Why I Left Comics

Despite the bold and emotional proclamations we may make when our favorite character is killed or a book we loves get cancelled, I don’t believe comic fans on the whole tend to leave their passion for the medium behind in one grand sweeping gesture. Rather, I think multiple factors tend to contribute to gradual erosion in enthusiasm that dulls the flame to the point where it’s not worth nurturing for the time being rather than stomping it out entirely.

For me, it’s tempting to simply say high school was the cut off point for my first life as a comic book fan and college brought about my second chapter (well, not that tempting, I do want this blog post to be more than two paragraphs), but certainly there was more to it.

Make no mistake though, high school played a role. For one thing, I suddenly had a lot of other interests to occupy my time, be it sports (I played soccer my freshman year and wrestled all four), the school newspaper, plays, and so on; my time to sit around reading about super heroes became more and more limited as I had other things to do. There was also the transference of funds and energy to parties and other distractions that weren’t on my radar in prior years. I saw my social outcast status fade a bit once I turned 14 or so; I don’t think I ever quite reached big man on campus level, but people seemed to generally like me enough to let me know what was going on over the weekend.

More than anything though, the friends I bonded with over comics drifted from the hobby, and certainly if there was any high school stereotype that proved true for me it was the follow the pack mentality, at least in some cases like this. With my buddies no longer making the pilgrimage to New England Comics or wanting to talk X-Men at lunch, those things held less interest for me as well (although in a story I can now chuckle at, I did continue “covertly” trekking to the comics shop every couple weeks for awhile, acting like I had stopped reading comics when I was still buying a few, and ran into a friend of mine who was doing the same; we both were mortified and didn’t acknowledge the encounter for some time, actually until I ran into him at New York Comic Con last year and said “Remember when…”).

It wasn’t just social contributors though. Comics lost me in the mid to late 90’s because a lot of the stuff that had fueled my fandom seemed to coincidentally wind down around the same time. There was good stuff like Grant Morrison’s JLA, Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s Avengers and more I wouldn’t experience for a bit after they came out because a lot of the stuff I was reading conspired to provide me with a convenient jumping off point. Here’s where I abandoned ship on the books that had been my childhood/young adolescent favorites…

What would be roughly a year-long process of me slowly going from a healthy number of monthly comic book purchases to none began in July of 1995 with the conclusion of the Age of Apocalypse. Whereas today I’m able to appreciate that event as the fun alternate reality epic it was, at the time, it was one of the first proclamations to a naïve 13-year old that comics changed. To that point, while I had been aware on some level of creators coming and going, directions changing and so forth, for the most part I still saw my most cherished books and characters as remaining in a state I could recognize them, typified by the 90’s X-Men titles, driven by a never-ending soap opera about people in colorful costumes drawn by guys with a splashy style that matched at least in part the Saturday morning cartoon show.

I remember reading in Wizard how the plug was going to be pulled on the X-Men books with no real explanation beyond that and not learning about the concept behind Age of Apocalypse until a couple weeks later via the Marvel Hotline (as a former Wizard employee now, I have to wonder to myself how much of the story they knew at the time and held back to help Marvel build an air of history; need to ask Brian Cunningham or Pat McCallum next time I see them). Comics were still vitally important to me at the time and in a childlike way that the idea I would “lose” so many of my favorites really shook me up (if 13-year-old me had been around for the New 52, he may have had a stroke).

When the X-Men books resumed their normal runs post-AoA (and without the Internet we did not know at the time when that would be if ever at the time), I regarded them with caution, feeling they had burned me once and I didn’t want to experience it again (I’m aware of how melodramatic that sounds, but I was 13 and hadn’t had a girlfriend yet, so work with me). In particular, I was unwilling to give the new incarnation of X-Force, once among my top titles, a chance. Fabian Nicieza, my favorite writer at the time, jumped off and was replaced by Jeph Loeb, whom I knew nothing about at the time. Tony Daniel, whose art I was really getting into, was replaced by Adam Pollina, whose style was not just radically different than the “X-Men house style” of the time, but just about anything I’d ever seen beyond those Vertigo books I never bought; he also almost immediately ditched the varied costumes for a uniform purple and yellow look.

