Alright, what's your
#comicsdna? The comics and books that were formative to you. At least four, more if you're nasty.

I wasn't going to post this because I decided it was frivolous and pointless (and, honestly, I'm guessing some variation has been done a zillion times by others). Then I look at the headlines and get sad, & mad, & disgusted. So why not?

I -- unironically -- always enjoy when pop culture entertainment (TV, movies, comics, pulp novels) throw in a little infotainment. Cap. Kirk & Khan bantering about Milton, Dr Who meeting historical figures, or Batman having a rare book hobby :)

-Superheroes are an odd genre, mixing real world with SF/F making them uniquely positioned for relevancy-thru-allegory
-Superheroes (not just mutants!) are oft coded as outsiders, minorities - scapegoats
-The genre came of age fighting Nazis!
-Less oversight/creators can be political (maybe?)
2/3

Interesting Pop Culture thing: we're in Dark Times, rising fascism/bigotry; weirdly, the genre you can look back thru old stories and find would oft warn of/address these themes? Not crime-dramas, not sitcoms, not even sci-fi necessarily.
But comic book superheroes!
The reasons are varied:
1/3

..I feel he probably saw their culmination/magnum opus in his collaboration with Denys Cowan on The Question. 11/x

An odd one to include is Conway/Batista's Last Days of Animal Man, Just in its portrait of superhero losing his superpowers as a metaphor for aging it felt like Conway (a middle aged man at that point) was channeling lived experience into the fantasy. 8/x

Shooter/Romita Jr/Thomas/et al's Starbrand; when Shooter unleashed the ill-fated "realistic" New Universe I sort of got the impression (reading some of the series) only Shooter really understood what he was going for with the project and the first 7 (I think?) issues are fascinating. 6/x

DeMatteis/McManus/et al's Dr. Fate is truly exceptional, of course. Other examples that (erroneously or not come to mind):
Gerber/Skrenes/Mooney's densely enigmatic, Omega the Unknown (Gerber a good example of what I mean about auteurial voices; many things he did are imprinted with his style).4/x

An expanded version of the shorter description/blurb that appears on Amazon for my stand alone novelette, The Ice Station (available in kindle & print).

Because it's soooo cold, but I need my right hand (for phone, sort change, etc.) I've started wearing a tight black glove on my left hand but my right hand bare. Funnily, I met another guy who had, independently, been doing the same thing.
It's the V.H. Adderly look!
(That's a pop ref, kids :)