1938 to the Present. He currently lives and works in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Oh, Catman.

If you were hoping this week’s entry was going to be a font of philosophical pondering, turn back now. My love of Thomas Blake, the man of the yellow and orange, is not rational, ethical or even natural. It even makes my husband nervous. Sure, it’s pretty unlikely the actual Catman will ever spontaneously erupt from the comic page into three-dimensional life, but that slim cosmological chance already has my brain burning with possibility.

A little background. Featured prominently in Secret Six, the monthly series published by DC Comics from 2008 until 2011, Catman is a minor Batman villain, created in 1963, who rose from obscurity to join this misfit band of anti-heroes and mercenaries. A laughingstock before then, Catman has since become, under the pen of the mighty Gail Simone, a fierce Tarzan-like figure, highly intelligent (if not wise) and exhibiting great prowess in combat and hunting. He’s as primal a figure in mainstream comics as you can get.

Sure, he’s not Batman. He’s neither on the side of angels nor devils, not the big name at the marquee or the guy who gets the happy ending. But anytime he appears on the page, I’m there. Why, you ask? Let me tell you.

1. He’s frequently naked. Just getting that out of the way.

2. He probably can’t win against Batman, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

3. He has a great bromance going with Deadshot.

4. He’s not afraid to look goofy. (Hee-hee “Maneaters.” Oh, Robin!)

5. He can carry a loincloth like nobody’s business.

6. He has some serious daddy issues.

7. Did I mention he’s frequently naked?

8. He used to be fat. Now he’s not. It gives me hope.

9. He’s bisexual. . .

10. . . . and an animal lover.

11. He can be super scary when he wants to be.

12. Ahem. Naked.

Lest you think, fair reader, that I am unusually obsessed and singular in my adoration of the man with the little cat ears, I leave you with proof of my camaraderie among other Catman fans. If nothing else, let this be a lesson that every character has the potential to be someone’s favorite, and there’s potential in every character to be great, no matter how dumb he or she may seem at first. Or second. Or third.

Naked.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

On one hand, we picture ourselves wearing jetpacks, flying through the open sky to get to work in the morning, and sending our relatives off (if we’re lucky) to live in space colonies on the moon. Love triumphs over our petty hatreds and we live in peace, not just with our earthbound neighbors, but with our friends across the grand universe.

On the other hand, we often also picture the worst: War comes to devastate everything we know. Governments fall into absolute, obvious corruption, separating the haves from the have-nots even more sharply than we experience already. Usually it’s snowing in this type of future, whether resulting from nuclear winter, global weather disruption or ash that just looks like snow as it falls across a smoky sky.

For years, the future in comic books leaned pretty heavily in the former direction, depicting a world of tomorrow that we all wanted to aspire to meet head on. The Legion of Super-Heroes, like Star Trek and The Jetsons on television, depicted a universe where planets were governed under one central authority each, and came together to form a United Nations of the galaxy. Young super-heroes from all over came together, each with his or her own special set of powers, to form a team in honor of their own hero from a thousand years prior — Superboy, the greatest example of cultural blending and good deeds in the history of the known universe. Like the Boy (later Man) of Steel, who came from one world to another — not to conquer, but to teach, protect and serve — these teenagers joined forces to police Earth and outer space, share adventures, make friends, and even sometimes fall in love.

And then, thirty-one years after the Legion first appeared and traveled in their “time bubble” to seek out young bespectacled Clark Kent in rural Smallville, it all changed for them. Economic collapse spurred on by a destructive war of science and magic led to a secret takeover of the Earth government by alien forces — and the dissolution of the galactic symbol of peace and collaboration that the super-team had become. 1989 saw the publication of a new Legion of Super-Heroes #1, with a first page simply entitled “Five Years Later.” Jumping right into the future’s future, readers were taken to a world that no longer admired the Legion, with its members now spread out across worlds, separated by politics and war, personal ties and grudges. Everything you knew was in question. And I couldn’t have been happier.

