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Jim Valentino was born in the Bronx, New York. Valentino began his career working on mini-comics in the early eighties. These stories, many of them later collected in the book ‘Vignettes’, were mostly autobiographical, inspired by underground comix masters R. Crumb and Vaughn Bode. He changed directions a few years later when he signed on to do his fondly remembered superhero parody ‘Normalman’ for Aardvark-Vanaheim. Valentino began working for Marvel in the late eighties and early nineties on series like ‘What If?’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’. Then, in 1992,…

Issue #4, “And Thus Shall the World Die” The anti-matter waves continue to threaten Earth-1 and Earth-2. As the Monitor’s teams try to protect the forks from attack, Pariah manages to save Lady Quark, a noblewoman and superhero on Earth-6, from her universe’s annihilation. Another world succumbs to the destructive power of the relentless anti-matter wave, but this time the mysterious man known as Pariah is able to save the life of one person, if only for a little while longer. Meanwhile, the android known as Red Tornado is captured…

TO UNDERSTAND Crisis, a little history of both the DC universe and our own is in order. In the real world, DC Comics first came to prominence in the 1940s, when hundreds of new heroes from dozens of comic companies joined Superman (1938) and Batman (1939) in the fight against evil. This so-called “Golden Age” was the greatest creative era in comics history. After the Second World War, most comic publishers saw less profit in superheroes, and public opinion against the supposed corrupting influences of fictional vigilantes meant an end…

DC COMICS CELEBRATED ITS 50th ANNIVERSARY by blowing itself up. For many comic fans and creators, it had to be done. Years of accumulated history were beginning to slow down DC’s mightiest champions, and the “parallel worlds” theory that allowed superheroes from the 1940s and the 1980s to co-exist was starting to interfere with the ideas of a new generation of comic writers, who wanted the freedom to re-interpret their childhood heroes. And given the success that revitalized heroes such as Marvel’s Daredevil and Uncanny X-Men were enjoying (not to…

ICE CREAM IS GREAT. Cookie dough is great. Chunks of chocolate fudge are great. But put them all together and mmm-boy… you’ve just discovered something really great. Call it the Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream Theory of Creativity — sometimes, the sum of a whole is greater than its parts. It works for desserts, and it works for superhero teams. And in the beginning, there was the Justice Society to put this theory into practice. By the early 1940s, DC had assembled a large cast of interesting characters,…

“A LONG TIME AGO, in a galaxy far, far away…” Today, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t hum the Star Wars theme song when they see those words. A landmark in movie-making history, Star Wars is the perfect example of the right idea hitting our culture at the right time… and comic readers should be grateful that it did. The mid-1970s was not a good time for American comic-book publishers. The superheroes, after a brief flirtation with relevance, was losing steam. Romance was dying, the funny animals’ days were…

Read Action Comics #1 Superman’s 1st Appearance Action Comics #1 (June 1938) is the first issue of the original run of the comic book series Action Comics. It features the first appearance of several comic book heroes—most notably the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster creation, Superman. For this reason, it is widely considered both the beginning of the superhero genre and the most valuable comic book of all time. Action Comics #1 From National Allied Publications: Creation and Writer: by Jerry Siegel · Joe Shuster Art: Joe Shuster First Superman …

THE COVER SAID IT ALL: Superman may have been “faster than a speeding bullet,” but there was a guy who could actually catch speeding bullets in his hand. This was definitely a hero going places in a hurry. By 1940, the sales figures showed that superheroes were hot, and DC was eager to repeat its own successes with new characters. It found them within the pages of Flash Comics, which was published by All-American Comics, DC’s sister company. (All-American was started up by Jack Liebowitz when his partner, Harry Donenfeld,…

BY THE LATE 1950s, the comics industry was in pretty bad shape. Except for Superman, Batman, and a handful of others, the heroes of the Golden Age were forgotten. A restrictive code of conduct disallowed all but the most inoffensive stuff, television cut deeply into the comic book’s core audience, and distribution problems put many smaller publishers out of business. War, romance, humor, science fiction — these were the steady sellers in an industry that almost forgot how to create heroes. Almost, but not quite. No one knows whose idea…

WHEN DC COMICS REVIVED THE FLASH, the sales figures told the editors they had a hit on their hands. But the Flash they brought back shared only his name and speediness with the original Flash of the 1940s, and many fans who still remembered the other guy kept asking if he would ever show up in the new, revitalized series. The funny thing was, the “old” Flash had already made an appearance — sort of — in the new Flash’s book. In the new Flash’s very first story (1956’s Showcase…

THE 129th ISSUE OF THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN introduced the Punisher, a character whose uniqueness lies in the fact that he’s anything but unique. After all, the armed vigilante working outside the law to punish criminals has a long history in popular literature. Still, credit must be given where credit is due — as far as the Silver Age is concerned, the Punisher was the first “hero” to believe that true happiness really is a warm gun. Before the oppressive Comics Code Authority set down its non-violence guidelines in the 1950s,…

WITH SPIDER-MAN’S SUCCESS, MARVEL wanted Stan Lee to create another superhero in the same style as everyone’s favorite wallcrawler. They got what they wanted at first, but it’s unlikely that anyone at that time expected him to take on a life of his own and basically change the course of comic-book history. But that’s what happens when you deal with the devil. In the beginning, there were more than a few similarities between Daredevil and Spider-Man. Daredevil lived in New York City, swung from the rooftops, and fought criminals with…

BEFORE FRANK MILLER CAME ALONG, Daredevil was pretty much a Spider-Man clone — a wise-cracking New York hero swinging from the rooftops and dealing mostly with colorfully dressed criminals. Like all the other heroes of the day, he was a good guy, someone who never thought twice about the violence that comes hand-in-hand with working outside the law. And the bad guys he fought weren’t all that bad, really — just maladjusted fellows who chose the wrong side of the law. Heck, Daredevil even managed to reform one or two…

WHAT IF SUPERHEROES REALLY EXISTED? What if costumed vigilantes changed the course of our history? And what if someone was brave enough to write a story about them? The answer to the last question is simple: you’d end up with something like Watchmen, the first serious attempt by comic artists to deconstruct the superhero genre. Watchmen was a 12-issue series published by DC that was set outside the normal DC Universe. No Superman or Wonder Women existed here. In this world, the heroes of yesterday are retired, dead, on the…

TO BE TOTALLY HONEST, most of the Hulk’s stories during the 1970s weren’t exactly groundbreaking pieces of work. At the time, the Hulk was a monstrously strong being with the mind of a child, and most stories depicted him as a misunderstood brute trying to find a place where he could get some peace from the people who hounded him. It didn’t make for imaginative storytelling, but The Incredible Hulk #181 — almost in spite of itself — became a part of history by introducing a type of character never…