Superboy #240, cover by Mike Grell and Joe Rubinstein
Normalcy was not something I was used to. And my life at 13 was, I want to say, as close to normalcy as I ever had. I had school, I had friends, I had a loving family, and I had my weekly trips to the grocery store to buy comics, trading cards, or candy
It’s kind of funny, reading back over the stories that I’ve told thus far. The stories seem focused on the things that I bought. And I guess, in a way they are, because I was not allowed to have these things for a long time. In the five years that I lived with my mom and stepfather, candy, for example, was strictly forbidden. We could occasionally be allowed half a stick of gum, and it was only Wrigley’s Doublemint. Visits to Dad’s and Grandma and Grandpa McClain’s house were exceptional. But to not be able to have the simple joy of an occasional jaw-breaking Bazooka Joe or a bag of M&Ms just seemed oppressive.
I’ve written before that my favorite candy bar was the Marathon bar, but there were other times when I just wanted to try something I had always seen on a grocery store shelf and wanted to try. Bottle Caps became another favorite of mine.
Bottle Caps are, as you can see, “The Soda Pop Candy,” and it came in the different flavors of pop. Strawberry, orange, grape, cola, root beer, I enjoyed them all. I still remember wondering if adding some to water would make a kind of pop without the fizz, but that was a failure. But hey, at least I was free to try! The great thing about Bottle Caps is that I didn’t have to eat them all at once and could save them over a couple of days. I still occasionally indulge in these when I buy groceries. I save them for family movie night.
The other candy I could savor was Spree.
Spree was fun because the flavors were so bright. There was a candy coating, but once you got past that, the phosphoric acid took over.
We had open lunches, even in junior high, and could walk downtown if we so chose. Many of my friends would go and get food or candy, and that’s how trends started. And while Jolly Ranchers were popular, the Jolly Rancher Stix candies were more popular with our crowd. They were long, flat versions of Jolly Rancher flavors that could be sharpened down to a shiv. The most popular one, though was the Fire Stix.
Fire Stix were a bargain because they lasted forever. If you were careful how you unwrapped it, you could put the wrapper back on and put it in your pocket to enjoy later. I loved cinnamon candy in general, and when I stayed with my dad, I often got a pack of Big Red gum, which became available in 1975! Way better than that old Doublemint.
If I was really lucky, I could get a Plen T Pak!
17 sticks of gum!
It just seems so odd to think about these things now as a highlight of adolescence. They should just be things that were part of every kid’s life. But to me, now, they represent something else. It’s no wonder I still indulge in these sweets. They bring memories of happiness, lifted spirits, and finally having the freedom to make decisions for myself.
In the glory days of high school, when I had left comics behind, there were still ways for me to enjoy my favorite superheroes. For some reason, reading comic books was scorned, but reading novels about comic book superheroes was A-OK. Following his successful Superman novel, The Last Son of Krypton, Superman scribe Elliot S. Maggin cooked up a doozy.
Published in 1981 as a movie tie-in to Superman II, even though they had nothing in common except the main character, Miracle Monday tells the story of the demon, C.W. Saturn, sent on a mission to destroy Superman’s morals. To do so, he inhabits the body of time-traveling journalist Kristin Wells, who has joined Superman’s supporting cast to research Miracle Monday, because in the future, no one knows why it’s celebrated. By creating a situation where Superman will be forced to kill his host, Saturn taunts Superman, even going so far as to reveal the Man of Steel’s identity to the world.
The great thing about this novel is that Maggin gets the heart of Superman. He does good. He fights to preserve life. And for goodness sake, he doesn’t kill. Ever. There’s a scene in the first chapter where Pa Kent is having a nightmare about his son simply killing the criminals he stops. The boy takes over a delicate eye surgery and humiliates the surgeon. He even offers to take over the country’s military because he’s going to be running things anyway. In the dream, Pa, as a last resort, goes out to a field to find some buried Kryptonite and agonizes over what he might have to do, but Superboy is there, and takes the shovel away, swings it at Pa, and Pa wakes up. Pa goes to his boy’s room, where Clark is examining a dead grasshopper. Pa gets a might nervous about it, until Clark explains that he wasn’t the one who killed it. He just wanted to find out why it died where there were no obvious signs. Pa is relieved that his son values life.
And all of that is just part of Chapter 1.