For someone like myself who spends an inordinate amount of time speculating on comic books, their characters and possibilities — both verbally and in my own head, ad naseum — it’s not hard to imagine how much this scenario appealed to me. Five years have gone by and heroes have gone missing, been changed, or had adventures that are now only alluded to in passing. This is speculation gold for a comic book continuity junkie, if, like me, you are patient enough to wait for answers. That said, this era of the team remains one of the most divisive in its history. Its fans (like myself) are hardcore lovers of the direction writer/artist Keith Giffen and his colleagues took, but its detractors are equally as — dare I say it — legion, citing the break from previous lore and status quo to be one of the biggest mistakes ever within the franchise. But what this series did best, I believe, was make the Legion of Super-Heroes both exciting for old time fans — who were treated to page after page of Easter eggs and hints about their favorite characters — and accessible for newcomers, who could get to know each member of the much smaller cast in a more intimate way.

At the center of the relaunch was Rokk Krinn, the hero of Braal once known as Cosmic Boy, now powerless and living in relative obscurity on an occupied planet with his pregnant wife. One of the three founders of the Legion, Rokk was understood to be the heart and soul of the team, and critical to their resurgence — that is, according to Chameleon Boy, ultra-rich son of the team’s initial funder and shape-shifting Durlan hero in his own right. These two men meeting to face off against the state of the universe was at the core of what it meant to be a Legionnaire: doing what’s right against all odds, and brotherhood (or sisterhood) above all else.

Giffen’s dedication to the nine-panel grid should look familiar to comic historians, as it was presumably an homage to the structure of Dave Gibbons’ epic tome a few years prior, Watchmen. Like Watchmen, Legion of Super-Heroes now was taking a darker look at the super-hero tropes fans had grown comfortable with over the years, although it’s not like the book hadn’t dealt with darkness before. One of the first series to feature a major character death as early as 1967, the book saw heroes kidnapped and tortured, replaced by imposters, characters go insane, members conspire against each other and even put on trial for murder. But throughout that history, the Legion had its own structure as an institution to fall back on. Here, with members scattered across the stars and some even intellectually opposed to its reformation, the team was reduced to a shadow of its former self. All that was left was their pride and friendship. And that, quite frankly, was thrilling.

Ever the soap opera, the book didn’t just have Giffen to rely upon in its writing duties, as the long-time artist of the title (spanning back nearly a decade) was joined by husband-wife team Tom and Mary Bierbaum. The Bierbaums brought with them a real sense of the characters’ histories, having been avid fans of the book themselves, but also a sincere dedication to move these people forward in their lives and get to the root of their individual heroism. Ultra Boy, long the most carefree — can I say mimbo? — is reintroduced as a man in mourning, returned to his corrupt home planet and running a black market operation after the seeming death of his beloved Phantom Girl. Not just a personality shift in time of crisis, however, this development in Jo Nah’s characterization came with a series of revelations about his complicity in keeping one of the world’s most powerful sorcerers under control — all without ever breaking the façade of a man too dumb to lead the team effectively. Meanwhile, Shrinking Violet (Vi) returns from war between her native planet of Imsk and Braal a high-profile dissenter, but one racked with guilt over the people she helped kill on Rokk’s home planet. The specter of their mutual battle at Venedo Bay hangs over much of the first two years of this series, and remains indelibly carved on Vi’s own face, a scar across the artificial eye replacing the one she lost in war.

Vi’s renewed relationship with Ayla Ranzz, Lightning Lass, is also a hallmark of the series and a significant milestone for LGBT inclusion in mainstream comics. The couple was never treated differently from any other marriage or coupling in the series, frequently shown sharing quarters, expressing love and fighting side-by-side just as family members Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl would. The series also featured one of the earliest focuses on a trans character at DC Comics, as Element Lad’s longtime girlfriend Shvaughn Erin revealed herself to have been born male. Twenty years later, there is much to criticize about the motivations and reasoning behind Shvaughn’s journey as a trans woman, but I can attest that her inclusion in the tapestry of the Legion’s future meant a lot to me as a young gay man. Seeing a character I had read about for years come out in the pages of one of my favorite monthly comic books was empowering, and the effort these creators put in at such an early stage of the effort towards fair representation of the LGBT community is commendable to say the least.

