This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each week comics creators, bloggers and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.

Fred Van Lente writes comic books for a living, including the irreverent-but-indispensible history of our medium, COMIC BOOK COMICS, INCREDIBLE HERCULES (with Greg Pak), and the October-debuting MARVEL ZOMBIES 3. He coordinates his various insidious plans for global domination through his web site.

by Fred Van Lente

The comics retailer has to put up with a lot of crap from the funnybook intelligensia – they’re not doing enough to bring women and kids into their stores, they’re not supporting independent books, they’re not nice to customers and puppies, blah, blah, blah – but I love my local comics shop, Rocketship, which is a few short blocks from my house in beautiful Brooklyn, New York (“Where The Weak Are Killed And Eaten”). Clearly I’m not alone, since Rocketship was named “Best Comic Book Store in New York City” by New York magazine and the Village Voice, and was a finalist for the “Spirit of Retailing” Eisner this year.

Because I happen to own a comic book publisher myself, I probably know more about the business of retailing than the average pro, but while thinking over what to write here it occurred to me it might be most illuminating to spend a whole day working at my L.C.S., to see what life is really like on the front lines of the Comics Crusade.

Try this High Concept on for size:

“Comics Pro Works One Day at Comics Shop“!

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is Matthew Sturges, whose resume includes writing or co-writing (with Bill Willingham) several DC and Vertigo titles, such as Jack of Fables, House of Mystery, Shadowpact, Salvation Run, Countdown to Mystery and Blue Beetle. Check out the main site’s recent interview with him to find out more about Jack of Fables, House of Mystery and his exclusive contract with DC.

by Matthew Sturges

I didn’t grow up reading comics. I spent most of my formative years in a small town in West Virginia, with no comic shop anywhere in sight. You could buy a few comics from the spinner rack at Kelly Drug, which was in the early eighties a throwback to a much earlier day, with a soda fountain, the whole bit. But it was just one rack, and I seem to recall that it held the same four issues of The Incredible Hulk for about a year.

My friend Chris Roberson got me into comics; I think the issue that did it for me was issue eight of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It’s the first appearance of Death, where she sits on a park bench and shouts Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! I had a T-shirt of that panel that I wore for years.

But it wasn’t just the comics that drew me in – it was the culture of comics that was just as fascinating to me. I’d been a geek for years, in a time and place when being a geek meant near-total ostracism by the ruling classes of my middle school. I hid my addictions to Star Trek and Doctor Who. The only guy I shared any of this with was the one kid in the sixth grade who got picked on more than I did. But now here was an entire community of nerds whose base of operations was the comic shop. Here recommendations were passed on. Here you could strike up a conversation about Douglas Adams or Monty Python without getting blank stares or a wedgie. It was like a secret club, and I wanted to be a member.

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is Kelly Sue DeConnick, co-writer of 30 Days of Night: Eben & Stella with Steve Niles and a contributor to Image’s 24seven and Comic Book Tattoo anthologies. When she isn’t writing comics, she’s translating them from Japanese into English; you can find a list of the manga she’s worked on here. You can find her blog, girl farts, here.

by Kelly Sue DeConnick

PART ONE
…in which we talk about what we’re not going to talk about.

Funny — not funny ha ha, more funny oh no — I didn’t noticed how sour and vinegary my thinking on comics had been of late until I was invited to talk about loving comics. I sat down to compose my love letter and my initial topic impulses were each immediately followed by something along the lines of “Yeah, but…”.

Yeah, but that’s hardly a feminist notion.

Yeah, but I haven’t read those in years.

Yeah, but… decompression.

Yeah, but the myriad of issues with Diamond, yeah but the direct market, yeah but the impossibility of nailing down sales figures, yeah but seriously now: sweatpants? Creator rights, posting board continuity cops, pamphlets versus trades, Hollywood, oh-my-god-the-Eisners-are-too-long, price points, the need for a union and healthcare…

Yeah, but rape, rape, rape.

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is Johnny Zito, co-creator of the Black Cherry Bombshells at Zuda Comics. He lives in a big house with three of his childhood friends where they jump on beds, bake cupcakes and stay up real late reading comic books.

by Johnny Zito

My definition of an ego character; like most of the facts and opinions contained within this article, is fast and loose.

The ego character appears in team books and crossovers, almost arbitrarily, to remind readers ‘Hey, we still exist’. Take your favorite ‘other guy’, the also ran or b-lister and drop them into the middle of the action. The result can be an amazing character study or a reviled exercise in vanity. Either way, when a creative team dusts off an old character to make them relevant again I get excited.