But more than anything, the mission statement of the book was changing entirely, with the team going from a group of teenagers living on their own (with their gruff cyborg mentor) to moving back into the X-Mansion. As I have come to know Jeph to be a talented writer and a swell dude to boot, I apologize for not giving his run more of a chance, but there are few things less cool to a 13-year old than his heroes essentially moving back in with their parents. As the capper, Cannonball, my favorite character in the book, was “graduating” to the X-Men, so it felt like it was time for me to do the same.

I started picking up Justice League America around the time Superman died to get a better sense of the DC Universe. Truth be told, I was never that into it and didn’t feel like it was fulfilling that goal by letting me know what The Ray, Fire and Bloodwynd were up to on a monthly basis. It became more of a reflex buy for me the same way Silver Surfer or Iron Man was; a book I didn’t love, but I did like having a lot of new comics to read every month. After Zero Hour, when Gerard Jones took over as writer and centered the book a lot around the weird love square between Nuklon, Fire, Obsidian and Icemaiden with The Flash maybe getting something to do every three issues, I lost interest quickly. I stuck around because they dangled the carrot of Guy Gardner coming back to the team, but once it became evident he wasn’t sticking around, I dumped the book in August of 1995.

I began reading Captain America in 1993 or so admittedly because of the stunt “Fighting Chance” storyline where Cap’s Super Soldier Serum was going bad and he only had a year to live. Yes, it was goofy with the pouch-filled vest, the armor and Jack Flag, but I ate up every chapter of Mark Gruenwald and Dave Hoover’s year-long story. When they jumped off the book (and Cap disappeared mysteriously) in September of 1995, I did the same, figuring I’d come in for this story only and didn’t have any interest in a long term commitment (I did the same thing more or less with the Death and Return of Superman). Ironically, the next run was the to-this-day highly regarded Mark Waid/Ron Garney collaboration cut short but Heroes Reborn and I would not get to read it until years later.

I had tried to give the main X-Men books a chance even after I dropped X-Force, but that didn’t last long. I was kind of intrigued by the Onslaught mystery and loved Joe Madureira’s art, but weirdly Age of Apocalypse really botched it for me as I just couldn’t get into the characters as I had before. Having gone back and caught up on what I missed during the years I was gone since, I kind of wish I had stuck with it, because stuff like Operation: Zero Tolerance and the later Joe Kelly/Stephen Seagle run was right in my wheelhouse, but I said goodbye to the comics that had really been my childhood lynchpin during the fall of 1995, though I would continue following their animated adventures for another two years.

I bounced in and out of the Spider-Man books for a lot of the Clone Saga, Amazing Spider-Man and Web of Spider-Man being my primary titles of choice. Because that era was my entry point, I knew no other Spider-Man, and just assumed it had always been full of mysterious strangers, shocking reveals and omnipotent villains just like X-Men. As I began to cotton to the fact that this was not really the case and the creative teams waxed and waned between restoring the status quo to “the good old days” but then lurched back into another clone showing up to keep that thing running, I strained a bit from feeling like I was caught in the middle of a tug of war. When Ben Reilly took over as Spider-Man would have seemed the ideal jumping off point, but I was still somewhat under the impression the saga was finally winding to a close; around the time Spider-Carnage debuted in April of 1996, I gave up.

I’m sure it won’t surprise any regular readers of this blog to learn that New Warriors was the toughest comic for me to give up—in fact, I never did. I stuck with the book all the way to its cancellation with issue #75 in September of 1996, the same month I started high school interestingly and poetically enough (childhood’s end and all that). The stuff that had driven me off other books didn’t faze me when it came to the Warriors. Fabian Nicieza left with issue #50, but I found Evan Skolnick to be a very capable successor. Nova, Namorita and Night Thrasher were written out, but I stuck around for Justice, Firestar, Speedball and the new recruits. Even the altering of the seminal logo wasn’t enough to get rid of me (and that was a big deal, I assure you). I may have missed an issue here and there, but that was only because I was going to the shop less and less, so sometimes I’d forget the shipping schedule and they’d sell out, as New Warriors was not a book my retailer was getting in bulk.

