For the boys over at
Second Printings who seem to believe they’re inventing positive comic blogging (just let them have it, they seem excited).
Bold words from some guys who haven’t strung together two blogs since 2007!
Says the guy who hasn’t strung two blogs together since 2007. (Shut up, get your own glass house).
Right, back to task... I bring you:
Top Five Favorite Comic Moments of All Time
Wow, where to even start? I mean, I can barely make any sense of that category. Moments? In comics? The moment I read them? The moment they were taken from head to page and birthed into creation? The moment they hit the “scene” and a generation of eager readers had their minds blown by the possibilities of sequential art?
Let’s be honest, “moments” are for the really-real world. So do I go with items like: The moment Kirby was born? The moment Levitz defied convention and invented the Levitz Paradigm? The moment a young Marv Wolfman realized “The Librarian” is kind of a gay name for a badguy? The moment Giffen stuck his head into Andrew Helfer’s office and said “Justisss League” that last time? The moment Grant Morrison smoked some hash in the mysterious alleys of Katmandu?
Nah, don’t over think it. Just go back in the vault, and remember when cracking the spine on some comics was a little slice of escapist awesomeness. All of which threatens to reveal I’m basically an old man who thinks comics were better in my day when they were printed on tree bark with dot matrix printers and only cost two playing cards a bite.
But here goes nothing in no particular order:
#5: The Day the Music Died on Infinite Earths
AKA The Spectre thumb wrestles the Antimonitor
for the Pink Slips of Time!!Worlds would live, worlds would die and the DC Universe would never be the same again.
As a kid picking up comics from spinner racks at the Boardwalk, my cousin and I would look for the comics with the most heroes per capita. The most bang for your buck. This led us to some interesting choices such as the decidely un-banging
All Star Squadron and
Who’s Who but eventually led to
Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Imagine that progression with me: We absorbed an entire universe worth of knowledge in time to watch it die. I think that’s why I am the only person on earth who identifies with (or even likes) Harbinger. Her story was damn close to mine.
Plus this undeniably epic series introduced me to future fanboy favorites such as Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner and Supergirl’s corpse.
It all but spoiled Geoff Johns and me forever. Unless worlds were living and dying and universes were changing forever, why was I wasting my time?
#4: Amy Winston’s 13th Birthday
”My parents got me the key to a magical kingdom that needs me to
cut school and make-out with older boys. What’d you get?”The first comic that was my very own. I mean, I still don’t know anybody who read Amethyst as it was coming out (or who will admit it... or who didn't come out shortly afterward). But I was in love. She was an older girl at the time, it was okay.
Amy Winston lived every kid’s dream: To be adopted. Okay, I kid—but kind of not really. Not only was she adopted, but she was an adopted refugee princess from a faraway kingdom where she’s all growns up… and magic! Take that Batson!
Plus, it was the era of the 12 issue maxi-series, which provided me with an appreciation for comics that had endings pretty early on. Afterall, the ongoing spin-off series started strong, suffered immediate disassociative personality disorder, and limped out of the other side of the Crisis only to die a lingering death.
But we’ll always have the Maxi, the escapism, and her 13th Birthday.
#3: Booster Gold joins the Justice League.
“The Me Jennerashun is in ur comics, saving ur Justiss Leaks.”Is the Cold War almost over, Mr. Reagan? I want to get off.
This was the second issue of Giffen’s League I bought. I missed #2 and #3* and skipped a lot of nuclear-terror fueled, thinly-veiled social commentary using tongue-in-cheek Avengers mock-ups…. I was probably better off.
But Booster? Booster was something else man. He was special in a way only a 12 year old could see. More than that, this is when the Giffen League became the Giffen League. I do appreciate those earliest issues now that I’m a little older and get what was going on. They’re really quite brilliant.
Despite the social commentary, consider two years previous that League line-up didn’t share an Earth in common. That's landmark comics right there. But to a 12 year old it was a book about: Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Captain Marvel and Batman.
Even if I knew half these characters only by their entries in
Who’s Who or their requisite panel and a half in the Crisis, it was still a less than compelling team. I had read every appearance of Dr. Kimiyo Light at the time and even I didn’t care if she ever showed up again. Issue #4, though, #4 was something special. The Royal Flush Gang became my new favorite villains!
