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.

Mix & Match Super Villains

It’s no secret that the Eisner Award-winning Invincible Iron Man is a pretty consistently solid comic book (or so the scoreboard would indicate). Matt Fraction’s writing is sharp, Salvador Larroca’s art is slick, my main man Alejandro Arbona edits the heck out of the whole shebang and Tony Stark has become a wonderfully complex and charismatic lead.

So it’s no surprise I dig the book as I do, but even I was a bit taken aback at how much I’m digging the current “Fix Me” arc in which Spider-Man archfoe—revealed to also be a former Stark peer in his younger years—Doctor Octopus is squaring off with Iron Man as he attempts to get Tony to cure his life-threatening physical ailments or at least admit his failure. It’s well-written, well-drawn, all that jazz, but honestly one of the biggest draws for me is simply seeing Doc Ock, generally an Amazing Spider-Man fixture, mixing it up with somebody new (and he brings Sandman and Electro along for the ride to boot).

Heroes trading their villains around is, of course, nothing new and has been going on since at least the Silver Age if not longer (I truthfully do not know if, say, The Red Skull ever appeared in Sub-Mariner during the 40’s or if Golden Age Lex Luthor fought that era’s Batman) and has been a fixture ever since. Particularly in the 90’s, if a villain was popular—Venom is the number one example that jumps to mind—you’d see them everywhere whether it made sense or not (A-listers like The Joker or Doctor Doom aren’t in the discussion here as part of what makes them great is that they can face off with anybody and it works).

In recent years, as restraint has returned to the medium, super villains have tended more or less to find a home title/hero and stick to it, so when something like “Fix Me” occurs it feels a little more special, as I’m sure it did the first time Magneto fought the Avengers back in the 60’s. More than that, though, if you find just that right “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that” pairing, it’s so sweet to see a bad guy out of the element you associate them with, but making such a perfect adversary for their unfamiliar dance partner. No matter how good “Fix Me” ultimately is, I’m sure Doc Ock will remain primarily a Spider-Man baddie simply because there’s such a rich history there, but developing a side feud with Iron Man can only up his profile and make for more great stories. I’m hoping for similar goodness in the just-announced “Storm Hunter” story this summer where Kraven goes after The Black Panther in another matchup that just makes total sense.

Following that train of thought, I wracked my brain for some shuffled hero vs villain showdowns I think have a lot of potential—and by the way, I fully recognize that as much as I know about comics I’ve got decades of continuity working against, thus I’m sure at least one of these has happened already and I look forward to hearing about it in the comments, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done again and even better.

(Also, I don’t have Photoshop at home, so I’ll assume you all know what the good guys look like and instead display pictures of the baddies)

SUPERMAN VS BANE
First and foremost, Superman always needs more villains he can just get into punching matches with, because the rotation between Metallo, Bizarro and Parasite in between cerebral wars with Lex Luthor and Brainiac gets played pretty quickly. Realistically, maybe Bane isn’t in Superman’s weight class, but then again, neither are a lot of the guys he fights. Besides that, Bane is a lot smarter than your average musclehead (when he’s being written right), as he’s the guy who not only physically dominated Batman, but weaved the psychological web of destruction that allowed that to occur. The optimum time for this to happen would have been right smack dab in the 90’s when Bane could taunt Superman with the “I broke your best friend” card, but done right today, this could bump Bane up a level and give Superman a fresh sparring partner for when you just need an issue of Action Comics full of double page spreads.

THE X-MEN VS THE DEVIANTS
It’s tough coming up with opponents for the X-Men particularly in the here and now as they are literally an army living on their own private sanctuary. However, the Deviants’ numbers dwarf even Cyclops and company, plus they’re an entire race bred more or less to go to war. Really there could be no more perfect threat for the X-Men to play against, as the Deviants are mutants gone down the worst possible scenario and any last remnant of Xavier’s dream torn to shreds: they’re an offshoot of humanity feared for their power, shunned for their differentness and driven to isolate themselves and lash out against the Eternals, Celestials and every either “normal” or “gifted” group that has been able to ascend into the light they’re denied, so of course they would really hate the X-Men. I’d love to see Cyclops’ strategic skills pitted against the likes of Warlord Kro and the X-Men forced to look into the dark mirror of what they could become—and are actually moving closer to if they really take a minute to think about Utopia—in the Deviants.

