2023 Trek to America – The Comics

For the last couple of months my family and I have been on holidays (that is, “on vacation” for the Americans amongst us) in the United States. The USA is the in which I was born and bred, but for about half of my life now I’ve been living in Australia. Normally we get back her for a visit about ever two years, but owing to various policies in both the USA and especially Australia related to recent global events, this is my first time back with my whole family for nearly five years.

My time in the US has been filled with many blessings and many things to be grateful for. One of them is the chance to get some comics for less than they would cost in Australia. This is not the major blessing, or the most important one, but it’s something I enjoy about my visits to the States nonetheless.

Comics from My Childhood – Superman Family #177

A while ago, I wrote about how I first became a fan of comic books.  This led me to remember several issues from DC Comics that came out in the 1970’s, that were formative parts of my exposure to this whole medium.

So then I decided to track down some of those comics and buy them, and journal the experience. I got three of them, with the earliest cover date being July 1976: Superman Family #177.

Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird vol. 1

I started off rereading the Nightwing & Flamebird vol. 1, largely written by Greg Rucka, thinking it was one of the better New Krypton books.  It had a strong story start, quickly establishing the identities of the mysterious heroes (which has been kept a mystery in the other concurrent books I’d read) and giving them a sense of a mission on earth.  We got a clear picture of General Zod and Ursa’s involvement, and the whole thing really came across as a decent follow-up to Last Son, which is one of the books that really set this whole story arc into motion.

Superman’s Anniversary – 75 Things

According to Brian Cronin, who seems to know so much about comics that I think we should really just trust him, today is the 75th anniversary of the first Superman comic being published!  I just found out about this a couple of weeks before the big day.  How could I have missed being aware of this, I wonder?