by Josh Crawley

For some reason the past few years, the winter season puts me in the mood to read Legion of Super-Heroes. While i don’t have a great number of Legion comics, my collection of them grows slowly every year. The past two years have been especially great for reprint collections, whether it’s the many Showcase Presents collections, An Eye for an Eye followed up by The More Things Change by Paul Levitz & Co., or the book I’m itching to get to soon, The Life & Death of Ferro Lad (as part of the DC Comics Classics Library hardcover line). If you’re interested in reading some L.o.S.H. yourself, 1,050 Years of the Future has a great sampling from many eras. (Normally I’d be torn about recommending Great Darkness Saga, due to the lack of a great introduction/set-up), but it’s out of print for some reason. My guess would be DC is waiting to make it an entry in the previously mentioned DC Comics Classics Library line, but at this point I wouldn’t hold my breath. After all, this is the company that has let Born to Run and Terminal Velocity (two AMAZING Wally West Flash stories by Mark Waid & Co.) go out of print.

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by KC Carlson

Crime comics used to be the bread and butter of the industry, long before many of us were born. Beginning in the early 1940s (although newspaper strip Dick Tracy [1931] was an important precursor), these types of stories lasted until they were driven out by crusading psychologists, crazed legislators, and wimpy publishers in the comic book witch hunts of the early 1950s. They were gory, grim, violent, wanton, and celebratory of crime and criminals. Of course, kids loved them! So they were crushed in the name of protecting the young ‘uns – covered up with the postage stamp of the Comics Code, which was your guarantee of bland comics!

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