What Elliot Maggin really digs into in this novel is how Superman perceives the world. With all of his fantastic senses, he sees colors that no one else can see. He doesn’t bother to name them because there’s no one with whom he can talk about them. And he sees the energy given off by living things. There is a scene where he is distracted by a conversation with Lana Lang on the school bus, when it accidentally hits an old dog from a neighboring farm. Clark can literally see it die as its energy dissipates and goes cold. It upsets him so much that he gets physically ill. It’s all part of growing up to be Superman:
Art by me again!
Without going into excruciating detail, Elliot Maggin’s Superman novels, both of them, were instrumental in the formation of my morals. This is no Man of Steel Superman, which I found to be as cold and lifeless as the dead dog. This is my Superman, more along the lines of Christopher Reeve. And honestly I don’t care if it’s corny. It was the foundation of a successful and beloved character for almost 50 years before John Byrne’s reboot in 1986 turned Superman into a Marvel character. There’s nothing wrong with Marvel characters. It’s just that Marvel was already publishing plenty of them. This Superman was fundamentally good.
Another wonderful aspect of this Superman, particularly in Maggin’s books, is his relationship with Lex Luthor. In the 1986 revamp, Luthor was turned into a middle-aged scientist/businessman. Back when this novel was published, Luthor and Superboy grew up together in Smallville. They were even in the same class. They weren’t rivals. Luthor literally had no peer. But his ambitions always got the better of him and he learned harsh lessons by having to go to reform school. Luthor is not just a two-dimensional figure in Maggin’s hands. He’s devious, yes. A criminal, sure. But he maintains several separate identities to perpetuate his criminal activities, even when he’s incarcerated. It’s not LexCorp as it was presented in the 80s, but LexCorp’s seeds are certainly found here. And Luthor even attended classes at Metropolis University in one of his many guises, and Superman, as Clark Kent, tries one last time to reform him, to bring him to the light. He’s even ready to reveal his secret to Luthor, but the criminal refuses the meeting. After all that, this is a Superman who never gives up on him. Even at the end of the novel, Superman asks the time-traveling Kristin:
“Just one thing. Do I ever make friends with Luthor again?”
She thought about how to tell him and how much to tell him. He was Superman, after all, she had to tell him something. Finally, she just whispered, ‘Someday.’”
No, this Superman is not hard core. You would never see him with glowing red eyes. He would not destroy most of a city just to fight Zod. This Superman is about hope, and I don’t mean some alien symbol that looks to us like an S. This is also a Superman not written exclusively for children, as we often hear said in today’s jaded exposition, calling him a “boy scout” or a “do-gooder.” This is the most complete version of Superman you could ever read about. And if you don’t believe me, ask Mark Waid, who is often credited with writing some of the best modern Superman stories:
“Miracle Monday is my textbook on Superman, who he is, and who those around him are. My textbook.”— Mark Waid
Elliot Maggin has published a second edition of Miracle Monday. You can find it here. You would be doing yourself a favor to read both of Elliot’s Superman novels.
Two years ago, I asked my wife if I could buy two “toys” that could be for both my birthday and Christmas presents. I wanted the 1/6 scale Batman and Robin from the 60s TV show that my friend Scott Wiles had just picked up. These things are insane. They come with multiple hands and batarangs bat-cuffs, and radios. And yes, Batman comes with a bomb. Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb, you know?
They were $500 for the pair. Crazy money, I know, but bear with me. I got a good deal on them, and I was going to display them in my office/studio, when I finally got it done. I loved this TV show when I was a kid and it was the impetus for me learning to read.
Sideshow Collectibles 1/6 scale Batman and Robin
Well, I started putting stuff on shelves and I dug the two “toys” out, still in their multiple-layered boxes. Just out of curiosity, I looked up their current prices on Ebay. $1100-$1200 for the pair!
Wait. What?
It may be the small town/country kid in me, but I can’t own two toys worth $1200. I just can’t do it. So, this past weekend, I sold them as part of the stuff that I had at the Elkhart Collectibles Expo when I sold everything on my table in one fell swoop. Cleaned out a lot of storage space in my garage, too.
Now, I do like collecting things. I like the thrill of the hunt. I like finding things in unusual places and getting bargains. And while I sold off most of my most collectible things when we adopted Sera, one thing stuck with me for a long time: My vintage Mego Superman. I told the story of it here.
Even at 50 years old, Superman still has it!