GREEN ARROW VS CAPTAIN BOOMERANG
Ok, maybe pairing off the two specialized weapons guys is a bit cliché, but just because it’s sensible doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun. Awesome arrow vs boomerang dual aside—and once they get to the gimmicks it would be seriously amazing—the personalities would be an interesting mesh as well. Going after Green Arrow would be a sensible move for Boomer, as he’s one of those villains constantly trying to prove he’s better than his reputation and targeting the perceived “weakest” member of the Justice League falls right in line with his character. For Ollie, looking at Boomerang would be—as with a the X-Men/Deviants pairing I just discussed—a glimpse at the road not travelled but that could still be. Digger is a guy who has let arrogance and his vices consume him and lost his family because of it; Ollie isn’t that far off from that. Both guys are arrogant and snarky and would have I suspect a spirited battle of wits, words, fists and projectiles.

SPIDER-MAN VS BATROC
This may be my personal favorite. I have already read the amazing Captain America & Batroc one-shot by Kieron Gillen and Renato Arlem headed to stores this Wednesday, and it only renewed and strengthened my affinity for “Ze Leapair,” a truly fantastic pseudo-villain and just fun character. I’d love to see Batroc gain a higher profile in the Marvel Universe, and Spider-Man is the perfect opponent for him. Captain America and Batroc always have cool dustups, but at his core, my favorite Frenchman is an acrobat, not a scrapper, so Spidey would be a great opponent for him just from a physical and fighting style angle. Batroc is also a guy who leads with his pride, preferring to prove himself against Cap rather than beat him or even pull off the big score and he’s all about the honorable opponent, so you know he and Spider-Man would start off trading barbs, but the Wallcrawler’s ceaseless banter and deprecating sense of humor would ultimately drive him—no pun intended—up the wall. And yet, underneath the surface, Batroc and Spidey actually have more than a little in common: both are underdogs, both seek and generally don’t get respect, and both stand by their morals at the end of the day (seriously, read any good Batroc story and he’s not really a bad guy, more of a thrill junkie and swashbuckler). Put the right artist on this and it would be an instant classic fight sequence, but the correct writer could also forge a cool rivalry/friendship in the end—paging Mr. Gillen and Mr. Arlem!

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES VS BLACK ADAM
Probably the best Legion of Super-Heroes story ever is The Great Darkness Saga, with Darkseid emerging in the future, and a modern highlight of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s run came when Ra’s al Ghul showed up as the out-of-nowhere mastermind trying to take over the United Planets. Long story short: Present day villains are gold in the 30th/31st century. Black Adam is immortal and this could certainly still be around somewhere in a thousand years or so, plus he’s one of the few figures who simply on his own could present a viable physical challenge to a fighting force as vast and diverse as the Legion. I’d love to see Captain Marvel’s toughest opponent lock horns with Mon-El and Ultra Boy, trade sparks with Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass or match magic with The White Witch. Black Adam is an unstoppable force and some of the Legion’s greatest battles have come when they go up against that type of threat; I’d love to see Cosmic Boy or Brainiac 5’s battle strategy, but I’d also like to see what happens when BA shrugs it off and ignites the tempers of Legion hotheads like Wildfire and Timber Wolf, leading to the inevitable dog pile. Throw in Isis and Osiris as well and this is a slobberknocker for the ages for sure.

IRON MAN VS THE LEADER
I’m biting a little on the Iron Man-Doc Ock feud I started the post talking about, but if anything, that story has shown me that Tony Stark up against other smart guys makes for quality stories. For years and years The Leader has been banging his giant head against the wall trying and failing to put mind over muscle against The Hulk, so it would be interesting to see him step up to somebody of his own intellect. Conversely, I don’t think Iron Man has ever gone against anybody with the brain capacity of The Leader, so it would be a different kind of challenge for him than battling The Mandarin or one of his numerous armored rivals. I don’t hate The Leader’s chances here, as a guy who has come within inches of putting The Hulk down despite no physical abilities can surely give Iron Man a run, while Tony would be in the uncomfortable position of not being able to necessarily fall back on his knowledge, having to opt for finesse and firepower instead.