Sadly, this iteration of the Legion lasted a mere five years, culminating in a complete reboot of the concept with younger, less traumatized versions of the characters taking center stage. Many of the developments in this era have resurfaced recently, including Vi and Ayla’s relationship, but much of what made this era so special to me is lost in later iterations, with new characters from the series never returning to the page, even in decades hence. What stands out so significantly for me in this world is that the boys and girls, the lads and lasses, were able to grow up, but never lost what made them heroes, even in the direst circumstances. They could still be funny, optimistic, and experience deep love and camaraderie despite being faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds of a government — to some degree, an entire United Planets — that didn’t want them to be together. The Legion, to them, was something too special to lose. And there’s no question in my mind that they were right.

Every Legion fan has an era they consider to be intrinsically theirs. Even if one loves all of them, there’s always one iteration that stands just a bit above the rest in his or her heart. This one is mine. No matter how many times I re-read it, I still get a thrill at the sight of Rokk’s unshaven face or Bounty’s mysterious smirk, because they truly were the people I wanted to be like someday. I imagined my own teenage self flashed forward into adulthood five years later and living in a future worth fighting for. The world could get darker but there would always still be room for hope in it. And honestly, that’s just as important a lesson to learn today as it’s even been.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

Originally published in DC Comics’ New Teen Titans #38 in 1984, “Who is Donna Troy?” begins as a curious play on the classic detective story. Dick Grayson, the young man known to the world as Robin, sits in a dark room that feels lifted from every noir film to feature a grizzled sleuth, just waiting for some femme fatale to stroll in the door and turn his life upside-down. Light slides between slits of the window blinds, creating patterns against the hero’s trench coat as he sits down with his coffee to silently review his case files. Dick’s inner monologue is every bit the cliché you expect from a movie detective from the ‘30s or ‘40s, crafting himself as a solitary figure emotionally distanced from those around him. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth, and co-plotters Marv Wolfman and George Perez know it. In actuality, Dick has grown up surrounded by family and friends, first in the spotlight of the circus, then later at Batman’s side and among his peers in the Teen Titans. As a result, Wolfman and Perez beautifully set up this brief façade — both within Dick’s physical surroundings and own thought process — to accentuate just how far from hackneyed this tale is going to tread.

The key irony to this scene is that Donna Troy has never been a femme fatale, but rather was known for many years (perhaps in great part because of this very story) as the girl everyone wants as a best friend. Kind to a fault, equal parts warrior and compassioned ally, Donna is a super-heroic Mary Tyler Moore, whose only darkness rests in the uncertainty about her own origins. Rescued from a tenement fire as an infant by Wonder Woman, Donna remembered nothing of her past prior to her arrival on the mythic Paradise Island. Raised as Wonder Woman’s sister by her mother Queen Hippolyte, and granted similar powers through technological means, Donna became the teenage heroine Wonder Girl and helped found the Teen Titans with Robin. Since day one, Donna had been committed to the team, coming to regard them as her own adopted family in lieu of any recollection of a birth family. Nevertheless, now coming up on the eve of her wedding, it seems to Wonder Girl more important than ever to know where she came from and who she really is. It’s a tension a lot of adopted children experience as they grow older, but one for Donna that fortunately does not seem alien or hurtful to the family of friends she’s gathered around her. Dick Grayson, an orphan himself, perfectly understands her dilemma, and while he briefly knew and enjoyed a life with his birth parents, Donna’s need for a connection to her past resonates strongly within him.

