Getting reacquainted with some old friends once lost. Michael Jan Friedman’s run on DC’s Star Trek: The Next Generation ongoing original content comic series.

Fun story I have been retelling the past month or so. In the early 1990s, I worked in comics retail at Alternate Worlds in Cockeysville, MD. My first day on the job, they sent me directly to the Star Trek Shore Leave convention in 1992 in its original location in nearby Hunt Valley. I loved the original series as a kid, had toys, posters, went to all the films. But I was way out of my league helping man a table in the dealer room with Next Gen running hot and back to yeoman status for the deep minutiae from the original series that sets apart the devout from the posers. I got eaten alive that night not knowing what the customers were after and a complaint was issued about this by one of the conventioneers who wanted the then-coveted “Mirror Mirror” pin, which was in a box beneath the table, but I had no clue what I was looking for.

I was sent back to the store to finish my shift but in the process of leaving, I ran into DeForrest Kelley zipping to the elevators. He gave me a kind, toothy smile and a wave to acknowledge me when I called out to him. Simply rad.

I made it my business from that night on to get educated on everything Trek to avoid having such an embarrassment occur again. I was a comic book expert, which got me the job, but AW considered themselves a boutique shop with a fierce Trek following. I recorded the first three seasons of Next Gen on VCR through syndication, then kept on with the show, then Deep Space Nine and Voyager. I ravenously devoured Trek as I did comic books. Vonda McIntyre and Michael Jan’s Star Trek novels advanced my education, but MJF’s Next Gen comics put me on par all the way and I soon became a guy the Trekkers could b.s. with in the store and depend on.

I had the entire run of Michael Jan’s Next Gen run, which, like my old baseball, got sold off when times were desperate. The early 90s of comics was inventive in some ways with Vertigo and the rise of the indie publishers. A train wreck more often than not with the Big Two. STNG was almost always quality in Michael Jan’s hands. Happy to have some of these back in an ongoing rebuild of my Star Trek comics section. Gotta love that Predator 2 insert ad from Issue 14.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

In honor of James Gunn’s reboot of the adventures of the Man of Steel, Superman, released this week.

We have our tickets for next week and we’re not affected by the obnoxious teeing off of this being a “woke” Superman movie. Superman has always been a story of an immigrant coming to America, all the way back to the World War II days. Created by Jewish immigrants, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Superman’s purpose in American culture has always been to raise the country’s morale along with the stakes of its own purpose and evolution. Superman is the best of us, the American dream splashed across a blue and red scheme uniform. Only Captain America serves as a better emblem of an earthbound, flag-waving superpatriot.

Yet Superman is the OG flag-waving superpatriot for the comics, t.v. and movies, helmed upon the heroic shoulders of Kirk Alyn (1948-1950 Superman serials actor) and the iconic George Reeves and Christopher Reeve, most especially.

So just let it be. Let Superman be who he’s meant to be, serving as a symbol of hope to his adopted land, not just the United States but Planet Earth itself. A stranger in a strange land from an entire cosmos away, orphaned through destruction. Despite this trauma and bearing the responsibility of keeping unearthly power in check for good, Superman heaps the entire world’s stress, plights and potential devastations upon his square, brawny posture.

Superman doesn’t know “woke.” Superman doesn’t have time to be “woke.” Superman always was, not just for the white privileged and middle-class male. He’s for everyone, of all races, religions, sexes and sexual preferences. He is the emblem of perpetual hope for all generations, no matter your walk of life. I’ve read Superman comics most of my life and can prove my point if you have the time and wherewithal to prove there is no stupid “woke.” Superman could own us all, but he chooses the righteous path. Sorry, Dean Cain, former Kal-El, with all due respect as one of the better Superman actors.

So let’s go, James Gunn and David Corenswet. There’s been way too much drama already for what is just a frigging popcorn superhero film going back to its roots instead of dwelling in the butt ugly miasma of the Zack Snyder era. There’s just Superman. Period.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

In the 1990s while working at the comic shop, I gravitated toward DC Comics and the independents (Image had just launched in the mother of all initiatives in the industry), and over the years, I’ve had a healthy balance between DC and Marvel. I will say I kept a heavy lean on DC during the New 52 and Rebirth rebrands, so it’s damned difficult to pick my top 5, even if Batman remains my all-time favorite superhero ever and Gail Simone’s reboot of Batgirl brought me back to comics after a five- or six-year layoff. Flash deserves to be here, so do the Green Lanterns Hal Jordan, John Stewart and Kyle Radner, the latter being the bravest thing anyone ever attempted in comics at the time to bring inclusivity as a gay GL. Aquaman’s the bitch of the DCU, but I’ve always loved him. Wish I had him in the top 5. Catwoman, no-brainer. Should’ve been in here. Superman and the JLA. I know, you’re going, c’mon, man! Nightwing. Hardware from DC’s affiliate line of heroes all of color, Milestone Comics.