Ego Characters provide a chance for under used, under developed or unknown characters to get some well deserved exposure. Some of my favorite super heroes are ego characters, probably a few of yours too.

Think of it like this: You’ve just been handed the reins to Justice League of America and you can put whoever you want on the team. Obviously Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman get an automatic pass. You can’t sell books without name recognition. Next, you look to see what other big guns are available; maybe Green Lantern and The Flash. The roster is still looking a little thin not to mention stale so you better keep adding.

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is John Jakala, who you can find blogging over at Sporadic Sequential.

by John Jakala

One of my favorite things about reading comics is finishing the main story and turning the page to discover that there are still bonus features left to enjoy. Back when I was a kid, it seemed like all comics were never-ending stories, with pin-ups and backup stories and schematics of secret headquarters to pore over. Extras were like a surprise dessert after an already delicious meal. It seemed somehow indulgent to get so much comic book content squeezed between two covers.

Of course, most of the extras were reprints of older material, but I wasn’t aware of that back then. As a young boy who simply couldn’t get enough of his favorite superheroes, I was firmly in the “more is more” camp, so it didn’t matter to me where the additional material came from or what vintage it was. All I knew was that bigger was definitely better. (This tendency to evaluate comics based solely on size persists to this day, as evidenced by the excitement I exhibit whenever a thick new omnibus collection is announced.)

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is David Gallaher, the writer of High Moon. The comic wrapped up just recently on Zuda.

by David Gallaher

When I was a kid, growing up outside of Baltimore, Sunday mornings were spent on the living room floor, eating Cap’n Crunch, and reading the funny pages. I must’ve spent hours reading everything from Peanuts to the Lockhorns. Sure, I didn’t get every joke – and every strip wasn’t always awesome, but even at that age, I really grew to appreciate that each comic had its own unique voice, style, and flavor.

What I didn’t realize at first, however, was that each paper had its own comic publishing agenda. Sure, I might be able to find the latest Phantom comic strip in the pages of the Washington Post, but would I find the most recent Marvin strip? When you moved around as often I did – this presented a bit of a problem. I was at the mercy of whatever the local, backwater paper chose to publish that day. I didn’t have access to some of my favorite strips – and there wasn’t a way to catch up on some of the strips I’ve missed.

But, then the Internet came along ….

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is Thom Zahler, creator of the comic Love & Capes. Issue #8 of the fun romance/ super hero series comes out this October, and a trade collecting issues #1-6 is due from IDW in November.

by Thom Zahler

I love comics toys.

I think it’s natural for people who create comics, or people who want to, to be drawn to the comics toys. When you’re a kid, they’re not just toys, they’re the things that you use to tell your own stories when the comics end.

There’s also something just so enrealing, to completely make up a word, about toys. Superman and Batman certainly exist in my mind and in my books, but they exist as a three dimensional form that you can touch and hold, they become even more real.

My personal love of toys is strengthened by living through one of the Dark Ages of Comics Toys. I put it around 1975-1985. Now I’m sure those older than me will tell me they had it harder. Maybe they did. But since it’s my love of toys I’m talking about, it’s my Dark Age.

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is blogger Jim Roeg, who you can find blogging regularly over at Double Articulation.

By Jim Roeg

When I think about the comics that made childhood golden, I think about Tintin.

My father introduced us. He was an aerospace engineer, so little wonder that he brought home Destination Moon—an engineer’s adventure if ever there was one. I was very young, so much of that first rather talky story about the construction of a space rocket in a heavily-guarded NASA-like atomic base was lost on me; its many scenes of green-uniformed men hunched over computer terminals and shouting urgently into headsets exerted only a limited appeal to a boy who was more interested in mummies and fossils than in turbine engines and radar screens. But its eccentric little scenes stuck with me: Tintin mobbed by bear cubs for his honey sandwiches, Thomson and Thomson apprehending a lab-skeleton after a misunderstanding at the X-Ray machine, Captain Haddock dressing up as a ghost to frighten Calculus into regaining his memory. And, of course, the rocket. That’s what Tintin was all about: a dream-ship like no other. As I was to discover in Explorers on the Moon—my next adventure—you don’t read a Tintin story, you strap yourself in and blast off. Tintin traveled, and took you with him, across the globe and beyond.

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Jamie S. Rich, the writer of Cut My Hair, The Everlasting and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, Love the Way You Love and You Have Killed Me, all from Oni Press. He also edits Madman Atomic Comics and writes movie reviews for DVDTalk.com.

CONDEMNED TO ROCK ’N’ READ

Comics nearly lost me once. Rock ‘n’ roll found me and brought me back.