Donna and Dick’s relationship is one of the most rare in comics, perhaps even pop culture as a whole, in that they are and always have been completely platonic, but deeply connected friends. This dynamic between a heterosexual male and female, particularly in their teens, is far more unusual than one might think. Time and time again, television and books seem to need to address sexual attraction between every male and female lead, but here the writers consistently represent Dick and Donna as solely the closest of friends. Brother and sister in a carefully constructed family, these two are bound not by blood, but by a lifetime of shared adventures and similar loss. It’s a much more difficult dynamic for writers to capture, as it bucks almost every tradition Western culture has tried to maintain regarding heterosexual inevitability, but Wolfman and Perez seem to instill it effortlessly, between these two characters in particular.

While Donna’s desire to know her past may not create familial tension with her groom-to-be or brother-in-arms, her frustration over the process of discovery does reverberate through her relationships. She may not think twice when barreling after the Fearsome Five or throwing a punch at the Terminator, but when confronted by the brick walls of her family history, Wonder Girl may have found her greatest weakness. She does at times project the same misgivings upon Robin, however unwarranted. Ward to the world’s greatest detective, Dick is no slouch when it comes to solving mysteries. That he in fact does so in a single comic book issue is its own meta-reading of Dick Grayson’s expertise, although it also typifies an era when single plotlines were not stretched over six to nine issues of decompressed storytelling. Inevitably, Dick strikes out on his own to find answers on Donna’s behalf, because despite her protests, he knows her heart as well as he knows his own. The family reunions, three to be exact, that Donna is graced with as a result of Dick’s love and dedication (and no small measure of pride), still create the same lump in my throat and tear-filled eyes that I had the first time I read this issue.

Unquestionably, Perez’s ability to capture facial emotion and body language so eloquently goes a long way toward contributing to my sentimental nature about Donna’s origin story. Every character is distinctively drawn and immediately recognizable in Perez’s New Teen Titans run, not needing to rely on costumes, clothing cues or even hairstyles to adequately differentiate Donna or Dick from other recurring family members or passers-by. Each character is a unique person, as flawed and perfectly individual as those people we know in our day-to-day lives. I frankly can only name a handful of other artists of super-hero comics about which I could say the same, and none of which render their charges nearly as effectively.

But honestly, “Who is Donna Troy?” just isn’t your normal super-hero tale anyway. No punches are thrown. No super-villains show up to move the plot along or introduce witty banter. Indeed, the very fact that Wonder Girl and Robin put on their costumes for any part of this issue seems only in service to the series as a whole; Donna and Dick’s deductive activities certainly don’t necessitate it. What this story excels at doing is removing all the faux action super-hero comics are usually packed with and letting honest motivations and character relationships unveil the dramatic potential of the story instead. While exploding buildings or invading hoards from outer space may often punctuate Donna’s experience of her expanded family, it is more appropriately defined by the smaller moments and revelations between them — not unlike our own.

As someone lucky enough to have both a strong connection to my family of origin and a constructed family of choice, I get to experience a lot of the joy that Donna sees in her own clan. “Who is Donna Troy?” may ultimately be the most perfect single comic book I’ve read for that reason alone, because it narrows down everything I believe to be true about family — that ties of friendship are as important as blood, that finding joy is paramount no matter what the odds, and every family deserves the right to define itself by its own best terms. Thanks, Donna and Dick, for being shining reminders of these truths, even all these years later. It’s no wonder I still think of you as one of my best examples for how important best friends and family can be.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He is an art director for several non-profit organizations, senior editor for Comicosity.com, and still manages to find the time on dark nights and weekends to fight the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

At first glance, Buddy Baker and Alec Holland don’t have much in common. Baker is a sometime actor and stuntman who has embraced his public role as Animal Man not just to fight crime, but to be an advocate for animal issues. He’s married with a son and a daughter, and while his acting career has never really taken off, he’s just starred in a little indie film which is garnering a some attention and even a hint of Oscar buzz. In the pages of Animal Man, there’s an ongoing contrast between the humble, salt-of-the-earth (I’m trying to avoid the phrase white trash) nature of the Baker family, and the way modern media occasionally intrudes on the story — the first page of the first issue of Animal Man is a faux interview with Buddy Baker from the deeply hip magazine The Believer, and most of the sixth issue consists of scenes from Baker’s indie film Tights, as viewed on Baker’s son’s smartphone while the family is on the run in their RV.