When I wrote “The Case of the Eight-Inch Action Figures” for my Solution Squad comics, I remembered what great fun those 8″ figures were. My brother and I eventually had Superman, Spider-Man, Kirk, Spock, Captain Marvel, Kid Flash, Johnny Gage from Emergency, and Hondo Harrelson from SWAT. We could only get away with playing with them at my dad’s and my grandparent’s houses, but we loved them.
This week, I was thinking, well, if I can’t bring myself to have $1200 toys, maybe I can still collect Mego figures. I have been picking up the 50th anniversary set, and last summer I bought a great set of the first six Star Trek Megos from 1974. Captain Kirk came with a broken leg, but I actually had a bag of Mego cadavers that I picked up somewhere or other, and I used a pin from a detached leg to repair him as good as new.
“We can rebuild him…”
So, the other day, I started down a rabbit hole. A few years before Mego made a comeback as a company, there was another called Figures Toy Company and they had produced 8″ figures in the style of Mego in mass quantities. I wanted to see just what they had out there. I immediately found what I was looking for.
Are they Hot Toys quality? Of course not, but I don’t care. They’re $50 for the pair, not $1200! While I was exploring the various figures they had, I was taken by the fact that they also sell blank bodies and heads in various colors. And I thought, I could make my own custom figures, as a friend had done for me with Radical.
I started looking at videos of how to customize Mego figures and I watched one guy just crush an Indiana Jones figure with a 3D-sculpted head, and all he used were cheap acrylic paints and a clear acrylic coat. My eyes aren’t good enough to paint tiny gaming miniatures anymore, but I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at that.
But what compels me to collect things like this? Clearly, the theft of my childhood inspired me to draw a line in the sand, but one would think that after years and years of recovering it, I’d feel complete by now. I don’t. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t play with the toys. They sit on shelves and look cool. But I did play with Mego figures and even make sets for them up until the day I went to high school. My dad, thanks to my grandmother’s advice, let me make up for lost time. But he gently suggested it was time to grow up, especially since I had a job, could drive a car and change its oil, chopped wood with an axe, and worked with power tools. When I started playing football in 9th grade, the desire just kind of went away, especially when I was trying to get the attention of girls.
Since my wife hasn’t threatened to leave me unless I grow up, I guess I’ll continue to enjoy the things I enjoy! Here’s just a sample of what I’ve found online so far:
Action Comics #484, art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Dick Giordano
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.
DC Comics Presents #1, art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Dan Adkins
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.
The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide
1984 Super Powers Action FigureDC Heroes Roleplaying Game
My sophomore year of high school had gone pretty well. I had just gotten my driver’s license, and I’d gotten to play varsity basketball (briefly) in the district championship in late February, having been called up from junior varsity, where I had played for the whole regular season. We lost in the regional tournament to Manistee Catholic Central, and the guys were all disappointed that the season was already over.
But not me. It was baseball season.
I loved baseball more than any other sport. I had ever since I was a small boy. And our tiny high school had no junior varsity baseball team. You were either good enough to be on varsity, or you didn’t play. And I had received my varsity letter in baseball my freshman year. I wore it proudly on the varsity jacket that my parents had gone in together to buy me for my sole Christmas present. Nothing made me more proud than to wear that jacket. They bought it for me a couple of sizes too big, which was smart, because I had gone from being 6’3″ and 150 pounds during my freshman year to 6’4″ and 200 pounds seemingly overnight. The weight gain actually came over the summer, as several of my classmates and I had attended a football camp at Central Michigan University. We worked out like beasts and ate like even bigger beasts. My bony frame suddenly started to fill out.
We were living with my grandmother by that time, my grandfather having passed the year before. My dad and I shared the semi-finished basement as a bedroom. My dad had a girlfriend now and spent many nights at her house anyway, much to my grandmother’s chagrin. Even when he was there, I had far more space than I had in the trailer. I was still splitting wood and it showed. My arms were gaining muscle, and you could see veins popping against my skin all the way down my biceps, and then branching out on my forearms. My stomach was flat and if I flexed, all my abominal muscles were visible as if in bas-relief. At football camp, I had won a certificate because I did 31 situps in 30 seconds. I could do 300 without stopping with no difficulty. Those were the days.
