There’s a certain bait-and-switch that happens with comic books. Quite often, the cover doesn’t match the contents of the interior. This one was no exception, although the marriage of Superman and Lois Lane does take place within. It’s just that it was the Superman and Lois Lane of Earth-2, the world of the golden age of comics instead of the continuity of the Superman of 1978. And while the outstanding image drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez sold this comic, the interiors were drawn by Curt Swan, the stalwart Superman artist whose work spanned decades. There is nothing wrong with Curt Swan’s artwork. It’s like comfort food to me. But the dynamism of Garcia-Lopez and just the pure joy expressed on his subjects’ faces always sold me on a comic book. I hoped that one day he would succeed Curt Swan as the regular Superman artist. And then, the very next week, I practically got my wish.
On the stands was a new title, DC Comics Presents, sort of a companion title to Brave and the Bold, which had been a Batman team-up book for several years at that point. I loved these sorts of team-ups. If I didn’t know anything about The Unknown Soldier, for example, I could learn about him when he teamed up with Batman in B&B. Outside of actual story, it was a way for DC to maintain their trademarks on dormant characters. DC Comics Presents was Superman’s own team-up book. I’m sure they were gearing up for the upcoming Superman movie that people were talking about. There had already been casting rumors flying about in trade magazines, with names like Robert Redford and Sylvester Stallone in the running. But Starlog Magazine #11, earlier in the year, had a photograph of the new Superman, Christopher Reeve!
Unlike the previous week’s Action Comics #484, DC Comics presents had Jose Luiz Garcia-Lopez art throughout the entire book. And it was gorgeous. It was kind of a silly story written by Martin Pasko, featuring a race across time between Superman and The Flash, who had been drawn into a civil war between aliens, but I loved it anyway. As it turned out, years later, I found out from Marty himself that it was not his favorite story. He and I became Facebook friends and had many interactions. My favorite came on his birthday one year:
“Okay, Marty. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Elliot S Maggin when I met him a few years ago. And it’s the same thing I told Dennis O’Neil when I met him a few years before that:
“I grew up being beaten every day from age seven until age 12, when my mother allowed me to go live with my father, for fear that her new husband was going to beat me to death. The worst thing he did to me was not the beatings, but burning my comic books in front of me, simply as an act of cruelty. My father was not an abuser, but he was also not a very good example to follow. It was his cheating that led to their divorce and my subsequent abuse. But at least he let me (and encouraged me) to read comics. I didn’t have adult male role models in my life. At least not any in the real world. The men who provided that example for me were Batman and Superman. And those heroes were written by real human beings whose names I knew, and you were most certainly one of them. From various issues of Action, up to and including #500 (one of my personal favorites), to DC Comics Presents #1 to various issues of JLA and World’s Finest, you did your fair share of shaping my life going into manhood. I still believe in the values those characters once embodied to this day.
“I’m 53 now, a middle school teacher for the past 31 years. I help shape the lives of young people. I also create comics, and not in the modern sense that we see Batman and Superman now, written for adults. My comics are written for me at age 12 and 13. They’re written for kids who need them, like I needed you guys.
“My 12-year-old daughter reads comics now too, and she also knows your work from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. At the risk of turning you into the monster you fear, I wanted you to know just how much your comics meant to me as a child, an adult, a teacher, and a father. I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to meet you face-to-face one day, but I wanted you to know all of this before you got another year older.
“Thank you and happy birthday.”
To which he replied, “I’m literally speechless (yes, that’s a joke from Mr. Motormouth, moi). But, honestly and sincerely, Jim McClain: Your deeply moving and beautifully articulated comment is the greatest compliment I’ve ever been paid.”
Marty died not long after that exchange, and I am so very grateful that I had the chance to tell him what his writing meant to me. They say, never meet your heroes, but I think in this case it was one of the highlights of my life.
I also happen to be Facebook friends with Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. But him, I’ve met in person. I was so looking forward to reading more of the DC Comics Presents series just to see his Superman in every issue, but again, the distribution in my small hometown of Mesic left a lot to be desired, and I never saw another issue of DCP until #26, a couple of years later. I never even got to read the second part of the story that it opened with until I was in college. I admire the Maestro, as he’s sometimes called. He defined what DC characters looked like for an entire generation. You may not know his name, but you know his art.