Alec Holland, on the other hand, is a renowned plant biologist who in the first issue of Swamp Thing is working in construction. He’s recently returned to life after a lab explosion years ago to find not only that his wife wasn’t so lucky, but that he shares memories with a monstrous superhero animated by a force known as the Parliament of Trees using what they were able to salvage of Holland’s personality after his death. The Parliament now wants Holland to become their champion himself as they had always intended, and he feels the unwanted pull of that destiny in both his waking hours and in his dreams.

But for all their differences, Baker and Holland have one thing in common. Their lives have been shaped and directed by forces that are beyond anything they had ever imagined, and the first year of each of their titles can be read as an extended cinematic pull back shot. In every issue, the frame expands a little, revealing a world bigger, deeper, stranger, and more dangerous.

In the New 52, Animal Man and Swamp Thing are revealed to be champions (“avatars”) for the constantly battling forces of animal and plant life, known as The Red and The Green, both of which oppose the embodied force of death known as The Rot. In times of balance, each of the three forces keeps the others in check. If things were in balance, of course, we wouldn’t have much of a story, and both titles at the inception find themselves in a place where the way things are is far from the way things should be.

In Animal Man, artist Travel Foreman evokes this dislocation by creating a world of open, realistic but flattened spaces with bizarre, hyper-detailed intruders. (Steve Pugh largely takes over by issue #7, but maintains Foreman’s overall stylistic deisgn.) Buddy Baker and his family are pursued by a grotesque, distended group calling themselves The Hunters Three who can consume living beings and wear their skins. The Hunters are portrayed as occasionally struggling to fit within their assumed shapes, which become cartoonishly distorted when a hunter is distracted or fatigued. Nothing about the process is pleasant or pretty. “This will hurt very badly,” one of the hunters tells a victim as he is being eaten, “but I need your sssskin. . .”

The flatness of Buddy Baker’s “normal” world is a vivid illustration of the new series’ central revelation. While Baker has been empowered by the Red as the de facto champion of the animal world, he is only a placeholder. The untimely death of the Red’s previous avatar left them in need of a temporary replacement, so they granted some of the next avatar’s abilities to her father. Maxine Baker’s connection to the Red far exceeds anything Buddy Baker has ever experienced, and her nacent powers already far exceed his own. Maxine is also just four years old, and for all her power, far from able to protect herself from the Lovecraftian figures pursing her.

While Buddy Baker finds himself a smaller figure in a bigger world, a custodian more than a champion, then Alec Holland is precisely the opposite, the champion who was taken from the Green and has now returned. Holland, however, wants nothing to do with the destiny the Green so fervently desires that he embrace, and he finds himself trying to prune back the tendrils the Parliament of Trees have wrapped around his soul. Fittingly, Yanick Paquette’s art is lush, flowing, and sometimes oppressively detailed. In the second and third issues, Holland meets a kindred spirit in Abigail Arcane, a woman whose family has a deep connection to the Rot, and who has a history with the Alec Holland simulacrum that was the previous Swamp Thing. Holland finds himself irresistibly drawn to Abigail, defending her life against both the Rot seeking to reclaim her, and the Green’s demands that he destroy her.

In different hands, we might have had two strong but unrelated titles, the interim hero and the reluctant champion with their very different stories in their own separate worlds. Linking the two together is a brilliant idea which has been executed with what I’m certain was no little effort and a great deal of skill. The star-crossed lovers and the father defending his progeny are both classic, even primal stories, but together they form a rich and unexpected epic about blood and family, and creating a future beyond what is encoded within history and genetics.