Five Favorite (Non-Flash) Speedsters

Since I spent some time last week waxing on how awesome super speed would be, it only seems right I now list off my favorite practitioners of said ability in comics, right?

To make things a bit more interesting though, I’m taking my obvious number one, Wally West, out of the—pun intended—running. To make things even more interesting, I’ll also remove anybody called The Flash (or Kid Flash) just because. And finally, I’ll endeavor to make this a list where it’s more about how the characters relate to and reflect the ability of super speed than their overall coolness, but of course the lines will inevitably blur.

Dig? Cool.

Honorable Mention: MEANSTREAK
No real discernibly cool personality, but I always just thought he had a rad codename.

Honorable Mention: JOHNNY QUICK
I like Johnny, but I haven’t read enough of All-Star Squadron to really know him as anything else but the dude from The Golden Age, and one story alone—even a really good one—doesn’t get you on the list.

5. XS
Combine your typical overexcited and oft-insecure teenage girl with the hyper kinetic nature of a person with super speed and you get XS, a bundle of fun from the 30th century. I always got a kick out of how Jenni would be incredibly enthusiastic over everything to the point where she spoke fast than her teammates could hear and then immediately flipped to extreme embarrassment once she realized just what she had done. Very endearing character and I hope she gets some play in Legion soon, as every team can use a good speedster.

4. MAKKARI
The Eternals’ Makkari combines my love of speedsters with my love of mythology in one gaudily-but-awesomely-costumed package. Mak’s the most inquisitive and adventurous of the Eternal bunch as befits an immortal god-type who can run really fast. Rather than cool his heels in Olympia with the rest of the gang, he made frequent incursions into the mortal world, be it to teach Plato philosophy or serve among the Marvel heroes of the Golden Age. Besides just the fact that he’s fast, I’m a fan of Makkari since he’s always on the move, jumping from one thing to the next with a natural curiosity that matches his ability to physically accelerate—he’s the James Franco of the Eternals.

3. JESSE QUICK
They don’t really play it up at all these days, but the era where Jesse Quick was not just a super hero but also a high-powered business executive always seemed an appropriate and interesting use of a speedster character to me. Of course whether they used their powers or not somebody with super speed like Jesse would be ideal in the corporate world where deadlines and innovation are key and of course she’d be a workaholic able to create more hours in a busy day because those are her powers and the environment she likely grew up in given her parents creeping into her personality. Her status as a headstrong female character who in my mind was assertive but certainly not the b-word also made Jesse Quick a favorite of mine during her Flash and even Titans stints.

2. MAX MERCURY
This is the flipside of my number one, but there is of course the aspect of super speed that allows you to live each moment as if it stretches a lifetime, so the idea of a “zen master of speed” such as Max Mercury both appeals and makes a lot of sense to me. After you pass the just running fast period of being a speedster, you’re going to get bored, and while frustration is one response, it’s cool that at least one guy took the road less traveled and spent the extra time his power affords him learning as much about it as he could. It’s neat the way Max has a better intuitive understanding of stuff like the Speed Force and also how he counters pretty much every other person with a similar ability set by having also learned near infinite patience and becoming the ideal mentor figure (though Impulse forced that “near” qualifier pretty well). There’s also a lot of untapped potential in Max Mercury as far as his crazy origins and not-fully-explored traipses through time, so an appearance by him is always welcome.

1. QUICKSILVER
In the years since Pietro Maximoff was introduced and then fully fleshed out and then further fleshed out as a character, there have been other speedsters who do the “I’m a total dick because I’m perpetually frustrated by how slow the rest of the world is” routine, but none as well, and of course inarguably none who innovated it. Quicksilver is a great character because cool powers aside, you really do have to find a reason to root for him; sure he loves his family and does generally save lives, but he’s also a former terrorist with a superiority complex who tends to lose his mind every so often. Probably no writer did him a great service than Peter David in X-Factor when he established the idea that Pietro isn’t a tool for no reason at all, he’s really just annoyed for the rest of us to figure out how to work an ATM machine. Kurt Busiek also had the great bit in JLA/Avengers where Quicksilver finally meets somebody faster than him in The Flash and rather than embrace him immediately becomes jealous, insecure and obsessed with winning a race. Quicksilver isn’t the most likable character and never will be, but he’s wonderfully layered and, more than that, probably a pretty realistic depiction of how most folks would handle super speed once the initial buzz wears off.