Though I played both football and basketball as well, baseball was by far my favorite sport because I loved not just the games but the practices as well. Football was just an evil grind that beat you down into the ground, and basketball was not very instructive. You spent just as much time learning to run plays for the offense as actually playing basketball. Baseball was different. The very first thing we did was start by playing catch and getting our arms loose. Hearing the hiss of the ball as it sailed through the air and the sharp pop as it hit your partner’s glove was as satisfying as any sound on Earth. The smell of glove oil and wintergreen-scented linament filled the air. Every sense was satisfied by baseball. Unlike football and basketball there were no plays to learn. We’d been playing together for years at that point. We all knew who was going to be playing where and how good each of us was. Practice consisted of one of the best things ever known: Playing baseball.
I tell you all of this to make a point. As soon as practice was over, I sped on my bike just as fast as I could to get home. Star Wars was on the radio!
I had read in the newspaper or a Sunday magazine that a Star Wars radio show was coming to our local NPR station. Yes, we did have an NPR station, thanks to the Interlochen Arts Academy 15 miles north of our little town. I did not want to miss a thing. I loved old radio shows, and I definitely loved Star Wars. To combine these two interests into one production was almost too much to hope for. Keep in mind that The Empire Strikes Back had come out the previous year, and had ended on a cliffhanger. If filming schedules stayed the same, we had another two years to wait for the next film. So any Star Wars was good Star Wars. You know, as long as there wasn’t another Holiday Special.
I sat down at the dining room table and tuned the radio to 88.7 MHz. You had to do that manually in those days, with no digital readout. You just estimated as best you could until the signal was strong. Sure enough, the familiar John Williams theme was playing. As I listened, I could tell I was in for a good time because Chapter 1, “A Wind to Shake the Stars,” didn’t simply begin with the star destroyer passing overhead, chasing Princess Leia’s ship. No, it began as the novelization did, with Luke working on his uncle’s farm and going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. He races through Beggar’s Canyon in his skyhopper. He sees the Star Destroyer battle with the Tantive IV. He reunites with his childhood friend Biggs, who tells Luke that he’s going to jump ship and join the Rebellion against the Empire. With the conversation fleshed out, you get a sense of how dangerous the Rebellion really is, because Biggs just wants someone to know in case he doesn’t return home. Ironic, yes?
I was hooked.
As the chapters progressed and I flew home each week to catch the next chapter, we got to meet Princess Leia and her father, Bail Organa. The princess has an unfortunate encounter with an Imperial bureaucrat that actually ends up with him dead at Leia’s hand, because she slips and reveals the code words, “Death Star” in relation to the secret space station. We find out how Leia actually gets hold of the Death Star’s plans. Sorry, Rogue One. All very exciting stuff.
The extended scenes were provided by novelist and Star Wars writer Brian Daley, the same Brian Daley who had given us the novel, Han Solo At Star’s End in 1979. Daley filled in gaps and added material that had previously been edited out of the original film and some from the original script.
I won’t say the whole radio drama holds up 100%, but it holds up pretty well, and I love it because it’s one of the nerdy things I hung onto quietly while in my athletic/socially acceptable phase. Naturally, I didn’t tell my teammates about it. I’d been teased enough.
There’s a fascinating story from NPR about how the whole thing got done here, and listening to it is not a bad way to celebrate Star Wars day on May 4.
I liked to help out my grandparents whenever I could. My grandpa had just turned 68 at the end of January and my grandma turned 64 on Christmas Eve of 1977. That was one of the funny things about my Grandma McClain. She had a December birthday, like me, and knew what it was like to get those combination gifts. Some of you know, I’m sure: “This is for your birthday and Christmas both.” She always made sure that I received separate gifts and cards for my birthday, and she always made me a cake after I went to live with my dad. You know, looking back on it now, it only happened six times before I was off to college, but I appreciated that chocolate cake with chocolate frosting every time.
My grandpa installed a woodstove in the dining room of their small house in Mesick. It was the 70s, you know, and that meant the energy crisis. The cost of oil was skyrocketing, and that included heating oil. My grandparents had a heating oil tank outside the kitchen window that powered the furnace in the winter and it was getting expensive. My grandpa bought wood by the cord and it was stacked up outside the back door, which led to the mud room. Whenever the woodbox in the mudroom got low, they had me come over and split wood. Yes, with an axe, just like a lumberjack. I would spend an hour or so out on the back patio, gradually de-layering from my winter coat to a down vest, down to a flannel shirt as I chopped. I could work up a pretty good sweat, even in the winter. I’d switch from chopping right-handed to left-handed to work out different muscles and avoid getting too sore. I’d been chopping wood since I was 12, and I knew a few tricks. When I was done, my grandpa would slip me a dollar without my dad knowing. My dad would have really been upset if he’d known Grandpa was paying me anything. They were already helping us out while my dad was out of work. I would take the money, though, and buy comic books or trading cards and the occasional candy bar.