As I’ve said before, I felt New Warriors ended on an appropriate note, with Skolnick bringing the full team back together and I do feel like those 75 issues constitute a complete story for me that subsequent revamps have left untouched. Still, it was a seismic shift for me as a fan, with my favorite comic being cancelled (despite my letter writing campaign of one letter to Marvel Vision) and me re-evaluating how into all this I still was.

Superboy was my favorite DC character as a kid (I liked the concept of The Flash, but didn’t know the person behind the mask that well yet). It was oddly serendipitous that at almost the exact same time New Warriors was coming to an end, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, the creative team that introduced Superboy and crafted the first two-plus years of his book, were moving on. If I had still been buying a lot of comics, I likely would have kept up with Superboy, but as I was pretty much done by the fall of 1996, their exit seemed an appropriate sign. In fairness, I did give the new creative team a few issues and really wanted to like it given how much I enjoyed Ron Marz on both Silver Surfer and Green Lantern, but even though they kept the same supporting cast and setting, the book felt different enough that it wasn’t too hard to move on (little did I know that 15 years later Superboy would be completely unrecognizable to a kid who grew up reading about him).

Strangely, as best I can tell, the final comic I was reading on a reading on a regular basis was Legion of Super-Heroes. This was odd because I’d come into the book late (I didn’t start until after Zero Hour in 1994), the characters had no recognition outside of comics (I never watched a cartoon with them or anything) and…well, Legion was just an odd book for me to end on. Don’t get me wrong, I thought that era was great, but it’s wild to me that I hung on with Legion of Super-Heroes longer than I did X-Men, Superboy and New Warriors. The split of the team and marooning half of them in the past where they suddenly weren’t as unique likely contributed to my severing ties.

(I should note the fact that I dropped my final two DC titles during Final Night speaks not to a disdain for that story, which I like, it was just coincidental timing)

And so as 1996 drew to a close, I was out of comics. I would check in now and again if I happened to spy a rack in a CVS or something over the next couple years and always checked what they had when I went to a bookstore, but for the most part, I was comics-free from 1997 to nearly 2001.

That, of course, is another story…

Leather Fetish

I’m currently in the process on working on a fairly epic series with Marvel.com video whiz Rich “The Dragon” Herrera that should hopefully be up in the next couple weeks on the site in time for the 600th issue of Fantastic Four. Without giving away the game, we’ve got about three hours or so of footage interviewing Tom Brevoort about the history of the FF from start to finish with plenty of anecdotes and neat facts along the way. It was basically like taking a master class in Marvel from a gent very qualified teach it and one of the cooler experiences I’ve had in a very cool career.

One of my favorite bits from the whole thing, oddly enough, was when we got to the 90’s and Tom spent a substantial spot of time talking about the period where the Fantastic Four got leather jackets and specifically that The Human Torch had a leather jacket (“Was he cold? He’s on fire!”). Tom of course acknowledged that the folks working on the book at the time, Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan, were just going with the general trend in the industry at the time, but as those were the comics coming out when I was a kid and I was part of the audience who more or less said “we would like to see The Human Torch in a leather jacket,” it got me thinking (again).

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again (right now, in fact): If you wanted your comic book character to look cool in the 90’s, you gave them a leather jacket with option of earring, ponytail and possible razor stubble. But did “looking cool” actually translate to “being cool”? Heck, did it even look cool? Let’s examine…

FANTASTIC FOUR
Y’know, from a functional standpoint (if not a fashion one), leather jackets really aren’t that out of place on the Fantastic Four. After all, they’re more explorers than super heroes at heart, so it does make a degree of sense they’d want plenty of pockets to carry around gear for wherever they’re headed and whatever they’ll encounter so they can always be prepared (and also stay warm, I suppose). Although Tom is right that a jacket offers very little use to the Torch, since he’s got built in weaponry and it would take excess time to treat anything he’s going to be carrying around or picking up in asbestos or whatever. And The Thing would never actually use anything but his fists so long as those are handy, plus he’ll tear through those suckers frequently enough to make the Hulk’s purple pants budget look frugal. And a jacket would actually hinder The Invisible Woman since at least part of her power hinges on not being noticed, which becomes more difficult with something making noise, causing wind resistance, etc. Ok, so maybe Mister Fantastic could wear a leather jacket from a functional standpoint.

