Recursion isn’t just a river in Egypt

I love first-generation Champions. I love superhero comics. Here we have a superhero comic based on early Champions. Brace for the awesome! … oh wait …

So not making friends here

Because in the course of dissecting an autobiographical point, I’m forced to say things you don’t wanna hear about the Wild Cards series.

The change of illusion

Six li’l issues of The Avengers. Do they really bear the whole weight of the history of Marvel Comics, and perhaps even of fan culture’s creative intestinal torsion? It can’t be that simple, but even at age thirteen-fourteen, I knew something was happening.

Sex and sex and sex and sex

It is going to be most tricky to keep this one SFW. Even saying “embedded” regarding the links makes me snort and snuffle with laughter. Don’t click, people, don’t click!

Stillborn

This is the fourth post in my accidental series regarding several retries to recapture the early Marvel spirit, including Give me liberty, I, said the Fly, Striking twice, some day, and here, as promised at last, the New Universe.

It is unwise to annoy cartoonists

One does not discuss superhero comics without considering John Byrne most seriously.

Today is for taboo III: Mess-Factor

This is the third of three posts about Marvel mutantdom in the late 1970s and 1980s; the previous two were Today is for taboo and Today is for taboo II.

I’ll open with perhaps the most rage-inducing comics-geek phrase I can produce: I like Cyclops better than Wolverine.

I, said the Fly

This was real.

Every so often, one can see superhero comics’ heart.

What does this power do?

Uh oh.

This is a role-playing post. Flee!

‘Verse this

Cool! We got it all stretched out up there and we nailed it! Oh wait … why can’t it move? And it seems unable to breathe … and its wrists are bleeding …

It’s the worst thing ever to happen to my experience of Marvel and other superhero comics.

The river

I know why Heraclitus cries

Picture the Marvel I first encountered, as a multi-year pile roughly centered on 1971: comics as physical objects are pure junk product; the brand is known to everyone but beholden to nobody; the Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation (soon renamed Cadence) seeks Hollywood but the actual product is still selling ad space to X-Ray Specs and plastic rats.

Doom’s face

FF #10, Stan & Jack in “postmodern R us”

In the unbelievably awesome Fantastic Four Annual #2, when Victor von Doom puts on his mask for the first time, a minion protests, “But master, it has not completely cooled yet!” and in the from-behind panel when he’s putting it on, vapor rises from the contact point to remind us of how hot it was.