It Came in the Mail

You know that thing that I do?  Where internally I'm ultra-geeky, but to the external world I'm cool and suave and totally happening?

Something arrived in the mail today that may put a damper on my carefully crafted exterior persona.

I ordered it from Etsy.

It came from China.

Wrapped... like... this.

 The kids were a little surprised by this.  Especially by the little bow.

 But what could be inside?  Off went the lid.

 Off went the carefully cut and placed top padding.

Out came a totally cool hand-crafted Aquaman iPhone case.

That's right, now everyone might tumble to the fact that my passions lie in the less-than-mainstream.

Oh well.  The secret is out.

Thanks,
DCD

Aquaman and Squinkies

A little while ago in this post here, I talked about reducing my collection and introducing focus rather than the idea of an overwhelming amount of comics and toys. I've been successful towards that goal. Steadily selling a few things on eBay once a week. Progress is slow, as planned. But to this date I've earned quite a lot by just selling off trade paperbacks. I try not to think about it too much.

While I don't actively collect toys anymore, there are some exceptions to that rule. The best way to stop toy collecting is to not go to Target or Walmart anymore. That way, I remain ignorant on what I'm missing out. But sometimes I find out about a product line, and then the brain rules come into play.

Is it Aquaman? Hawkman? Is it cheap? Will you display it or put it in a box? Is it an antique?

I like the idea of continuing to buy Aquaman things. It's a small, controllable subset of the collection. And it fills the uniqueness quality that being an Aquaman fan gives me. If I collected Superman, Batman, or Spider-Man, I would be drowning in merchandise. My Aquaman stuff will barely fill a bookcase when I'm ready to finally move into my new comic sanctuary.


Recently, I picked up a toy line called Squinkies. My six-year-old son, Alex, has some Squinkies. He has Marvel and Star Wars Squinkies. I think they also make Squinkies for generic animals and possibly a line of cute character Squinkies aimed at girls. For Christmas, Santa Claus brought Alex some Squinkies based on some DC Comics Characters. That's how they showed up on my radar.

I picked up four multi-packs of DC Comics Squinkies. They came in packs of 12. They're small, so they're easy to display. They're cheap, so the funds that paid for them came out of the collection selling that I've been doing. AND... best of all... Aquaman is featured. Twice.

Each multi-pack of Squinkies comes with three hidden figures. Packed in an opaque globe so you don't know what character they are until you open the package. One of the hidden figures is super-hipster super-obscure character Kamandi. I was thrilled. Another of the hidden figures was the Batmobile. I was ecstatic for this surprise, as Batmobiles are another sub-theme to my collection.





I saved the Justice League pack of Squinkies to open for last. This pack was interesting. First off, it was based on the new 52 versions of the characters. Only six of the seven Justice League members were visible. And the other characters represented were the mortal enemies of the League members. Joker, Cheetah, and Lex Luthor.

Would we see that seventh member? Yes. I breathed a sigh of relief as Cyborg popped out of his opaque globe. Another surge of excitement as the second hidden figure turned out to be Super Gorilla Grodd, enemy to the Flash.


Wouldn't it be nice if we got a Black Manta?

Wouldn't it be nice if this very last Squinkie, if the very last hidden character Squinkie, if this one in my hand right now.... were Black Manta?


Why yes. Yes that would be very nice indeed.





I'm so happy!

Thanks,
DCD

Podcasts, Community, Hobbies, and Bliss

Some time ago, my pal Steve Lietuvnikas pressed me into trying out a podcast called Comic Dorks. It was a new podcast just starting up and included some webcomic creators that were familiar to me. But the real way Steve hooked me into trying it out was by telling me they were discussing digital comics and the business end of such things. This was of great interest to me. Great enough to get me to try something new.

I had been aware of podcasts, but largely ignored them. Every inch of my life is filled with activity and I'm hesitant to add anything new to the very limited time I have for myself. But I had a long distance trip coming up with my thirteen year old, Ashton, and having something other than a 1940's radio show on my iPod seemed to make some sense.

