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!
Absolutely, I loved this story. O’Neil and Miller crafted my favorite type of Spidey story, where he’s in above his head and out of his element. Nothing goes right for Peter. He loses the girl twice, probably failed the lab he was in, beats up a bunch of gargoyles and for his trouble gets yelled at by an old lady, and shut out by Dr. Strange
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!
I bought into the “Death and Return of Superman” hook, line and sinker. I was stoked for this book to come out and wanted to see how they would handle bringing a character back from the dead, in a time where comics characters didn't return from the dead that often. This book was polybagged in a white bag and came with a trading card. This book set up the “Reign of the Superman” storyline. This issue was also Jerry Ordway’s send off from the Superman books. Ordway had been with The Adventures of Superman since Byrne revamped Superman.
I remember not liking this book very much. I thought the art was weird and didn’t get the story. The 90s were a time where every book needed to have Ghost Rider, Punisher, Wolverine or Venom to sell a book. The anti-heroes were big in the 90s and I wasn’t a fan. I liked the traditional heroes. Now, I get nostalgic and defensive when people badmouth comics from the 90s, probably because I’m an old curmudgeon and enjoy arguing with people. But enough about me let’s see how the book is.
The 1980s and 90’s were a rough time for Supergirl and her fans. For starters, she was killed in Crisis on Infinite Earths wiped her from existence. The editorial mandate was with each super-powered cousin, dog, cat etc. Superman loses a bit of his uniqueness. He is no longer the last survivor of a dead world, but one of many and so, the Superman family was shrunk to one.
However, this didn’t stop writers from trying to bring back many of the Super-Family adjusted so that they were not also survivors of Krypton, Superboy was a clone of the Man of Steel, Krypto was a puppy rescued by “Sooperman’s number 1 fan” Bibbo and Supergirl was a shape-shifting alien called the Matrix who dated Lex Luthor Jr. (who was actually the original Lex posing as his own son.)
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!