We had pretty much broken up. I lived in a town with no comic book store, and like most teenagers, I was finding other things to occupy my time than what had made me happy only a short time before. I was still too much of a nerd to get into anything that was really and truly bad for me, so it wasn’t drugs or sex or crime that took over for my four-color addiction. It was movies and literature and, most importantly and passionately, music. Like most misfit adolescents, that music tended to be on the more cultish side–strange, dark bands that sang about strange, dark things. Being into those kinds of bands was like learning the password into a whole new social circle. Unlike comics, which had largely been a solitary hobby for me, listening to the Smiths and Depeche Mode and the like provided me with a dual outlet: I could listen to my music alone or I could listen to it with friends and get two totally different things out of it.

Since this was the late 1980s, one of the bands we all really liked was Love & Rockets. In obsessive music circles, much like obsessive comic book circles, knowledge is a top commodity. The things you know that nobody else knows determines your coolness. Then, I was the guy that knew that the band had stolen their name from the Hernandez Bros.’ comic book. I had a handful of well-read issues and a couple of the early Jaime collections that I could show around and use to impress my friends. One of those issues was Love & Rockets #24 (Fantagraphics Books), which I remember because the cover of that comic is still one of my all-time favorites. It’s of Ape Sex, Hopey’s band, up on stage, taken somewhere from the back of stage right. You see the performers, and they look like they can really play, but more importantly, you see the audience. There’s all kinds of different people in there, including a girl’s legs sticking up over the stage and some dude leering at them. Another guy is in the background flipping the band the bird. All you see is the arm, the hand, the finger rising up above everyone else’s heads.

I hung onto my Love & Rockets even as my interest in the X-Men and Spider-Man waned because of covers like that one. I could look at it and see something that was recognizable to me, an existence that, even though far removed from my own (where I lived in Southern California might as well have been a galaxy away from where Hoppers would have been), touched my own. I could know those people. I could maybe be one of those people. They were interested in the same things I was, and from what I could tell, so were the Los Bros Hernandez. Love & Rockets was, as far as I know, the first comic to include a soundtrack in every issue, listing the tunes the guys were listening to when they created their comics. It’s a practice that has since been adopted by the likes of Paul Pope, Jim Mahfood, Chynna Clugston and even me. Whenever I see one of us criticized for doing it, the accusation is usually that we are being self-serving and conceited about our own musical tastes; really, though, we just want to be like the Hernandez Bros.

(more…)

This summer I ♥ Comics returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week our guest contributor is blogger David Brothers, who you can find blogging regularly over at The 4th Letter.

by David Brothers

As far as superhero comics go, the middle tier is where it’s at.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. Spidey is still essentially the perfect superhero. But, pound for pound, most of my favorite comics tend to come from the middle tier characters.

Think about it. Superman, Batman, the X-Men, and Spider-Man make megabucks for their companies. Therefore, they’re kept under close watch. They become properties, and properties must be protected. That makes it a little harder to introduce sweeping changes to the character without the heavy hand of editorial control swatting down anything that deviates too far from the status quo.

(more…)

This week our summer-long feature, I ♥ Comics, returns to Blog@Newsarama. Each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week we’re joined by Eisner nominee Matt Silady, creator of The Homeless Channel and a teacher at the California College of the Arts … the picture to the right is of his graphic novel class at WonderCon earlier this year.

by Matt Silady

“You really couldn’t have shown up at a better time. You are making comics in the New Golden Age.”

As I looked around the classroom, I was a little surprised how easily the words slipped out of my mouth. The New Golden Age? Seriously?

I’d certainly heard the idea batted around a bit. Comic book critics like Douglas Wolk seem pretty convinced. Heck, a quick survey of The New York Times Arts section would make you think that comics could bring about world peace. But this was the first time I heard this sort of thing coming from me.

(more…)

Labor Day was always one of those bittersweet holidays as a kid. On the one hand, it was a day off and usually meant we went to the lake. On the other hand, it also meant the end of summer vacation.

This summer we dusted off our I ♥ Comics feature and asked a few folks to share what they love about comics. As the summer comes to a close, here’s one last chance to feel the love:

–British girls’ comics by Brigid Alverson
–Gwen Stacy by Bully
–Opposite numbers by Mark Engblom
–Page 22 by Jason Rodriguez
–Superhero friendships by Rachelle Goguen
–Characters who see dead people by David Welsh
–Graphic covers by Tim Leong
–Sequential art by Chip Mosher
–A good villain by Mike Thompson
–Stories by Jennifer de Guzman
–Teenagers by Karen Healey
–Team books by Joe Casey

I want to thank the 11 people and one bull who helped us out this summer by contributing, with a special tip of the hat to Kevin Melrose, who helped organize the whole thing.