Because of this, Animal Man and Swamp Thing are comics about heroism and not just superheroes. Both titles have seen, groundbreaking work in the past (as written by Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, respectively), but they existed for all practical purposes in their own pocket narrative universes. With their New 52 incarnations, Snyder and Lemire have been able to bring themes (and a level of quality) more often found in indie comics or imprints like Vertigo to the mainstream DC universe. It’s an effort whose first fruits are just beginning to mature, but the ground is rich, and there’s the promise of even better to come.

—

Gavin Craig is co-editor of The Idler. You can follow him on Twitter at @craiggav.

But shortly after I started reading comics as a little kid, that all seemed to change. Around 1986 or so, heroes got dark. Marvel Comics’ first Punisher series debuted that year with former Spider-Man antagonist Frank Castle leading his own title in a hail of bullets and indignation. DC Comics’ Watchmen maxi-series hit the scene, full of heroes like Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan and the Comedian who exhibit sociopathic behavior. Eclipse Comics’ Miracleman had emerged, featuring a level of violence the American comics scene had never experienced with a superhero sidekick slaughtering his attackers after a brutal rape scene. Even perennial good guys Batman and Superman grew darker for the remainder of the decade.

Maybe the shift occurred as a result of a new generation of writers arriving on the scene, having grown up exposed to greater injustice and brutality in the post-Vietnam media. Maybe the fans themselves finally tired of the golden boy image of the superhero and, as in other media, wanted to explore America’s newfound interest in amoral protagonists (think Scarface or Dynasty). In any event, what most comic fans describe as a “grim and gritty” era began, with some still maintaining it never actually went away.

If a pendulum has swung from the hyper-morality of 1950s and 60s comics to the hyper-amorality of superheroes of the late 1980s, Manhunter is a fascinating equilibrium point between the two. Launched as an ongoing title by DC Comics in 2004, Manhunter details the origin and mission of Los Angeles District Attorney Kate Spencer as she arms herself to take out villains for whom the justice system hasn’t found a solution. When Kate loses her prosecution against serial super-powered killer Copperhead, she predicts the defendant will kill again. Hours later, her prediction gruesomely comes to pass. Determined not to let the killer go free a second time, Kate arms herself with advanced technology confiscated or recovered from police crime scenes and dons a new identity in the criminal justice system: vigilante.

By most superhero standards, writer Marc Andreyko’s presentation of Kate’s origin and motivations are positively banal. Much is revealed about her childhood that leads the reader to understand why Kate became a district attorney, but little beyond her own powerful morality seems responsible for the move between civil service and vigilantism. Unaware of her own meta-human legacy and an unending stream of comic characters to take the name before her, Kate becomes Manhunter out of a deep sense of justice and an understanding of the limits of a system she works within by day. As she says to a rather famous defendant later on in the series, “I have no problem with lethal force, not when villains pervert the justice system. When all other options have run out, well. . . sometimes safety wins.”

In fact, Manhunter does an excellent job of exposing the arbitrary nature of debates about heroes that kill. Many fans have wondered why the Batman has never taken the opportunity to kill the Joker after the madman has spent years escaping his cell only to murder, maim and terrorize thousands of citizens, including members of the hero’s own family. Many others maintain Batman’s high moral code prevents that from even being a story possibility. For Kate, moral choices are not all-or-nothing. Her personal code, much like the law itself, is conditional, open to evolution, and subject to interpretation. What’s so intriguing is that her judgments neither seem weak nor flexible from a reader perspective, but instead deliver confidence in her commitment to both occupations. When Kate chooses not to kill her opponent it speaks as much of her moral acuity as when she does. She hasn’t abandoned the legal system as a course of action. Far from it, she works as diligently within the system as without.