I’m not going to include the Vertigo comics, which technically falls under the DC umbrella, but anyone who knows this stuff knows Vertigo deserves its own separate canon and break off as horror and mature audience comics. I’m a giant fan of the Vertigo books, but to get to the core of my favorite DC characters, here we go:

One: Batman

Two: Batgirl

3: Wonder Woman

4. Mister Miracle

5. The Spectre

I’ve been a comic book guy for most of my life, Marvel Team-Up # 72 from 1978 featuring Spiderman and Iron Man being my first contact comic. My folks got it to occupy me for a 3 hour trip to Ocean City back then and boy, did it ever. I read that sucker five times down, three more on the way home. HOOKED forever. I worked comic book retail for a short time in the early 1990s with my buddy, Brad Owings, funny enough, my boss at the time. Here I present my Top 5 all-time favorite Marvel characters, a lifetime spent with these heroes. I will later present my top 5 from their Distinguished Competition.

One: Moon Knight

Two: Black Panther

Three: Spiderman

Four: Daredevil

Five: Storm

Behind them, the Captains, America and Marvel (Carol Danvers era)

All images courtesy of the public domain

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

As mentioned in a prior post, one of the most figurative media which influenced my writing and continues to do so today is the once-maligned, now celebrated EC Comics of the 1950s.

This is the same comic book imprint famous (or infamous depending on your tastes) for releasing the original Tales from the Crypt horror comic series which became a mega hit in the 1990s as a televised adaptation for HBO.

If you’re really paying attention to the show’s seven seasons, you’ll note not every story aired was a Tales from the Crypt original tale. The show culled many stories from EC Comics’ other brands like Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear and Shock SuspenStories. I won’t bore you further by delving deep into the British horror film company Amicus, who had their more moderate (but nonetheless creepy fun) short story compendium films for Crypt and Vault during the 1970s.

What I will mention briefly is that EC Comics (acronym for an “Entertaining Comic”) came under fire from the United States government during the McCarthyist paranoia of the 1950s for their garish, sometimes gory depictions of horror-styled comeuppance. Leading to mass comic book burnings helmed by the conservative propagandist Frederick Wertham’s publication of Seduction of the Innocent used by the Senate Judiciary Committee. EC Comics, ironically enough, originally started publishing mainstream romance and Christian-based comics. Funny to think of the Senate’s staking the claim of EC Comics breeding youth of the 1950s into hedonistic mass murderers. Killing in the name of Nikita Khruschev, of course.

Paltry sales then pushing EC to go more hardcore (for the times) in their horror comics, Shock SuspenStories may have been tamed down in the gore department, but the series still pushed mind-alerting stories (also in their sci-fi comics like Weird Fantasy and war lore, Two-Fisted Tales) filled with a repetitive cheaters-will-get-theirs motif.

I was going through my EC reprint collections (alas, I only own two original ECs in my massive comic collection), this morning and forgot how daring Shock SuspenStories issue number 13 was, which leads off with the HBO-adapted “Only Skin Deep.” For me, the second tale of the four in this issue is the most riveting and the biggest challenge to the system which may have added to the spark of monomania when it was published in 1953. I told TJ, who was lying next to me in bed, how blown away I was by “Blood-Brothers” as she woke upon my hitting the final page of the story.

Let me quickly summarize this genius-level storytelling coming during The Fabulous Fifties, which, facing the facts if you have direct experience or were raised by the generation, was fabulous more for Caucasian males than any other demographic of the decade. There was a reason things came to a head the subsequent decade with the Civil Rights Movement.

“Blood-Brothers” focuses on a bigot by the name of Sid who has engineered the death of his neighbor, Henry, who happens to have a mixed-race lineage in his bloodline. All beforehand, Sid has accepted Henry as a friend and an equal, but when another neighbor puts his house up for sale and the leading applicants are a family of color, Sid begins a crusade of hatred leading to Henry’s suicide once Henry has made his family history known.