Underrated/Overlooked: Legion of Super-Heroes "Year One"

I was, once upon a time, one of those great unwashed who found the Legion of Super-Heroes too intimidating and complicated.

To be fair, my primary exposure to the Legion growing up was through house ads for the “Five Years Later” incarnation in the DC books I did read, so to me it was a book about sad-looking middle-aged people dressing in shabby rags, sitting around looking forlorn (I’ve since come to appreciate that era of the mythos, but with no sense of context or what came before, it did not look terribly appealing, particularly to a kid who liked shiny super heroes). I picked up a couple issues of Legionnaires, but could not make heads or tails of where it fit with the other book or reconcile why there were all these characters with the same names and powers.

The first Legion book I vividly remember buying and reading was one of the middle chapters of the “End of an Era” crossover running through all three of the group’s titles (including Valor) prior to Zero Hour. It involved trying to collapse pretty much all of Legion history up to that point, attempting to sort out decades of inconsistencies in six issues and wrap up the group’s story once and for all to clear the decks for a full reboot.

In short: It doesn’t seem like there could be a worse issue for a Legion neophyte already wary of the towering continuity to try out.

And yet, it worked.

Or rather it worked in concert with something that struck me in the base framework of Legionnaires as well as the fact that both books were starting from scratch to tell a new version of the old story after Zero Hour wiped out all that had come before. The Zero issues of Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires were great, and before I knew it, I became a full-fledged Legion junkie, with the franchise becoming probably the first DC one I really latched onto in the way I did Marvel books.

It’s interesting to me that when the publication history of the Legion gets summed up, generally it tends to jump straight from the Paul Levitz glory days of the 70’s and 80’s straight to when Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning came onboard in the late 90’s. If you go looking for the great Legion stories, you’re going to get directed to stuff like The Great Darkness Saga and Legion Lost, perhaps with a recommendation to check out Jim Shooter’s Silver Age stuff or Mark Waid’s “Threeboot” if you really want to look. And I love all of that stuff; Great Darkness is one of my favorite stories ever, the DnA run was some fantastic sci-fi that put my boys on the map, and I championed the Threeboot long and hard at Wizard. Yet it always confounds me that the post-Zero Hour re-launch gets more or less swept under the rug. Not only did it start off really strong, I do remember it being fairly successful commercially for a bit there, with lots of internal press for the books and the Final Night event more or less spinning out of Legion (before becoming a Green Lantern story in the end).

And as much as I’ve grown to love the Levitz Legion, DnA’s Legion, the Threeboot Legion and so on, that post-Zero Hour group remains the Legion I truly think of as mine.

I think the first year following Zero Hour is the strongest case for the “forgotten” Legion. After that, there were peaks and valleys and somewhere along the way when half the team was stranded in the present for what felt like forever I jumped off, but those first 12 months from the Zero issues to the Year One-themed annuals were rock solid, building a new mythology while also constructing a focused super story that paid off in spades. Mark Waid and Tom McGraw (I believe with the assistance of Roger Stern, though I’m having trouble confirming it, and later Tom Peyer) seemed to have a really clear idea of how they were going to prove to folks like me who had been so terrified of the Legion that here was a great concept when you stripped it down and focused on the basics of what made it cool.

Rather than being introduced as a sprawling and established organization coming back in time to recruit Superboy to their cause, this Legion started from the start, with three super-powered teens unexpectedly joining forces to save the life of a rich old man and giving him the idea that the future needed heroes. From there, Waid and McGraw did the slow rollout, introducing a couple new members each month, quickly enough so that they could fill out a clubhouse within a few issues and the requisite friendships and romances began to form, but with sufficient deliberation that we actually got to know the characters as individuals and not just names and powers in a virtual army.

Cosmic Boy was the natural leader. Live Wire was the dreamer with the wandering eye. Saturn Girl was the ice queen. Apparition was too perfect. Triad was conflicted. Leviathan had an inferiority complex he tried to mask with a false superiority complex. Invisible Kid was the guy you wanted to be friends with. XS was the schoolgirl in over her head. Chameleon was the foreign exchange student. Brainiac 5 was the arrogant jerk.