Podcasts, if you're not familiar, are essentially internet radio shows. You load them up on your iPod and listen to them when you're good and ready, instead of having to be beholden to the air time of the radio show. There are some podcasts that are just straight radio programs that have been turned into internet form, and some podcasts that are produced specifically for internet download. Such as Comic Dorks, which is four guys sitting around microphones chatting about comics.

Which is close to perfect.

The brilliant thing here is that podcasters don't have to struggle to find an audience within a specific broadcast range. So the topics can be as limited as the taste. This greatly appeals to me! I found one podcast, the Thrilling Adventures of Superman, that focuses specifically on Superman in the 1930's and 1940's. Try selling that to a traditional radio station. But with the power of the internets this guy in his basement chatting about his favorite version of the Man of Steel has no problem finding an audience at all.

I had been only trying out comic book podcasts, afraid to venture into a larger world of topics. But a friend from work, Megan Stickel, got me to try something new. RadioLab, from NPR. This show is brilliant. Sometimes scientific, sometimes emotional, always well thought out. RadioLab takes topics that I did not think would interest me and presents them in such a way as that I find myself thoroughly engrossed. One episode, called 'Fact of the Matter', deals in the nature of truth. That particular episode blew my mind. Another episode, 'What's Up, Doc?', tells a few stories about the man who voiced Bugs Bunny, Mel Blanc. That episode had me tearing up. The last episode I listened to was simply called 'Bliss'. It presented several stories that seemed to have no direct association, but they were able to tie together the ideas with the simple thread of "bliss". It had me thinking about what bliss meant to me all day.

I enjoyed RadioLab so much that I loaded it up on the kids iPod touches for their gym workouts. Ashton's pretty into it. My eleven year old daughter Katie doesn't quite know what to think of it yet. But she did enjoy the 'What's Up, Doc?' episode.

As good as Comic Dorks is, it's not my favorite podcast. The topics are very current, for modern day comic readers. So... not really fully my thing. I need something more tailored to my specific interests. Would the internet know of such a show?

As luck would have it, it's been under my nose for quite awhile.

The operator of the Aquaman Shrine, Rob Kelly, has joined with the operator of the Firestorm Fan blog, who calls himself the Irredeemable Shagg. When they bump their fists together and call out their magic words, they produce what is known as the Fire and Water Podcast; the Official Podcast of the Aquaman Shrine and Firestorm Fan.

My love of the Aquaman character is well documented. And I visit the Aquaman Shrine daily. That's an easy sell. I was always a little partial to Firestorm in the 1980's, but never read him consistently. But coincidentally enough, I just finished a massive read through of all of Firestorm's appearances in the 1970's and the 1980's. Making the Fire and Water podcast my absolute favorite listening material at the moment. Outside of Jack Benny, that is.

Shagg and Robb also sprinkle in episodes that focuses on DC's 1980's maxi-series Who's Who: the Definitive Directory to the DC Universe. These two fellow geeks go through every page of every issue and talk about every character entry in this art-and-biography style of DC characters. Can you think of anything more glorious than that?

I was at the gym the other day, having a tough time on the machines because of a stomach bug that just will not go away. I was on my last machine, the stationary bike, using Rob and Shagg's show to get through the exercise a little smoother. They were discussing Who's Who number five, which showcases the characters of the DCU that start with the letter 'C'. Rob was telling us all about the cover. Why it's gorgeous, genius in places, and the subtle details of some of the character interactions. And mis-pronouncing "Cinnamon".


"Hanging off of Colossal Boy's bicep is Congo Bill." Rob explained. "But this is something I never understood. He seems real angry. I don't know why he's so upset."


I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW! I immediately stopped peddling and hopped up off the bike.

"I think I might know why." Shagg interrupts Rob, as is a common practice between the two.

