Comics

Did you read Uncanny X-Men in the ’80s? Did you get a job or a girlfriend or both and wander away from comics? And have you been tempted to dip your toe back in those waters but were intimidated by the idea of having to catch up on 20 years’ worth of stories? Well, my mutant-loving friend, have I got some comics for you.

There are two kinds of comic book characters: those that are owned by their creators and those that are owned by corporations. Virtually all of the famous superheroes fall into the latter category. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and their ilk all appear in multiple comics each month, with their adventures chronicled by a legion of writers and artists, so as to maximize profits for the companies that hold their copyrights. Martha Washington is a great example of the other kind of character. She debuted in the 1990 series Give Me Liberty, written by Frank Miller and drawn by Dave Gibbons, and has since appeared in a handful of other comics. But each and every one of her stories sprang from the minds of Miller and Gibbons, which made it possible for Dark Horse Comics to collect them all in a single volume: The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century.

With the city buzzing over the Dallas Theater Center’s production of It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman, I thought it would be a good time to retreat to my Fortress of Solitude and inventory some of my favorite Superman comics. The character was nearly 50 years old when I first gave a hoot about him in 1986. That’s when John Byrne was given carte blanche to rewrite those five decades of history. Byrne was an established star at Marvel Comics, most notably for a lengthy run writing and drawing Fantastic Four, but DC Comics lured him away. I was a Marvel zombie back then, when that term described a loyal customer as opposed to a flesh-eating superhero. But if Byrne was making the leap to DC, then so was I. (jump)