This week we wrap up the summer-long resurrection of one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, where comics bloggers, creators and fans discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Joe Casey, who has written comics like Godland, Automatic Kafka, Rock Bottom, The Milkman Murders and Full Moon Fever, in addition to just about every major character for Marvel, and many of DC’s as well.

They say honesty is the best policy, so I’ll just come right out with it: It might not be an easy thing to explain, this love I have for superhero team books. But I definitely have it. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. In any given month, usually more than half of the top ten best sellers in the Direct Market are team books. The fact is, team books have always been popular since the very beginning. The book that ushered in the Marvel Universe was a team book. The DC book that inspired that book was a team book. Just about all of the greatest success stories at both major publishers have been team books.

Now, there’s got to be a reason for this… some basic commonality that superhero team books — and their fans — share that can somehow illuminate their appeal in some sort of academic sense. Actually, there probably is, but for the most part I don’t think about that stuff. Sometimes love truly is beyond all rationalization. Like I said, that odds are that I really won’t be able to explain it with any great degree of clarity. But, what the hell, I’m going to give it a try…

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Karen Healey, who writes the column Girls Read Comics … And They’re Pissed over at Girl-Wonder.org. Per her bio on the site, her doctoral dissertation has the working title “Power and Responsibility: Fan Creators, Fan Consumers, and the Modern Superhero Comic”, but she secretly calls it “Superhero Comics Are Really Fanfiction And That’s Quite Interesting.” She also wrote a paper on Jessica Jones from Marvel’s Alias comic

I heart teenagers, and not in the way that should get me arrested.

I love the way they’re caught between childhood selfishness and adult self-knowledge. I love the way they stampede and stumble into growth, the way that every small disappointment is a major disaster and each minor triumph is the best thing that’s happened to them for, like, ever. I love that they have so much to learn, most of which they arrogantly assume they know. I love how almost every teenager is firmly convinced that they are very mature for their age. I love that so many of them are positive that if the Man just got out of the way for two minutes, teenagers could save the world.

And I love teenagers in comics.

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Jennifer de Guzman, editor-in-chief of SLG Publishing. She also writes a column for Comic World News and maintains the SLG Publishing blog.

Here’s a confession: Comics are not the storytelling medium I love best. That place in my heart belongs to prose. I have degrees in English literature and creative writing, and when I tell stories, prose is the medium that comes most naturally to me. I adore words, and even as a kid didn’t balk from reading books without pictures in them.

However, as much as I would like to believe that words can express everything, I know that sometimes they can’t, and that sometimes they need to step aside and let images do the talking. Page 9 of Shenzhen by Guy Delisle brought that to light for me.

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Mike Thompson, aka Boy of Tomorrow, who helps run the comics section at the gaming site GayGamer.

I am a bad man.

There, I said it.

For, like, the fifth time today. It’s actually become a bit of a personal slogan, to be honest, but I’ve come to realize that honesty is the best policy. I suppose it’s no surprise that I often buy comic books because of the villains that’re appearing in the issue as opposed to the heroes. You see, to me, villains are the characters that actually have the most fun in graphic novels, and it’s the heroes who have to run around cleaning up after them. Seriously, which sounds more enjoyable, robbing Fort Knox or stopping the robbery? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

However, only a few rogues manage to stand out from the seething masses of evildoers and return to the funny pages on a regular basis. So what distinguishes a great villain from the tedious ranks? Oh, good, I’m so glad you asked.

In my opinion, there are four different characteristics that go into creating a character that’s a truly nasty (and thus memorable) piece of work. Four factors, if you will, that need to be blended properly in order to make a truly great character who might just be appreciated enough to return in the near future after they’ve been sent packing. Now, I know that there are a number of other factors which go into the basic construction of a bad guy, but I’ve always felt that the following are the most important:

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Chip Mosher, writer of Left on Mission, who agreed to do one thsi week — the week of the San Diego Comic-Con — long before he was named marketing and sales director for BOOM! So my hat’s off to him for getting this to me in what’s a very busy week for him and the rest of the industry.

Anyone who is familiar with my comic writing debut, Left on Mission, will know that I am totally into putting in tons of “quiet moments” into my stories. Helped immensely by the majestic artwork of Francesco Francavilla and the gorgeous colors of Martin Thomas, I have been able to really put everything that I love about comics into Left on Mission. What do I really love about comics? I love the sequential art form. I like to say that I am trying to put the sequence back into sequential art with my script … and that means doing something a little different with the pacing and those “quiet moments” I spoke of earlier.