I KNOW TOO! I KNOW THIS ONE! I'm walking back to the men's locker room and focused only on my iPod, completely ignoring the Zumba class full of hot girls as I walk by.

Shagg goes on to explain that Congo Bill has a shtick where he can change brains with Congorilla. And that's probably what's happened here. Congorilla sits placidly looking at Colossal Boy, why Congo Bill with the brain of the giant golden gorilla hangs from Colossal Boy's arm in animal rage.


I'm grinning. I'm grinning like crazy. I'm grinning so hard that my face hurts. It's the absolute perfect geek-moment for two men and their audience of one separated by time and distance and technology, yet sharing a geek-moment so hugely obscure that only a comparative handful of people on the planet would have caught that little detail.

I know what my bliss is.

Hopefully you have a hobby in your life that can engender such passion in you.


Thanks,
DCD

The Hunt for Aquaman

I wanted to take a minute to tell you why I feel this is the golden age for enjoying entertainment of the past. More specifically, I wanted to give you a personal example of it.


It was 1985 when I learned that Aquaman had his own cartoon in 1967. I remember feeling a wave of shock in my stomach. The feeling a collector gets when he misses out on a rare piece. I felt overwhelmingly irresponsible. I had no idea that my favorite character used to have his own cartoon. I had never seen it, never heard of it, had no knowledge of it's existence.

I found out because of this advertisement in a comic book:


As I said before, it was 1985. And all I knew at this point was that the cartoon existed, and that I would soon spend $24.95 of my lawn mowing money to own it. But what questions could I answer beyond that?

When did the cartoon air?
Was it in the same style as Super Friends?
How many episodes were there?
Were they being aired on local stations now?
Was the cartoon any good?

No. Idea.

This was 1985. What were my options? Let's run THAT down...

Ask my peers at school? (No.)
Ask my local library for more information? (No.)
Try to find fan magazines with more information? (Not likely)
Ask my Dad? (No!)

My first step was to call Errol's, a precursor to Blockbuster, and pre-order my Beta copy of the video. That's right... Beta. So I would run into a problem just three years later that I didn't foresee at the time.



Secondly, I had to find out if the cartoon was aired locally. I did this by getting out the local TV guide from the newspaper and going through every day, every hour, looking for all possible interpretations of the show. And at this point, I didn't even know the official title of the show was the Superman/Aquaman Adventure Hour.



Third, I saved up my money, waited, waited, waited, and waited for the release date, biked to Errols with my wallet and backpack, and finally bought the thing.



I loved the cartoon, of course. There are aspects of cartoons from the late sixties that are vastly preferable to cartoons from the early seventies. You can thank parents groups for that. But I'm not here to do a review of the cartoon at the moment. Pertinent to the story... my new beta tape had "8 Aquatic Adventures".

Just eight. And still I had no more solid information. I knew what the cartoon was like. I loved it. I could guess that the cartoon pre-dated the Super Friends. But I had no way of knowing if there were any more episodes.

Three years later, in 1988, I had to find a friend that had both a beta machine and a VHS and who could transfer the cartoons to the VHS format. As beta had died. But at least I had my cartoons in a tape that would play on my Grandmother's VCR.

It was about five years after that, 1993, when I found a guy at a comic book convention who knew anything about anything. I was shocked to learn that not only were there 36 episodes of the Aquaman show, but that the show also had a few 'guest shot' episodes of Justice League, Teen Titans, Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and the Atom. This all pre-dated the Super Friends.





This type of dealer isn't selling video that's been officially released by the companies that own the properties. This dealer is selling VHS copies of cartoon episodes that he had gotten from local TV stations and transferred the film to VHS. I paid the guy whatever he was asking and left with many of his cartoons on VHS tape.

Which would prove yet another problem several years later.

Having the 36 episodes was completely worth it. I love every single goofy moment of every single one.





In 2007, Warner Bros finally released the full series on DVD. Much more than "8 Aquatic Adventures". I now knew far more about the cartoon than I did in 1985, but more from learning bits and pieces along the way then being able to pull up information on the all-knowing internet. I bought the DVD without hesitation.