Each character was somebody you knew or could at least relate to, and as they interacted, you saw your own youth played out on a level you could only imagine. Because as I always say when it comes to the Legion, there is nothing better than the high concept of teenagers with super powers getting to live alone with other kids their own age in an awesome headquarters with no parents in sight and seemingly unlimited resources. Plus they got to save the universe every month. As somebody who loved summer camp, I think the Legion tapped into that part of me that thrived on escaping society a couple of months every year and getting to have responsibilities beyond my age thrust at me while also getting to act way younger—it still does.

Anyways, rambling aside, when you forget about the continuity crap, Legion is just a cool as it gets idea that should always be a lot of fun and wish fulfillment to the highest power. Waid and McGraw’s Legion was the embodiment of cutting through the smog of comic book complications and making the books a place you really wanted to spend time every month. It also helped that they had great artists in Stuart Immonen and Jeff Moy, each of whom brought something different to the table. Immonen in that early stage had a neat sort of gritty realism that he could pull off without making the stories seem dark. On the other end of the spectrum, Moy’s art was buoyant and full of life, but he could bring it for the emotionally heavy stuff as well. They complemented each other and what the writers were trying to do perfectly.

While the Legion grappled with an assortment of threats, Waid and McGraw also continued to add members like Shrinking Violet, Kinetix and the xenophobic Andromeda while also casting pre-Zero Hour Legionnaires like Ultra Boy in new roles—he was on a rival team but had a Romeo and Juliet love story going with Apparition in a nod to their classic romance—and throwing in curveballs like Live Wire being kicked off the team and replaced by his twin sister Spark. While I didn’t know everything about the Legion as it was before Zero Hour, I at least recognized many familiar characters or relationships, and enjoyed the wink by the creators as they found new ways to use old favorites like Matter-Eater Lad as the Legion’s chef or Bouncing Boy being a non-powered sort of intern (and having a crush of pre-Zero Hour wife Triad).

And the whole time, beginning right from Legion of Super-Heroes #0, something larger was going on off to the side. The people that tried to assassinate R.J. Brande were tied to a larger group called the White Triangle, a cabal of Daxamites founded on considering all other races inferior. Andromeda had ties to the White Triangle but hid them early on and also seemed to be slowly coming around. Members of the group beat one of Triad’s selves nearly to death. The plotline was very heavy stuff, dealing with tough issues like intolerance and hate crimes and doing it with maturity and weight in a fantastical setting like that of the Legion’s supposedly idyllic future. It hung around the fringes of the first year’s worth of stories, but with mastery, Waid and McGraw (at this point I believe with Peyer) brought it closer to the forefront until it reached a boiling point.

The Legionnaires Annual that wrapped the White Triangle story and carried the Year One banner which most books used to tell origin stories but here marked the conclusion of the new Legion’s first year of existence, felt very much like a season finale. The White Triangle finally found a way to get their Superman-level powers working on Earth and launched a full scale out in the open invasion. After months of working behind the scenes, the bad guys were here and they were terrifying.

It was all hands on deck as anybody who had left the team came back and every guest star available showed up to pitch in. Live Wire’s hero arc reached a dramatic crescendo as he returned to the team that had spurned him to help save the day. Andromeda was forced to finally pick a side. R.J. Brande showed up at the very last minute with a secret weapon that would make old school fans smile. Everybody got their big moments—and there were casualties. The deaths were not at all tossed off and had extreme gravitas to them; I remember getting quite emotional watching a couple of these new friends I’d gotten to know over the previous year get snuffed out.

That story still stands out to me well over a decade later as one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of how you build expectations and tension over the long haul and then end it right. It was just great storytelling.

So if the current Legion seems appealing to you but you’d a bit put off by the sheer number of characters or amount of continuity changes, let me make the suggestion that you try and track down the Legion of Super-Heroes: Beginning of Tomorrow trade and then scrounge up all the back issues you can. The post-Zero Hour Legion really is the ideal gateway to the concept working without any baggage, and if you’re like me, you’ll then be ready to take the training wheels off and start exploring forwards and backwards in the franchise. It’s a truly wonderful world to explore, you just need the right entry point, and I’m telling you, it’s the one even most hardcore fans forget ever existed.

Who Digs Teen Super Heroes?

