Last week, I wrote my 300th Fluit Notes column for the Captain Comics website. In celebration, I’d like to write about a comic book that shares the number 300. No, not the Frank Miller comic that was eventually turned into a movie. It’s the 300th anniversary issue of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Like most fans, I read comics in my youth. And, like most fans, I quit comics as a teenager. Reading comics was a phase you were supposed to grow out of and I accepted the conventional wisdom- wrongly as it turned out. I came back to comics as a college student. I was a theatre and English literature major at the time. I read over 100 pages a day, and I loved it. But after polishing off a novel by Joseph Conrad or a play by Euripides, I wanted something different, something extra. Comics became the thing I read just for fun- like dessert after supper. *
I enjoyed going to the comic store on a Friday or Saturday afternoon. I didn’t have a pull list yet. I didn’t know about sales charts or anything like that. I was new to the whole experience. I had fun picking up shiny new comics- old favorites like X-Men and new releases like Birds of Prey. And I had a blast browsing through back issue bins- rebuying comics of my youth like New Teen Titans or discovering titles that came out before I was born like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.
I had a voracious appetite for comics. I figured that the best way to feed that appetite was to buy a lot of different titles with a lot of different characters. One day, while flipping through a box of back issues, I stumbled across a comic that had more characters on the cover than I had ever seen before: The Legion of Super-Heroes #300. I had to have it. I bought it that very day for the exorbitant price of $2.00.
I had a passing familiarity with The Legion of Super-Heroes. I knew about the concept though I couldn’t have identified most of the individual characters. This would be my introduction to- my immersion into- the Legion of Super-Heroes. I loved it. It had action (in space!) and a ton of characters interacting with one another. It had the same soap opera rotating storyline feel of my favorite comics, The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans. It alluded to its long history with a Superboy guest appearance. And it promised wonderful stories for the future (which was about a dozen years in the past as I read it).
Then, at the end, I read something that blew my mind. After the traditional letter column, the editors announced a Legion of Super-Heroes contest. The 28 different characters on the cover had been drawn by 34 different artists (counting pencillers and inkers separately). The contest was to identify which artist drew which character. I was flabbergasted. Remember, I was still a comic book newbie. It seemed impossible to me that anyone should be so familiar with comics- so immersed in the medium- that they could identify different artists (including inkers!) by a single drawing. I was amazed and impressed.
That initial reaction stuck with me. It’s not often that you remember a specific editor’s note at the end of a letter column.
But something happened in the twenty years since I first read Legion of Super-Heroes #300. I’ve become immersed in comics to that extent. I’ve read 1000s of comics from all kinds of publishers in all kinds of eras. I joined a comic book website and eventually became a columnist. I became, for lack of a better term, “an expert.”
Last summer, I attended a huge meeting for our denomination. On the first day, they did a test run of the electronic voting system. We were asked to vote for a chairperson from among several superheroes.** As they flashed the nominees across the video screen, I was able to identify not only all of the characters but the artists for the vast majority of the images. In sotto voce, I identified the artists for my friend sitting across the table from me- George Perez, Bryan Hitch, and so on. He was astonished- and a little appalled, to tell you the truth.
As I saw the look on his face, I reflected on my reaction to that issue of Legion of Super-Heroes from a long time ago. I had become the kind of expert that was once beyond my ability to imagine. It wasn’t part of any plan. It wasn’t something I set out to become. It happened naturally, through my avid interest in all things comics. Ironically, Legion of Super-Heroes #300 was one of the comics that set me down that path.
That kind of knowledge can be fun. It’s like a party trick. It’s especially impressive to little kids and their parents (though the kids are more interested in identifying the characters; they haven’t necessarily realized yet that somebody draws them).
I remember another incident, shortly after I discovered the original Captain Comics website in the summer of 1999. I asked Cap some questions about Green Lantern. While asking my question, I mentioned that my former high school friends had asked me these questions and I didn’t have the answers. Cap answered my question. But he also used my answer as a launching pad for a larger observation. All of us, he noted, were considered comic book “experts” to outsiders even if we had only read a few comics ourselves. He then urged us, his readers, to be good ambassadors for comics.
I’ve tried to be that. For example, I help kids in my congregation identify the superheroes on their bedroom posters. One kid had a poster with over 100 Marvel characters on it. I answered every question he asked. I explained who Fin Fang Foom was, and a few others, to his delight. That’s another party trick that would have seemed impossible when I joined Captain Comics website 15 years ago.
So, here’s to 300 Fluit Notes columns, to all of the comics I’ve read over the years and to all I’ve learned from them.
(* I still read heavy literature and old drama, and I still heavily read comics. I finished a novel by Vladimir Nabokov last month and I have the complete collection of Ben Jonson’s plays waiting for me on my shelf. If you follow this column, you know I read comics as well- whether it’s the latest issue of X-Men or new collections of older comics like Nexus.)
(** Iron Man won, partly due to a Canadian “protest vote” against Captain America.)
Replies
300. 1999. I've been enjoying your stuff for a lot longer than I realized :) Congratulations.
To clear things up, I found Cap's original website in 1999. I didn't become a columnist until 2007.
Cap's first website didn't even have a forum. Cap had his this week's comics column (and wow am I happy that's back), his Mailbag column and maybe his Scripps-Howard columns. We communicated with each other by writing to Cap through his mailbag. There were a couple of other features as well. JeffPolier had his Cavalier's Notes column and there was the old Gotham X fanfic.
After a while, Cap couldn't keep up the website by himself. It closed up, but a new forum arose from the ashes. It was very basic, like an old usenet site. That worked well enough for a while and Cap eventually started a new website with the forum as the main feature. We've moved a couple of times since then. The current ning site is something like our fifth iteration. That's not quite Iron Man relaunch territory but it's in the same neighborhood as JLA.
I just wanted to say my congratulations to you too Chris - AND - that that particular issue is one of my favourite's EVER.
I could identify a few of the artists and I was SO PROUD!
I only discovered this site last year - but I'm loving so many aspects of it.
People like you keep people like me coming back.
Cheers
Great column, Chris, and congratulations on 300 Fluit Notes columns!
Hoorah! I would conisder myself a "comics expert", but there's way too many people here (yourself, for one), who are way more "expert" than I am!
That's the good thing about this page, if someone doesn't know it someone else does.
Nice going, Chris, and congrats on number 300!
Your timeline just made me realize I've been here over a decade myself. I wanna say 2002, man time flies.
Congratulations on 300 columns, Chris! My experiences are exactly like yours, yet completely different.
One of my former roommates (also a comic book reader), once brought a date home and was showing her a poster he recently bought. When I entered the room, he showed it to me, too, and I asked, “Who is that?” His date, exasperated with me, exclaimed, “It’s Spider-Man!” He caught my drift, though, and replied, “Joe Jusko.”
More recently, our friend’s young boy asked, “Captain America is the same as Wolverine except he carries a shield, right?” I was very careful when I answered that question!
"Actually, my boy, Captain America is also a much better dancer."
Smart kid.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next