A couple of years later, the cartoon is available on iTunes for digital download. i bought that too.


So yeah, I have the cartoons, have seen them, and have had all my questions answered. It only took about fifteen years.

My buddy Steve just texted me with the name of a TV show he thought I would find interesting. Five minutes later, I knew all about the show without asking Steve a single question. I didn't need the TV guide, the library, a comic book convention, an illegal VHS dealer, four different formats, and fifteen years to find out.

Golden age.

Thanks,
DCD

The Summer of 1977; A Tale of Loss

There’s a comic book columnist called Mr. Silver Age, and I believe it was him that wrote that the Golden Age of Comics is when you were eight. Not the traditionally acknowledged real Golden Age of comics, which is between 1935 and 1951, but each person’s personal Golden Age of when comics were at their greatest. And that age is when you were eight.

I turned eight in the fall of 1977. The summer of 1977 was my Golden Age of Comics.

It was the best family road trip in my memory. We were moving from San Antonio, Texas, to an Air Force Base in Platsburg, New York. We made several stops along the way, visiting friends, relatives, amusement parks, and Ocean City, New Jersey along the way. My Mom was very pregnant with my sister Robyn. And she had packed a never-ending stream of comics and distractions for us kids during the trip to keep us out of her hair. Many of these issues formed lasting impressions on the core essentials of these characters. And this is the block of childhood that I will choose to re-live once the memory-to-hologram technology exists.

And it was on this trip that I got the greatest Aquaman comic ever created.


This was the re-launch of Aquaman in his own title. The artwork, by Jim Aparo, was perfect. The villain was Black Manta, at his best. The Manta henchmen were even great. The action was top-notch. And I finally got to see my favorite Super Friend in his own real solo title. Before this, I only had the one reprint book.


Thing is… this Aquaman comic, my absolute favorite and the jewel of my collection, I lost it. I lost it soon after we got to New York.


We lived in base housing at the time, in a row of townhouses. And I was making friends faster than normal because of all the other Air Force kids who were used to moving a lot and readjusting. I had picked a couple of comics out of the collection one day and was sitting and reading on the small patch of grass that was our front lawn. One of the kids ran up and yelled something at me about joining the gang for some playtime thing. I leapt at the chance, stashed my comics, and would later find myself embroiled in battle royal where I had a trash can lid and was fighting everyone else off in a case of overwhelming odds… just like Captain America.

Did you catch it? My mistake? Something I would never do today. Did you? I “stashed my comics”.

Instead of taking the time to run back into the house, upstairs to my room, and placing my comics into the box with the rest of my collection, I got lazy and stashed them quickly. We had a little outdoor trash closet, where we were to put our trash can and the base trash collectors would come get the cans out of the closet. My sister and I were used to using it to quickly stash toys outside so we wouldn’t have to go back inside and all the way up to our room when we wanted to do something else.

I forgot them. I forgot the comics I had stashed.

Trash day was the next day.

I remember the devastating feeling of eight year old loss when I later realized what had happened. I remember checking the trash closet multiple times, unwilling to let go of hope. I remember being devastated on the inside, but being unable to show it on the outside because ultimately, the fault was mine. There was nothing I could say or do that would return those comics to me. I would NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN.


I was eight. The idea of comic book stores and back issue selling was still a ways off for me. At that time in that place, my statement was correct. I WOULD NEVER SEE THAT ISSUE OF AQUAMAN AGAIN… until I re-purchased it at a comic book store in Burke Virginia in 1985. Eight years later. But I had no way of knowing that.

I couldn’t tell my mom, there was no impending source of sympathy, the fault was mine.

I’ve always been plagued by the need for action. To get something done sooner, rather than later. If something’s wrong, to right it. If something needs doing, to do it. So when something happens that’s completely out of my control, that I can literally do nothing about, stress wells up like a tangible thing in my chest. It happened when dogs killed our family cat in 2011. It happened when the trash men took my comics and threw them out in 1977.