The short answer to that question is me—it’s the more in-depth version I’m interested in trying to figure out, and will attempt to do so with a little impromptu history lesson wherein the facts will hopefully be at least close to accurate given the minimal research I plan on doing.

As we all know—right?—the first major young character in comics was the original Robin, Dick Grayson, introduced in 1940 to be the boy/teen sidekick to Batman. Bucky, Speedy, Toro, etc. and a horde of other pre-pubescent tagalongs were created throughout the 40’s to accompany the hordes of hit or miss super heroes the industry was churning out at a feverish pace. The idea was that since a lot of kids and teenagers read comics, they’d like to have a character they could imagine themselves as; they could hero worship Batman and Captain America, but they could actually be Robin or Bucky.

Robin and other young boys hanging out with strapping men in spandex of course became a major target of Fredric Wertham in the mid-1950’s, so a lot of them went away over the course of that decade, as did super heroes comics as a genre in large part. This was likely just as well, since the kids who grew up in the 40’s were now hitting the cusp of adulthood and didn’t feel like identifying with a cheeky circus performer in pixie boots or precocious army mascot in a domino mask, preferring the edgier EC Comics-type fare you’d expect twentysomethings to cotton to. The only teen heroes who really thrived to any degree in the 50’s were Superboy because he was just Superman as a kid and Robin because he was mostly an accessory to Batman. The exception to the rule would be the Legion of Super-Heroes, introduced in 1958, but I attribute the fact that they had a unique gimmick—that whole being from the future thing—as offsetting a malaise in young protagonists at the time.

The game changed again in 1962 with Spider-Man, not just another teen character but a full-on leading (young) man with angst and depth his predecessors of 20 years earlier never came close to demonstrating. With Spidey, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko invented not just a hero their younger readers could fantasize about being, but in Peter Parker an alter ego who wasn’t all that far off from how they actually were real life, mixing the tried concept of a wish fulfillment character with an identifiable protagonist. It no doubt helped that the Wertham storm had been weathered and there were actual young readers to appreciate the effort again.

Whether because of Spider-Man, the return of teen fans, just because or a combination of them all, DC brought back their younger heroes in full force, grouping Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad and Speedy together as the Teen Titans while also giving the Legion their own ongoing series in Adventure Comics. At Marvel, the X-Men were created perhaps in least in part with the idea that if one awkward kid did well, five would do even better, while Rick Jones became a fixture in Incredible Hulk, Avengers and later Captain America and other titles.

While the late 60’s did not bring the return of Frederic Wertham, there was the inevitable aging of another audience and ensuing lack of interest in teen heroes that killed off both Teen Titans and X-Men for a good bit. However, rather than go gently into that good night, the folks responsible for Spider-Man and the Legion came up with the novel solution to simply age their charges ever so slightly, meaning as their fans were going off to college, so was Peter Parker; as the readers were discovering romance, the Legionnaires were hooking up. Rather than lose that young audience who found Iron Man too old but were over the youthful adventures of Supergirl, a middle ground of hip characters in their early-mid 20’s were established, with many tenured leads being subtly slid back towards that demographic as well.

Once you buzz past the early 70’s and get toward the end of that decade on into the 80’s, things get interesting as far as teen and just-past-teen super heroes. The three most commercially successful ongoing series of the period for quite some time were Uncanny X-Men, New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes.

In the case of the X-Men, a cast certainly not fit to be attending high school shot the book to popularity in the middle of the 70’s—Wolverine has never been a teen hero—but the ultimate entry level character for kids in Kitty Pryde cemented it’s spot as in many ways it became about the one kid being your access point to hanging out with the coolest group of older friends you could imagine.

New Teen Titans showcased a mix of high school and college age characters that all happened to be extremely physically attractive—but in distinct and thus more believable ways thanks to the talent of George Perez—having incredible adventures and also exploring their friendship and sexuality. Legion of Super-Heroes was a similar set-up but in the far-flung and awesome 30th century. Whereas Robin and Bucky had been endearing but fairly goofy wish fulfillment fantasies to kids in the 40’s, the Titans, Legion and X-Men were far sexier versions who were able to hold the attention of their audience regardless of age—young readers wanted to spend time with them, slightly older fans wanted to be them, and those who had been following along since the 60’s saw their glory days. As a result, these books stayed on top for most of the 80’s.

