I’ve loved comics since before I could read them on my own. Growing up, I had a filing cabinet full of comics.
One of the drawbacks of having comics as a kid is that kids aren’t good at taking care of things and I read my comics until many of them fell apart. But just because they were ripped and cover-less doesn’t mean that I didn’t love those books. When my family moved from the Bronx to Miami, I threw many of my old beat up comics away and only a handful survived the move.
Since, that move I’ve established a new collection, long boxes full of comics are piled up in my home-office and dozens of trade paperbacks line the shelves. Nowadays, I find myself reading each comic and filing it away and maybe reading it once or twice more, if I’m particularly wowed by it. But the comics from that filing cabinet the Bronx, I read over-and-over again, the panels are burned into my brain. Where they better comics than what currently comes out or do I remember them fondly the same way a girl in her late 20’s remembers the Backstreet Boys, not because they were good but because they were popular during her formative years?
I’m determined to find the answer. None of my comics were particularly special, most were single issues, not worth much money. I decided to find as many as I can on Amazon, Ebay and conventions and pick them up, not to send them away to get graded but to read them and see if they hold up to my childhood memories.
I am Matt Masdeu and I am the Re-Collector!
Superman once again proves himself incorruptible. He could enslave humanity with his power but instead seeks to protect it and even serve it. Superman’s power never gets to his head and that’s what makes him so special. The Ultimate Man is wrong in his assessment that we need more Supermen because as Wayland and Ultimate Man prove, power corrupts.
John Henry Irons was trapped under a building during the Doomsday Massacre. Upon realizing that Superman is dead, he seeks to carry on his legacy in a suit of literal steel and protects Suicide Slum, a neglected neighborhood in Metropolis. Suicide Slum is overrun with gangs brandishing highly power “Toastmasters,” guns that Irons himself help develop. Now he’s committed to taking them off the streets!
For those too young to remember, “The Death of Superman” was a huge storyline with major mainstream news coverage and it was possibly the first storyline where the main character actually died. Sure, characters died, you lost Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacy and Bucky but you never lost Spider-Man, Captain America and certainly not Superman, the greatest hero of them all!