So I don’t leave things lying around, out of place. That was one lesson learned. And I’ll be pounding this lesson into my kids heads for as long as they live with me. I’ve tried to discuss it with Lorie, but you know how that turned out.

It was really a great comic, though.


Thanks,
DCD

P.S.  This will be my last Saturday post.  Scaling the blog down to just three times a week.

My Obsession with Spreadsheets

Among my many weakness is my love of a good spreadsheet.

There's something about putting data into an orderly fashion into little columns and rows in electronic format that just speaks to me. I love it. Maybe it's something about my job as a computer programmer or my database organizational training. But I think it's much deeper than that and comes part-and-parcel with being OCD.

My earliest memory of being a little too obsessed with organization comes from the summer of 1978. I was playing cars with the neighborhood kids, one of those rare instances when I agreed to play something other than super-heroes, Star Trek, or Star Wars. It was my box of toy cars and my porch, so therefore it was my rules. I couldn't quite decide on the division of the cars and the setting and circumstances in which we would play. One of the other kids asked me "Can we stop getting ready to play and just play?". That was a ridiculous notion and I told him as much. A few minutes later, I ended up playing alone.

At some point when we lived in Rochester, New Hampshire between 1979 and 1981, I got my hands on my Father's typewriter. My sister played with it for a few minutes and completely lost interest. But I remember sitting and working for awhile on a list of super hero names categorized under the teams in which they belonged. The experience was at once both pleasurable and frustrating, as I kept making mistakes and having to start over.

The ability to enforce order out of chaos is kind or rare, I think. Fifteen years ago, my Assistant Manager at Blockbuster marveled at the way I would storm in on a busy Friday afternoon, make a pile of all the chores he couldn't quite get done, and begin delegating tasks until the pile was gone. My distrust manager loved my "task clipboard", where I hand drew a grid and mapped out through the following week which member of the management team was to perform which task and on what shift. Other store managers thought it was way over the top. My assistants loved it, clearly knowing their expectations in advance. It was my first spreadsheet, before I actually had access to a computer.



This is my 'spreadsheet' of k-cups. Lorie was in charge of the k-cup drawer for about three minutes.

I've begun to create spreadsheets for no other reason than to get my overly-active brain to calm down for a few minutes. Compiling data on my various hobbies in a way I hadn't thought of before. It helps me when I'm really angry about something to just calm down and focus on something simplistic, monotonous, and structured.

Let's look at the spreadsheets on my iPad at this particular moment in time. I have 59 spreadsheets.

9 spreadsheets are in the "old" folder and no longer viable.
18 spreadsheets are dealing with comics in some way.
4 spreadsheets I use with the kids and parenting.
4 spreadsheets are for Ashton alone.
4 spreadsheets for music (remind me to tell you about my crazy iPod playlist habits sometime).
3 spreadsheets tracking my obsession with toys.
2 spreadsheets that help me with the budget.
2 spreadsheets for Christmas.
2 spreadsheets with notes on my computer set-up.
2 spreadsheets helping me track my exercising.
2 spreadsheets keeping track of my movies.
1 phone list for work.
1 gift notes spreadsheet.
1 list of items loaned out.
1 spreadsheet designed to help me with time management.
1 Years in Review quick reference guide (remind me to tell you about THAT sometime).
1 spreadsheet I made Lorie put together to track work on our house addition.
1 spreadsheet tracking blog posts. This particular post is slated for 7/20/2012, according to the spreadsheet.

It's worth noting that many of these spreadsheets have multiple tabs. For instance, one of my movie spreadsheets has a tab listing out the Hammer Horror films, the year in which they were released, whether they're in my collection, and whether I've seen them. Love me my Hammer Horror.

Say what you will, but all this spreadsheet madness just serves to make me better at my job.