WONDER WOMAN
Covered this recently, but the answer is no, Wonder Woman should not wear a leather jacket (in my opinion). Her gear is more than just a costume, it’s a uniform; the honor guard of a proud people symbolizing their greatest champion yada yada yada. You can alter it slightly (as has been done currently), but in story there’s a certain level of prestige and heritage that’s integral to Diana’s character, while on a real world level Wonder Woman has one the most recognizable costumes in comics and you shouldn’t be covering that up with a leather jacket (or bike shorts). To be fair, there was a very valid story reason why she wore what she wore—she wasn’t Wonder Woman anymore so keeping the garb would be disrespectful to her mother and her people—plus it was only ever designed to be a short term gig, but Diana should never be a slave to fashion trends.

THE X-MEN
X-Men and leather go together like peanut butter and jelly; it’s a beautiful and symbiotic relationship. In the 80’s, you had Mohawk Storm’s gear, in the 90’s you had the brown jackets that carried over from the comics to the animated series, and this century you had the black and yellow (and white) gear Frank Quitely introduced. It’s my belief that the reason the X-Men floundered commercially in the 60’s and early 70’s was not due to lack of Wolverine, but because they were hung up on spandex. Also, Gambit would probably curl up in the fetal position and weep if you took his duster away from him, and that’s a story nobody wants to see (unless Mike Carey has a really good angle on it, maybe).

SUPERBOY
A thousand times yes. That Superboy to this day is not sporting a leather jacket, an earring, John Lennon sunglasses and a fade cut is a crime against fashion. And since he was supposed to be not that much older than me when he was introduced, it made total sense he would emulate the same looks I did (particularly when his genetic role model had a mullet). I only wish his aesthetic dynamic had stopped aging along with his physical body.

THE AVENGERS
No.

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
There are aspects of the Five Years Later run of Legion of Super-Heroes that I enjoy, but on the whole, making the best bright and shiny future in comics into the typical dystopian fare was a misstep. It felt wrong all the way to the way the characters dressed, since colorful attire with potent symbolism was central to the “carrying on for the greatest heroes ever” Legion conceit while the drab gear the FYL crew wore signaled how out of place they were. Only Ultra Boy and Timber Wolf are street enough to rock leather jackets (Karate Kid could if he wanted to, but he would never want to).

CAPTAIN AMERICA
What I said about Wonder Woman, probably magnified. Cap is literally draped in the American flag; play that all out, or don’t play it at all. Covering up the symbol he’s proud/brazen enough to wear in that manner is not Steve Rogers at all. He’s also all about grace and agility, so all that extra weight is no good (again, there was a reasonable story reason, and the character was actually against the change, but it was still not so hot).

NIGHTWING
Actually never wore a leather jacket, but he made a disco collar and mullet reasonably cool well past their respective expiration dates, so if anybody is gonna bring it back, Dick Grayson is the man. Also: pixie boots.

Underrated/Overlooked: Legion Worlds

After being quietly appreciated for the better part of a decade, Legion Lost, the 12-part series by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and a young Olivier Coipel that reinvented the Legion of Super-Heroes for a new century, has in recent years gained a deserved higher profile. Lost presaged a lot of DnA’s later work with bold science fiction in their later Annihilation, Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy stints, placing the relatively optimistic Legion I grew up with and dropping them into a foreign universe with exotic challenges that forced the teenagers to grow up and face unspeakable tragedy and sacrifice. It was a powerful story with aggressive art by Coipel that topped many fans’ “why hasn’t this been collected?” lists until just recently; today, not only can you grab the trade at stores, one of the new series launched by DC bears its name.

DnA would go on to launch a Legion ongoing building on the darker edge and emphasis on character drama they brought to Lost, but first as a bridge, they penned the six-part Legion Worlds, an anthology that explored the 31st century landscape the missing Legionnaires had left behind and what had become of their teammates. The sprawling art team included a mix of untapped talents like Yvel Guichet, Enrique Breccia, Paul Rivoche, Jamie Tolagson and Kilian Plunkett with established names such as Coipel, Darwyn Cooke, Rick Burchett, Duncan Rouleau, Rick Leonardi, Steve Dillon and Mike McKone, plus covers by then up and comer John Cassaday.