The idea that the entire issue was a publicity stunt to enable Max to gain a controlling interest on the team… blew my little frikkin’ mind, man. Plus, Beetle got the one thing he was missing: Someone to play off of.
“Now let’s do some blow and watch The Secret of My Success!”*Way-Back Machine Trivia Time: Specialty shops were just starting kids! Few and far between and unreliable as hell! You could try your luck at the spinner rack; one week it was Batman and the Outsiders, the next week it was Strawberry Shortcake. And it was uphill both ways and we liked it!
#2: Illyana Rasputin: Grown and Fully Armored From the Head of Belasco!
“Claremont, take me away!”And Emo Marty was born. Seriously, if there’s someone I had more of a crush on than Amy Winston, it was Illyana Rasputin. Oh, not like above. That’s gross, man, she’s a little girl for chris'sakes.
No, no, like this:
"Heavy Metal Music is f'reals!"She was the New Mutants' resident beserker/loose cannon antiheroine. She was all brooding and doomed—and known for it! in an X-book known for brooding and doom! Oh man, she was the awesome-est! And best friend to Kitty Pryde—my
other favoritest character of all time ever anon—to break up the tragic monotony every once in awhile.
Holy crap, Claremont was plum out of his mind and there was a time he could do no wrong with me. Simonson too, although I was always watching ‘Ouisy, she’d keep making Illyana shop and like boys. There was no time for shopping and boys, there was angsting to be done!
Note her juxtaposition in my fandom as basically "Dark Amethyst". Magically-aged, powerful sorceress chick who inherits a magical world… but only after taking it by force with a sword of pure hate she forged from her own angst to kick the Alaskan King Crap out of the devil…like…person…guy…!
Because that’s how swords of pure hate roll!Did she just say she “staggered Wolvie”? Did she just call Wolverine, “Wolvie”? Yeah she did bitches, b/c at one time Wolverine was almost conceivably one man and sometimes got beat… but only when de-aged in an Annual, and even then only by another team berserker. Back when he was a nice guy who was good with kids. Sometimes
too good.
So yeah, Illyana Rasputin kicked Wolverine’s ass, tell your friends.
Everything about Illyana was my best friend. She was just the right companion growing up for a young man with a dark side to nurse. Shit, those trench coats weren’t wearing themselves! If I didn’t hold onto the belief that my adolescent rage was so tragically unique it might cost me another piece of my soul before I’d snap and destroy my friends with my all-encompassing darkness, I wouldn’t have had anything to hold onto at all.
Her angst had its own
crossover.
I remembered you too, Illyana. So, please don’t let Mr. Yost touch you anymore.#1: Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go
“Is that the dream where I’m a pirate?? …I have an earring?”To be fair, Kingdom Come nabs #1 chronologically as any other criteria. I will forever love Amy Winston more than I will love Kingdom Come, despite the latter’s overall better quality.
However, Kingdom Come saved comics. At least it saved comics for
me.
The 90s showed us what happens when we go too far as a people. The horrors of when we dabble too much in trying to chase that bleeding edge. The evils of letting artists think they can write.
Kingdom Come swooped in and saved us all from Lobo wannabes melting the Helmet of Fate down into daggers. I know it saved Power Girl. It reminded us what heroes are supposed to look like; what comic books are supposed to be; who Power Girl was—well, come on, she got knocked up with some sorcerous apocalypse baby?! I mean what the fuck is that?
There have been many moments since Kingdom Come—some of them better, some of them not-so-much—that I have gotten to enjoy, thanks to this series telling me it was okay to come back. Things will get better. Superman will cut that mullet... or at least consider a pony-tail. Wonder Woman won’t be a complete idiot working at Taco Bell any more. Batman… will still be a dick, but he’ll be right more often. Donna Troy will stop dating Kyle Rayner. Richard Jonathan Grayson will get his own series. Things can only go up from here.
And for that, I am forever in Mr. Waid and Mr. Ross's debt.
Here, here *Clink*!Plus, a world lived, a world died and nothing was ever the same. And I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
There you go, kids. Because you demanded it! Well you didn't so much demand it.
Second Printings asked an open air question, which I kind of answered. And for that trip down memory lane, I'm in their debt too.
Thanks guys. Cheers in the new endeavor.
Y'know, there is
one more….