As the 90’s dawned, for whatever reason, the 70’s backlash of disinterest in teen heroes seemed to resurface and the answer of the comics community was to take the previous solution of aging their young characters even further. The X-Men—the presence of Jubilee aside—became comprised more or less entirely of adults, and ones with a hard edge at that. The Teen Titans became the New Titans, ditching the optimism of youth for a seemingly endless wave of tragedy (see Donna Troy’s life). The Legion jumped ahead five years and became grown-ups in a now dystopian future. Even the New Mutants, who remained among Marvel’s younger characters, transitioned into the paramilitary X-Force, with gray-haired Cable at the helm and as the focal point.

In spite of this, there were a lot of great teen books and characters in the 90’s—I should know since it’s when I started reading comics. You had my beloved New Warriors, Tim Drake as Robin and the new Superboy, not to mention a wave of would-be Spider-Man surrogates who went on to various levels of success like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker. Even A-listers like Green Lantern and Flash became part of the youth movement, with Kyle Rayner and Wally West taking the mantles, plus good stuff outside of Marvel like Harbinger at Valiant or Prime at Malibu.

Of course there were also simply so many comics in the early 90’s that the “throw everything at the wall” approach to publishing was guaranteed to yield at least a bit of quality in every category across the board including with teen heroes.

Give or take 10-15 years or so that brings us to today. We’ll leave out the bit where the market collapses and nothing is doing well because it’s not really relevant to any points I’m trying to make or explore.

The comic industry has rebounded from the abyss with vigor over the last decade, experiencing rebirth in publishing as well expansion into other mediums like film and television. There’s a whole component about the indys and how coming of age graphic novels and standalone stuff about growing up has surged of late, but again, not really what I’m talking about here, so we’ll stick to super heroes.

If there’s been any knock on mainstream super hero comics in the 00’s—and there has been more than one, but this is a biggie—it’s that kids don’t read them anymore. If that is the case—and for the sake of the argument we’ll assume it is—then the original reasons why we had Robin in the 40’s, Spider-Man in the 60’s and Kitty Pryde and the Titans in the 80’s has evaporated somewhat in that the median age older reader probably doesn’t want to self-project as a younger character, particularly when the big guns are perpetually situated around the late-20’s/early-30’s age range most fans find themselves at or wish to get back to already.

Indeed, these days the rules that apply to an “adult” book like Avengers or Green Lantern carry over to “teen” books—or to put it more simply: It doesn’t matter how old the hero is, if it’s a good comic, it will succeed. Thus even with a dearth of younger readers, quality stuff like Ultimate Spider-Man or Young Avengers continues to experience success. Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans or Brian K. Vaughan’s didn’t so much do well because they spoke to a younger generation; they did well because they were kid. On the flipside, I don’t think Blue Beetle or Young Allies had trouble because they starred teenagers; they had trouble because it’s a tough market to launch new books in period (which sucks because those were some quality comics).

So coming full circle, what is I like about teen super heroes? It may have started out as an “Ooh, I could be Superboy!” or “Ooh, I want to hang out with the New Warriors!” thing back in the 90’s, but at this point I’m 28 and comics starring the younger set like Avengers Academy or the latest iteration of Teen Titans still tend to grab my interest.

For me, I think it’s that I’m an unabashed fan of the soap opera element of comic books just like I am of television or movies, so I’ll naturally gravitate to stuff starring teens or young adults where that is dialed up to 11 (I love Gossip Girl, but my parents have been on me for months and I still haven’t given The Good Wife a shot). If I’m going to get lost in a world of pathos, angst, romance and heroics, I want my escapism writ large and to the extreme, the way teenagers tend to view life (and the way me and most of my friends do too, since we’re largely in a collective state of arrested development). There’s something about every new crush being the love of your life, every test you face (written or super villainous) being the most devastating ever, and this group of friends being the one you’ll keep forever that appeals greatly to me.

Do I love teen super heroes because I’m a romantic? Because I’m a drama queen? Both? Does it matter? I don’t think it does.

I do hope more kids read comics again someday for lots of reasons—health of the industry, good way to learn to read, etc.—but for sure one is so that teen super heroes get another shot and another generation gets to see how cool they are.

And I’ll still be reading too.