It’s a clever storytelling device on DnA’s part as the Legion—and thus the readers—has been away from their universe for over a year (real time) and there’s a lot of ground to cover to set up the new series. They had fun with the vastness of the Legion’s landscape, setting each standalone chapter on a different planet housing one or more members of the scattered team and familiar to fans. As with any series of the format, some stories were not as strong as others—I don’t remember the M’Onel-centric Earth story in the first issue much, though that was mostly a primer for the rest of the series, and recall not investing too much in the Magno/Cosmic Boy spotlight on Braal—but the stuff that stood out did so strongly.

The second issue has Ayla Ranzz, the Legionnaire known as Spark, returning to her home on Winath, with both her twin brother, Live Wire, and erstwhile love interest, Chameleon, among the Lost. It’s the kind of thoughtful, psychological, and slightly creepy story DnA excels at, with Ayla trying to pick up the pieces of her life and finding it hard to do so as something of an outcast in her own home where everybody is born with a twin and “solos” are shunned. Ayla’s older brother, Mekt, a solo himself and formerly the villain Lightning Lord, has also returned, supposedly reformed, somewhat mentally addled and hoping to bond with his sister over their common sense of loss. There’s a mystery plot about natural disasters and whether or not Mekt could be responsible, but the real meat is in the family drama, and the tension Ayla feels both over being adrift and at the possibility her brother may not be as innocent as he claims is palpable.

Issue #4 shifts the action to Xanthu, where Star Boy—one of my favorite post-Zero Hour Legionnaires—has returned home with lover Dreamer and teammate XS in tow to help his world fend off the threat of Robotica, a race of artificial intelligence that has gained sentience and rebelled against the beings they feel have oppressed them. It’s very much a war story, as the heroes face overwhelming odds and basically go on one suicide run after another, but it also shows another side of how much the Legion defined these characters and kept them as well as the universe optimistic and bright; in its absence, people like Star Boy and XS have struggled with their purpose, but keep fighting because it is in some sense all they know and all they have left. Robotica is a new take on a familiar trope—the robots go crazy because we don’t appreciate them enough—done with visual panache by Duncan Rouleau, a master at drawing robots and the like.

Next up the focus falls on Karate Kid, who has journeyed to the isolated and peaceful planet of Steeple, bringing along Ferro for a period of contemplation and prayer as they deal with the loss of the Legion. I’ve always loved Karate Kid in all his various incarnations, and this story highlights all the cool stuff about Val Armorr, as he is the one Legionnaire who seems to have moved on in a healthy way with his strong sense of self and devotion to continued enlightenment; of course he also still gets to kick stuff. A bruiser from Takron-Galtos makes his way to Steeple, and while Val is initially reluctant to raise a hand against him, having devoted his energy to quelling rage and violence, the overmatched Ferro gives it a shot and gets badly injured in the process. Karate Kid is now faced with the dual challenges of facing down the bad guy and also saving his friend’s life; the former he does in a great fight sequence illustrated by Steve Dillon, and the latter forces him to make a powerful choice that adds punch to an already rocking tale.

The finale heads to Rimbor, birth world of the Lost Ultra Boy, and the place his pregnant wife Apparition has chosen to hide from mercenaries hired by her mother. Consistent with its portrayals across Legion history, Rimbor is already a nasty place, filled with gang wars and violence, and a pretty crappy place for a pregnant lady to hang out, even if she can become immaterial at will, but Apparition has made an awesome ally in Timber Wolf, who makes his post-Zero Hour debut here and whom DnA as well as Kilian Plunkett do a great job with. After five issues mostly touching on how much was taken away by Legion Lost, it’s cool to end with the reintroduction of a classic character in a fun way, as DnA make T-Wolf every bit the badass he was in the old days, but add in some charm and a quirky paternal concern for Apparition’s unborn “cub.”

I didn’t actually buy Legion Lost, as I was just getting back into comics at the time and just missed it by a couple months, so when I did decide to track down the modern incarnation of another comic I’d loved as a kid, Legion Worlds was my first exposure. I’ve since gone back and read Lost, but even on its own, World did a fantastic job giving you a tour of a universe both somewhat recognizable and completely altered, moving several pieces in place to ensure you’d be invested in the ongoing series. With the creative talent involved and awesome array of characters that play parts big and small, this is a hidden Legion gem for sure.