On the death of Johnny Storm

[caddyman]

I have loved comics, particularly American style comic books for pretty much as long as I can remember. There was a period from about 1971 to 1985 when I pretended I didn’t because kids aged between 12 and 26 are sometimes too cool for school. Or at least they wish they were. Cool kids didn’t read comics, until they got to an age when they realise that actually, they are pretty cool, and you can pretend you’re being ironic when you read them, so that’s okay.

Then eventually, you just get back to the point where you read them because you like to read them and so the circle is complete.

I still buy comics, though these days they are rarely the monthly issues; I wait until the collection comes out. Monthly reading lists are too complex for me these days. They tend to expand exponentially until one day you realise that you are just buying them for the sake of it and you only read a fraction of the titles you are collecting. So you cut back and that’s the way it should be. Just cream off the odd title and go with your guilty pleasures.

When I started buying American comics, they were comparatively hard to get hold of. There were no comic shops, just stands in newsagents that you had to riffle through in the hope of unearthing a gem. I managed to build up a fair collection of Fantastic Fours, for instance, but because the shipping was erratic to this side of The Pond, it was not unusual to get them in the wrong order or sometimes miss issues entirely.

Of course, having been to a greater or lesser extent an aficionado of the genre for upwards of 40 years, it is getting harder to find something that isn’t resonant of a storyline or storylines that have gone before, so upon reading that the Fantastic Four has one more issue before cancellation and relaunch as the Thrilling Three (or some such) because Marvel have killed off the Human Torch (mark II), I think back to the previous cancellations of the title and relaunch with an issue number one a month later, and find myself unconcerned.

Johnny Storm treads the same path as Superman, Batman, Captain America, Thor and Captain Marvel (to name the characters that spring to mind instantly. I am sure there are more). I give him a maximum of 18 months restful death before he is found sitting under a sponge in the Negative Zone, the result of some dimensional experiment by Dr Doom. There will be a multi-title cross-over event and four or five mini series before we can all rush out and buy Fantastic Four number one.

The gods of copyright and the bottom dollar demand it, so mote it be.

Excelsior!

Comments

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

I was really impressed when Dark Phoenix bought the big one. Alas twas as you say, these things do not last. However for a time, until she came back there was always an extra thrill of excitement when one's heroes were in peril, shame they bottled it.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

The only things I collected, were every achievable issue of Agent X9 because they featured Modesty Blaise. Then The Phantom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom and Lucky Luke. But my brother and father read MAD, Tintin and of course there was Disney in the house, too but no Marvel comics. I only got into those via cartoonist friends in Gothenburg in my late twens which must be considered a bit too late to become cool, so I left it at that.