As an avid Law and Order fan myself, I also delight in Andreyko’s split focus between Kate in costume as Manhunter and her in more courtroom-appropriate attire. Throughout the series — which ran in various forms for nearly six years, avoiding the publisher’s ax no less than three times — Kate prosecutes (and ultimately defends) several trials featuring characters from across the DC Universe. The series features several spellbinding artists, including Jesus Saiz, Javier Pina, Michael Gaydos, and Georges Jenty, all of whom ably maintain a visual interest in Kate’s everyday settings and clothing — no small feat. Ultimately, the focus on Kate, rather than simply the Manhunter, as a protagonist and hero only serves to underscore the intelligence, bravery, and moral complexity motivating her double life. It also serves to expand Kate’s world in two particularly compelling ways.

Motherhood has never been particularly pervasive among super-heroines, but certainly hasn’t been depicted quite this way before. Frankly, Kate is bad at it. Divorced with limited shared custody of her 7 year-old son Ramsey, Kate is evidence on paper that maternal instincts don’t hit everyone that brings a child into the world, no matter how much that child is loved. She forgets pick-up times, smokes in his presence (in a town and era where that is considered nearly criminal), leaves horrifying crime scene photos around for him to view, and doesn’t even secure her own arsenal out of his grasp. When these failures land Ramsey in critical condition at a nearby hospital, it’s hard not to understand her ex-husband’s outrage. From the standpoint of good fiction, however, I find this aspect of her character both compelling and exceptionally refreshing for the superhero genre. There’s no question Kate tries to be as good a mother as she is a Manhunter, but it’s just not going to happen — perhaps not even in a tale set 15 years in the future, wherein Ramsey embarks on his controversial career of choice.

On the flipside, the focus Andreyko gives Manhunter’s supporting cast led to some of the most positive portrayals of gay characters in its years of publication, even earning the title a GLAAD Media Award nomination. Kate’s co-counsel and best friend Damon has a large role in the series, as does his boyfriend, newly out super-hero and Golden Age legacy Todd Rice (Obsidian). Damon and Todd aren’t alone in their nuanced character depictions in Manhunter, as the entire cast is very carefully scribed for maximum reader interest, but I have to applaud just a little bit louder for the book leading the charge in this case.

All in all, Manhunter represents a thoughtfulness to the debate of heroism and morality that is often overlooked in mainstream comics, from one extreme to the other. The only shame involved in this case is that Kate Spencer hasn’t propelled to iconic status with fans, as have some of her more famous clients or witnesses before her. The wheels of justice grind slowly indeed.

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He works a day job as an art director for several non-profit organizations, but spends his dark nights and weekends fighting the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.

Add to this little factoid the reality of being a comic book collector. One of the things I love most about comic books is that, barring some sort of natural disaster, they show up every Wednesday at your local shop. Every week there’s a new crop of books, and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have at least one waiting for me. Keeping up isn’t always a chore, but it certainly can become one. God forbid you fall a week behind, because that story you haven’t found the time to read yet is about to get spoiled the second you turn on your computer. Twitter becomes a minefield more stressful than jumping around Gotham City wearing a yellow cape, bright red tunic and little green booties.

So with all this energy I’m putting into reading my weekly comic books, email, research for work, internet browsing, and being sold a new cable provider for the 95th time in a day (in order of obvious importance), what about everything else I want to read? Well, it’s quickly become a stack on my dresser, sitting patiently next to my keys and any number of adorable trinkets that don’t have a permanent home. Most of these books are in some state of consumption, half read and then put down — not because they aren’t amazing, but because life unfortunately gets in the way.

Well, life is just going to have to take a backseat for the next few months, because I now vow publicly to upend this stack by the time the first orange leaf hits the sidewalk this fall. Want a summer full of awesomeness, too? Read along!

Alpha by Greg Rucka
Described by the author as “Die Hard in Disneyland,” Alpha is the first book in a new series for Rucka, who not only wrote Gotham Central and Batwoman’s run in Detective Comics, but also my favorite novel series of all-time starring Atticus Kodiak (Keeper, Finder, Smoker, etc.). Undercover Delta Force operator, Master Sergeant Jad Bell has been assigned to the Wilsonville amusement park as an undercover security officer. The action begins with the detection of a hidden dirty bomb and escalates from there. No one writes an action hero’s inner monologue better than Rucka, so this one tops my list.