What I love about comics is when they become more than just a series of disconnected panels strung together with text – but really move…and really move in interesting ways you can’t get in any other medium … being able to lead the reader through a series of panels and then WAMMO – the page flip. How awesome is that?

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is Tim Leong, the editor of Comic Foundry Magazine, which is currently in Previews and will be on stands in September.

No, I don’t mean graphic a la Heroes For Hire. Working as a magazine designer, I’m a visual guy by nature, so I’m typically drawn (pun intended) to covers that take a more visual approach.

Back in 2004 I wasn’t a comics guy. I was as a kid, but like many people in their teens we parted ways. I had a cousin who went to the Kubert school and while we were talking comics one night he convinced me to stop by a store. Luckily, Midtown Comics was right across the street from my office. So I waltzed in and there’s a huge wall of new comics. Hundreds of covers. It almost overwhelming. I had no idea where to start or what was good. The covers were just all over the place. Crazy fight scenes. Iconic poses. DDD-cup breasts. And then — I’ll never forget this (The Strokes’ Reptilia was playing at the time), I’m looking at this huge wall of visual diarrhea and suddenly, like a Magic Eye poster, everything came into focus — I spotted Tony Harris’s cover to Ex Machina #2. In a sea of repetition, this cover took the time to come up with something other than another generic fight scene that would make it stand out. The cover was effective — it stood out from the pack and made me buy it, which I did without knowing a single thing about it.

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is David Welsh, who maintains the manga-focused blog Precocious Curmudgeon, and writes the weekly “Flipped” column for Comic World News.

By David Welsh

Death in comics is a complex and varied experience. Lots of things can happen to characters who shuffle off their mortal coils. Sure, superheroes and villains seem to go into some kind of holding pen until they can return in an appropriately dramatic fashion. They get engaged, score with the emotionally disturbed mutant who killed them in the first place, or just bide their time until they die again.

But the revolving door isn’t the only fate for comics’ deceased. There’s a whole healthy sub-genre about people who deal with the ambivalent dead, and I’ve developed what might be called a morbid fondness for it.

So let’s say you’ve bought the farm. You probably didn’t have much say in the matter. You’re anxious, so you’ve decided to linger a bit before you go on to see what’s next. What will it take to give you that extra nudge into the beyond? In many cases, it takes a quirky, attractive group of young people to give you that boost up the celestial ladder.

The process can be gentle, as in Meca Tanaka’s Omukae Desu from DC’s CMX line. The afterlife bureaucracy tries its best to keep wayward spirits moving in the right direction, but even they need to outsource at times, which is where the comely young people come in. Student Madoka Tsutsumi can not only see dead people, he can lend them his body to allow them to clear up unfinished business in the land of the living. Said loose ends range from the sweetly sentimental to the profoundly goofy, and Madoka’s supervision is carried out by a guy in a bunny suit, a cute dead girl, and an organization with an excessive fondness for theme days. It’s charming stuff, a workplace comedy about closure and compassion.

(more…)

This summer we’ve resurrected one of our favorite features, I ♥ Comics, and each Wednesday through Labor Day comics bloggers and creators will discuss the things they love about the medium.

This week, our guest contributor is writer, retailer and musician Rachelle Goguen, who maintains the blog Living Between Wednesdays.

By Rachelle Goguen

Don’t get me wrong. I love a big, epic battle. I love diabolical schemes that can only be solved with heavy detective work and fists. I love peril and I love suspense and I love the comic book heroes who tirelessly fight evil every week for my entertainment. But what I really love is what they’re doing after work.

Superhero friendships. I can’t get enough of them. If you enjoy superhero adventures and action, then you are a comic book reader. If you freak out with joy over superhero downtime, then you are a comic book nerd. I am, without question, a giant comic book n.e.r.d. I love team-ups in general, but it’s always that much sweeter if the heroes pal around a little. Comics are full of great BFF combinations. Green Arrow & Green Lantern, Power Man & Iron Fist, Captain America & Iron Man, Blue Beetle & Booster Gold, Spider-Man & Johnny Storm, Green Lantern & The Flash, Captain America & Falcon, Barbara Gordon & Black Canary, Captain America & Hawkeye, Dick Grayson & Wally West, and, of course, Superman & Batman. Crises, cosmic events and supervillains make comics exciting; friendships make them a soap opera. If a friendship is long-standing and well-established, it makes everything that happens to a character that much more interesting. When Blue Beetle was killed, my first thought was that Booster Gold would be devastated. Knowing that Ted was leaving his best friend behind heightened the tragedy of his death. In the recent “Lightning Saga” JLA/JSA cross-over, it wasn’t for me that I wanted Barry Allen to come back, it was for Hal Jordan and Batman.

(more…)