You might wonder how all this is related to the blog theme of historical perspective. It's not, directly. But indirectly, I keep thinking it's all related. All my passions and hobbies have interrelated in some way. And you'll notice it's not just history I'm interested in, but specifically how history is related to pop culture.

And then there's this:


I started this spreadsheet a couple of days ago after I wrote about my Flash re-read. It struck me that I "needed" to track the major milestones in comic book publishing. And through that, divide out those milestones by character, chart the dates, and see if any interesting patters show up.


And look at that! We just discovered that Kid Flash and Aqualad were created within a month of each other. Both would go on to be founding members of the Teen Titans in 1964!


And you thought I was going overboard! Pshaw!

Thanks,
DCD

The Aquaman Post

So, I started the blog with a handful of ideas in mind and formulated a general purpose for myself. I made the introduction, stuck to the theme, and planned out a few things to write about and do. And yet... people are asking me why I haven’t written about Aquaman yet.

YES. I love Aquaman. He’s by far my favorite comic book hero. I love the Justice League, was ‘turned on’ to comics by the Super Friends in the early seventies (I was four). I have always loved the beach, the ocean, and swimming. And all these things have only intensified with age. My nostalgic feelings about my Aquaman memories from my childhood have intensified. The mysteries of the ocean have allured me. The movie Jaws has made me forever wonder what’s just beneath the surface.

And yes, I get tired of Aquaman getting a bad rap from two-bit comedians all the time. It was funny twenty years ago when Tom Hanks did it in the movie Punchline. But it’s all been the same joke since then. Plus, there are other heroes that start with the letter ‘A’ that are far more lame than Aquaman.

This...






Plus this...






Equals Hearts-a-poppin'!





Sorry folks, inside joke. That dude up there is my buddy, Steve Lietuvnikasisaisies, and he loves the X-Men. Which I oh-so-helpfully interpret as love for Angel. Only one of us really thinks this is funny. Guess which one.

Click here to buy something Angel-related for Steve!

My main reason for not yet writing about Aquaman, or including him in any of my plans, is that the subject is covered far more comprehensively at the Aquaman Shrine. An excellent website, run by a super-nice guy, and I urge you all to visit it daily for your Aquaman needs.

So, I’ll keep my eyes open for Aquaman stuff with an interesting historical perspective that I can talk about, like this panel:





I love everything about that panel.

But for the most part, there’s nothing I can offer you that Rob Kelly of the Aquaman Shrine has not already covered and probably mastered.

…

…well…

…I may have ONE tidbit too which Rob doesn’t have access. One or two memories. Or three. Perhaps four. At least five solid stories of Aquaman directly affecting my development as a human being. Six. All right, seven but that’s IT.

There are at least three times in my life that I’ve almost died trying to emulate super-heroes, all in my childhood. No, I never climbed up on the roof and tried to jump off while wearing a red bath towel around my neck, although my father-in-law did. My ‘incidents’ were a little more complex.

First, there was the Hawkman incident. I had tied some cardboard flaps to my back and gone running around the house. I had used my sister’s jump rope to tie on the makeshift wings, and had made a perfect cross pattern on my chest just like Hawkman. But there was excess jump rope and it was getting in my way. So I looped the excess rope around my neck. I figured it was a good way to make sure the wings REALLY stayed on. I almost choked myself to unconsciousness before my Mom caught on that I was up to no good. She grabbed me by the wing as a staggered by.

Second, there was the Green Arrow incident. There were several Green Arrow incidents; actually, thanks to a toy bow and arrow set I had as a six year old in Texas. But the only clearly life-threatening situation was when I was convinced of my fine archery skills so thoroughly that I attempted to prove myself by hitting our house number next to the front door. The arrow went sailing beautifully right through the bathroom window. Knowing I had mere seconds to get to the bathroom and hide the arrow before Mom caught me; I shot into the house at full speed. Very nonchalantly, I sped past my Mom who was on the phone and calling out to me “What was that?” I threw her off my trail by yelling over my shoulder “I DON’T KNOW MOM BUT I’LL GO CHECK IT OUT!” I did not succeed in my subterfuge.