I’ll let you read the details because this story deserves your attention, even if you could care less about comic books. The punchline is the proof in the pudding where the coroner attending the police scene following Henry’s death reveals the exposition of Sid’s own life as a child depending upon the blood transfusion type match from an African American male.

Making the point, rebellious for its time, that it’s not skin color which differentiates us when our lives on the line, but blood type. In this case, a racist who plants a burning cross upon the lawn of a former friend he’s taken painful measures of destroying his life, having been literally saved once by a black man.

I can only hope McCarthy and Wertham have found bigger enlightenment in the afterlife all these years.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

If you REALLY know me or you’ve been astutely reading Roads Lesser Traveled, you know about my longtime fascination with Heavy Metal, the illustrated fantasy, sci-fi and horror magazine geared toward adults that I was reading on the sly from age 11 on up.

Finally having the first issue from April 1977 in my possession bought at a steal with gift money is a surreal moment of my geeky life.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

This week I wrote two entries for a sci-fi story contest, the prompt being what fetishes might an alien life experience.

Having myself a good chat with the editor, who encouraged me to write a second story after my first submission, I got to telling her how the contest theme reminded me of Heavy Metal, the “adult illustrated fantasy magazine,” for which I’ve had a long love affair. I’ve stupidly had one collection after another of Heavy Metal built, then sold off to either make space or make the bills, but historically, this is one the greatest realms of hard sci-fi, fantasy, pulp and cyberpunk that’s ever come about.

So popular, so revered in the underground is Heavy Metal magazine, I once had a silent, snarling skirmish with a younger woman over a box of back issues a vendor had on the cheap at a comic book convention. Me being a gentleman to a fault, I gave her a silent wave to have first dibs. With a brisk nod but a noticeable leeriness about her while pawed through the vendor’s stock of The Spectre comic series, she got all the ones I wanted, but I came out fine with a handful of my own. Geekdom supremo.

I mean, the covers alone have hosted the who’s who of sci-fi and fantasy art royalty, H.R. Giger, Boris Vallejo, Simon Bisley, Frank Frazetta, Berni Wrightson, Olivia De Berardinis, Barry Windsor-Smith, Walter Simonson, Jean “Moebius” Girard, Richard Corben, Neal Adams and Esteban Moroto, to name a few.

Now, the term “adult” with Heavy Metal magazine comes with a very real caveat. In the later 1970’s and Eighties, there was no term “mature audiences,” not until DC Comics spun off their Vertigo line of non-mainstream, cutting edge material unsuitable for younger eyes. Back then, things were more full-frontal, in warning and in content. Accordingly, any real Heavy Metal fan has a Pavlovian, one-word phrase to sum up the entire imprint’s experience: “Den.”

Richard Corben took Conan the Barbarian, shaved him bald and set him in an X-rated sword and sorcery realm. Softcore chop ‘n slop with a lot of payoff sex. Sometimes Den was the conqueror. Often, he was conquered himself. Sexually, of course. Raped, even, if you can imagine it. Den got laid ten times more than Conan, and like James Bond, it’s prerequisite that Robert Howard’s timeless Cimmerian gets a shag or two per adventure.

I always enjoy telling the story of being age 12 and going into a local convenience store chain called 7-11, and I would go get my comic books every week at another convenience store. I would save just enough of my allowance money hoarded over a few weeks to pick up the latest Heavy Metal issue and Savage Sword of Conan. Both forbidden fruit to younger eyes of any decade, but especially 1981-83.

I was always pushing the button at 7-11, since you know a curious lad at that age was all about the naughty contents inside material youngsters aren’t supposed to have access to.  The Hispanic clerk always on shift knew it, knew me, always gave me a devilish grin and sold them to me anyway. He only gave me a refuting “Eh eh” once when I pawed an issue of Penthouse on the shelf in his store. His chuckling at me gave us an unspoken bond, nonetheless.

It’s always fun, just little more delicious having an “in” at certain points in your life. It was better than pinching my dad’s Hustler and Playboy magazines when he shoved them into a box he thought was stowed away from me. Heck, I wasn’t above crawling into dumpsters back then when I saw someone throw their skin and porn mags away!

I grew to love the writing in Heavy Metal as I grew up and was a religious follower during my time working in a comic book shop in the early 1990s. I hopped back on a few years ago, because I just cannot resist this magazine for sci-fi literati and porn pundits alike.

Thus, it was not just the naughty stuff that attracted me, though I was thinking upon it when writing my second entry for this contest I titled “A.I. Love.”  I’ll be lifting an extra smirk on my face if it gets published.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.