Comics of my Life: Introduction.

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This is the first entry of a series featuring five comics that are permanently integrated into my life; five comics that I couldn’t possibly do without and wouldn’t know where I would be if I hadn’t read them.  This one serves as an introduction with subsequent entries featuring STARMAN, SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, HOURMAN, Y: THE LAST MAN and the Joe Casey/Grant Morrison runs on X-MEN.

I’ve been working towards a series of posts like this, writing about works that I’ve appreciated.  I think it is important to first start where it all began, with Veronica giving me the first issue of The Flash vol. 3 #1.  The one with Wally West’s Flash racing the fighter jets.  To a six-year old I don’t think there was anything cooler. 

My Dad had been telling me about comics when I was quite young, like when he was teaching me how to ride a bike while on the rooftop courtyard of the Galaxy apartment building in New Jersey. He told me about Captain America, the Shadow, and how his mother threw all of his baseball cards and his comics away, all in between skinning my knees.  

My very first comic that I bought that wasn’t given to me was a Green Lantern annual with Hal Jordan smashing through a giant robot.  Growing up there were large amounts of comics that I read, including the tail end of Denny O’Neil’s Batman and leading up to the Death of Superman, which had to be the single-most traumatic event when I was twelve years old.  I remember it as clear as day:  I was the new kid in my sixth grade class, we had just moved to Weston, CT, and my friend Kenny and I both had the comic.  And I remember both of us being traumatized by what happened.  Kenny, as a presentation, had setup a mock newscast, and talked about the death and answering questions like what this would mean for the people of Metropolis.

For Kenny’s birthday, later that year, we traveled to Marvel Comics in the city and had a tour. Spider-Man walked on a table in the conference room talking about the history of Marvel Comics, how it was founded, then took us on a tour of the building. Through the famous Marvel Bullpen, through the printing presses and finally getting a grab bag of comics.  It was fantastic, and one of my most cherished childhood memories.  

Later that year, Kenny wrote in my yearbook: “It was fun meeting you this year, Dave.  Let’s get together sometime this summer and trade comics.”  And I remember thinking: “silly, you don’t trade comics like they’re baseball cards; you read them.” But now looking back his context wasn’t incorrect, even though I thought it was then, and according to my parents, I’m such a know-it-all.

High School, though, was my formative years with comics.  My computer teacher, had bestowed to me single issues of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns which literally changed the entire way I looked at comics. These two comics pushed me towards reading the two comics that forever will be one and two in my top favorite comics of all time.  

Those being James Robinson and Tony Harris’s Starman, and Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle and Guy Davis’s Sandman Mystery Theatre.

Though I think the unifying aspect of those comics was mostly that the characters now had changed to being something other than what they were.  They stopped wearing costumes.  Jack Knight’s Starman was a leather jacket clad, wisecracking antique dealer.  What I loved about that comic was this retro style to it. That could be attributed to the sensibilities of Tony Harris.  Just look at that character! Leather jacket, jeans, gets shot all the time, this gold staff with this weirdly pointed end and general bad attitude towards his father was something a sixteen year old could latch onto. 

It was with Starman when it crossed into the Sandman Mystery Theatre era that I became enthralled with that comic.  The retro feel of Starman had rubbed off on me and got me attached to Sandman Mystery Theatre.  Which played up my already natural attraction to noir.  These two books came along when I became obsessed with crime movies like The Usual Suspects, LA. Confidential, and The Untouchables.  Three films that appeal to me in virtually every way that an old school 1930s crime drama with a twisted mature angle did.  Sandman had the mystery aspect with the tortured Wesley Dodds and his nightmares of terrible crimes where he is forced to don a gasmask and a trench coat and goes out to gas various serial killers and niche crime dwellers to silence his nightmares.  Easily one of the best comic series ever done, Sandman is a series that I often like to go back to.    

These two works express in me three aspects that I’ve always loved: noir, family drama and retro throwback style. Rocketeer is another one. Throughout the next week or so I’ll feature five books that are my all time favorite books ever done.  Starting with the two books I just mentioned, and then going into the Scott Lobdell/Joe Maduiera run on X-Men to the troubled but far more interesting Joe Casey/Grant Morrison runs, to Tom Peyer’s Hourman, and finally Y: The Last Man.

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