Avengers West Coast and Alpha Flight Classic by John Byrne
Each of these books are over 20 years old at this point, but still have ramifications for Marvel Comics to this day. Both volumes of Avengers West Coast that Byrne wrote and drew (Vision Quest and Darker Than Scarlet) focus heavily on the Scarlet Witch and her synthezoid husband The Vision. In fact, the former’s path to madness begins in these stories and carries through to this summer’s blockbuster comic crossover. Likewise, the first two volumes of Alpha Flight Classic introduce the first and best Canadian super-team in their own series, with the ever-acerbic Northstar front and center. Northstar is currently set to marry his longtime boyfriend in this month’s Astonishing X-Men, so it’s nice to see where it all began for this preeminent gay super-hero.

Firearm by James Robinson and Cully Hamner
This one came out of the way-back machine after I listened to an interview with the owners of now-defunct Malibu Comics — a thriving comic book publisher in the early 1990s who spun off their own super-hero universe, the Ultraverse. The series centers on private investigator Alec Swan, who gets dragged into cases involving the strange and ultra-human, much to his chagrin. Lasting only 18 issues, Firearm was one of James Robinson’s earliest ongoing series and if Starman and the recently released Earth 2 are any indication, I’m going to love this one too.

Chicks Dig Comics
A collection of essays about comics by and for the women who love them, Chicks Dig Comics features a litany of writers that I have grown fond of year after year — Gail Simone, Amanda Conner, Jill Pantozzi, Jen Van Meter, Jill Thompson, and many more. Published this spring by Mad Norwegian Press, this is the book to read if you know (or are) someone who thinks comics are just for the boys. The commentaries are simultaneously thought provoking, entertaining, and certainly a source of aspiration for my own writing on comics.

The Quality Companion
Published by TwoMorrows, one of the comic industry’s most prestigious sources for historical analysis, The Quality Companion is a look at the now largely forgotten comic company that debuted Plastic Man and the Spirit, among other 1940s luminaries. Quality was later purchased by DC Comics and had its characters absorbed — in one form or another — into the main DC Universe where I would encounter them years later. Some of these characters are once again being reintroduced in a big way with sexy good girl Phantom Lady striking out in her own mini-series this summer, co-starring the diminutive Doll Man. Everything from bios on the original creators to synopses of the heroes’ books themselves are well documented here both for posterity and your enjoyment.

Finn and Charlie are Hitched by Tony Breed
A weekly webcomic by writer/artist Tony Breed, Finn and Charlie is a cute little slice of life for two men who are married and approaching middle age. Although I can read it anytime at hitchedcomic.com, I do like to double dip and pick up the collections. The first two, Can We Skip to the Part of the Conversation Where I Get My Way? (a phrase I have thought in my head many times while talking to my husband) and I Love You, You Big Weirdo (which I say some form of every night before bed) are now joined by How Would I Know If You’re Dreaming? The new book also features a delightfully naked Finn on its cover with a well-placed penguin to maintain the character’s modesty. Drat!

Supergods by Grant Morrison
Last on my list is a book that’s one part history, one part autobiography, and about three parts diary of a big comic book geek (who just happens to be a little off his rocker). Grant Morrison has written some of my favorite titles over the years and the chance to peek into his brain is too good to pass up. Subtitled What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human, Supergods is a wild ride through the legacy of super-hero comics that makes it crystal clear these characters are truly our modern myths. Agree or disagree with his observations about Superman, Batman or the like, but you know this is going to be a fascinating read one way or the other.

Now, how much vacation time do I have saved up?

—

Matt Santori-Griffith owns one business suit, three pairs of shoes, and over 15,000 comic books. He works a day job as an art director for several non-profit organizations, but spends his dark nights and weekends fighting the good fight on Twitter.com in the guise of @FotoCub. He has not yet saved the world, but isn’t giving up quite yet.