You may not think that was life-threatening, but my six-year-old self sure did.
Third, there was the Aquaman incident. My Dad had a tough time teaching me how to swim. Oh, I had no fear of the water and I took to it. The trouble came when he tried to teach me the proper way to swim and I tried to stick to the methods I had seen Aquaman use on the Super Friends. Arms straight, feet kicking was exactly the OPPOSITE of Dad’s method of freestyle. He did not understand the trouble. To me, it was clear as day. We’ve always had trouble seeing eye-to-eye. (That’s funnier if you know my father.) Anyway, one day on the way to the pool, it clicked in my head how one can be a champion swimmer and swim just like Aquaman and even stay under water indefinitely.

Drinking.

It was so obvious. So clear to me at that moment. Humans need water! We need to drink! Mom’s always on me that I don’t drink enough water! This was brilliant. I would keep this secret and test it out at the pool and then I would receive the accolades of the entire scientific community.

I DID try this method. It DID NOT work. I can’t recommend enough that you do not try this. I don’t remember much, just sinking and kicking and stroking and coughing (underwater) and thinking there was a flaw in the plan somewhere. Dad had to drag me out of the pool. He wasn’t happy, but at least I wasn't facing Mom after having shot out the bathroom window with an ill-advised toy bow-and-arrow set.

Let’s see the good old Aquaman Shrine report on THAT!

Thanks,
DCD

Discovering Mars

It was the summer of 1980 when I discovered a member of the Justice League who I had never heard of.

In my circles, I was widely considered the foremost authority in comics. Even at eleven years old, it formed my identity and personality. We moved a lot, and I didn’t have many roots or lifelong friends to help me through formative years. My consistencies and reliabilities were comics and science fiction. So my identity, for a long while and even today to some extent, is wrapped up in comic book super-heroes.

So imagine how I felt discovering a member of the Justice League who I had never heard of.

I had gotten all eight issues of a mini-comic that came packaged with some candy. I didn’t care about the candy all that much. But the comics were great! Little tiny comics recounting the secret origins of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Hawkman, and the Justice League of America. This was the first time I found out about many of the origins of these heroes.

I got the candy comics in a small convenience store at the end of the street that we lived on in New Hampshire. I savored each one of them, refusing to flip through them until I was ready to read them in full. I placed them in careful order, saving the best for last. Superman was first. Who didn’t know his origin? Then Batman. Aquaman was second-to-last. And I saved the Justice League one for very last.

I remember reading the Aquaman one on the way to the beach. I thought that was appropriate. All I knew was that Mom mentioned meeting some friends at the beach in Maine. When I hear ‘beach’, I think Ocean City, NJ with sand and surf. When we got there, it was a rock beach with freezing cold temperatures. The Aquaman comic was of very little help.

Let’s get back to the Justice League comic. When I finally got to it in my reading order, I had this major, juicy mystery on the front cover! There was a guy! A guy who was green! A guy who was green who I had never, ever seen before! Who was this?



It was page five before I learned his name.



He snuck around in the background once:



It was page eleven before he showed up again:



On page thirteen he got another mention:


And that was it. That was all I would get about this previously unheard of character. I knew that he could fly, could punch things, and was from Mars. That was it.

The point being… what a wonderful feeling this was! It’s like a ‘history’s mysteries’ sort of thing. A feeling that there was a whole history to this medium that I thought I knew so well. But Justice League was my absolute favorite book! How could there be a mystery character? A character never mentioned in any of my Justice League comics or any of my Super Friends episodes.

It was the summer of 1981 before I would learn more about this mysterious character.

It was the summer of 1984 when he heralded the destruction of the Justice League that I loved so much from my childhood.

It was the summer of 1988 when I realized I had known about him all along, remembering a story I had read in the summer of 1976 at age six.

But those are other blog posts.

Thanks,
DCD