I bought one of my favorite comics ever with one of those dollars. It was Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #239.
Superboy #239, cover by Mike Grell and Josef Rubinstein
I loved the Legion books because they were teenagers, just like me. Well, they were probably a little older since I’d been a teenager for two whole months, but you get the point. It had a science fiction bent, being set in the 30th century, always 1000 years ahead of our time. So, this one would have been set in 2978 instead of 1978. I always thought it was funny that it wasn’t 1000 years ahead of Superboy’s time. It was 1000 years ahead of Superman‘s (our) time. In the best way, the Legion stories were kind of like Star Trek and superheroes combined.
This particular comic starred my favorite Legionnaire, Ultra Boy. As I wrote here, I like Ultra Boy because he could only use his ultrapowers one at a time. He could be strong or invulnerable or fast. He could fly or use his penetra-vision (like X-Ray vision but he could see through lead, too) or his flash vision (think heat vision), but only one at a time. He was limited, and had to be smart about it. There’s an entire power framework in the superhero RPG Champions built around this concept. The power slots are labeled “ultra” slots with good reason!
In the comic, Ultra Boy wakes up in a crashed space ship without his flight ring and no memory of how he got there. In fact, he’s not even sure on which planet or moon he is. As he slowly figures things out, he gets sold out by a former flame, who is then immediately murdered by a weapon that mimics Ultra Boy’s flash vision. Jo (Ultra Boy’s real name) quickly discovers that he’s being hunted on his home planet of Rimbor, and not by just anyone, but the Legion itself, his own teammates. He’s been framed for murder! Ultra Boy leads them on a merry chase, using his knowledge about his friends to keep things to his advantage. Ultra Boy uses his strength to defeat Star Boy, who had pinned Ultra Boy with his gravity powers, then takes his flight ring so he can fly and use one of his other powers at the same time. He even manages to outmaneuver Superboy and Mon-El so that they crash into each other at superspeed, stunning both. But eventually, Colossal Boy sucker punches Ultra Boy from around a corner, and Superboy and Mon-El combine to knock him out with a timed simultaneous punch. When Ultra Boy comes to, he’s about to be turned over to the authorities, when Chamelon Boy shows up to clear his name, using good old-fashioned detective work, which he was doing while the rest of the Legionnaires were busy fighting.
This is still one of my favorite issues of all time. It has great artwork by Jim Starlin, inked by Joe Rubinstein, with finished dialogue by Paul Levitz.
I love it so much that when I wrote an illustrated prose Solution Squad story for my graphic novel, I had a cover drawn by my friends Paul Schultz and Shelby Edmunds that is reminiscent of the cover of this book.
Cover of The Last Boy, by Paul Schultz and Shelby Edmunds
Looking back, much of my Solution Squad graphic novel was informed by these influential comics of my adolescence. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Spoilers for Season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follow. Go watch it!
I love this show. I really do. I have watched all 10 episodes of the first season six times each. I will likely do so again before the new season begins on June 15. Yet, according to the person I was for over 50 years, I should hate it with a fiery, red-hot passion.
Confused?
Strange New Worlds is a prequel series to TOS (The Original Series), also known as Star Trek. It takes place about six years before Captain Kirk takes command of the Enterprise. In the year 2259, the Enterprise is commanded by Captain Christopher Pike, whom, as TOS fans know, ends up paralyzed in an accident. He appears in the season one two-parter, “The Menagerie,” which utilizes the original pilot (entitled “The Cage”) for Star Trek, but with a new wrapper featuring the characters the series ended up with. Pike is so bad off, he can only answer questions with one beep or two, to indicate yes or no. In that episode, Spock commandeers the Enterprise to return Pike to Talos IV, where Pike can live a life free from his metaphorical prison with the help of the mental illusion powers of that planet’s inhabitants.
Captain Kirk with Captain Pike
In Strange New Worlds, Christopher Pike is in his prime, at the height of his powers, one of which has to be his remarkable hair.
Captain Christopher Pike, played by Anson Mount and his hair
This Pike is unlike most captains on Star Trek. He is charming and affable, yes, but he freely mixes and mingles with his crew, often inviting them to his incredibly spacious cabin for gourmet meals, which he prepares.
Pike, with his Number One, Commander Una Chin-Riley
But Pike also has a slightly dark side. When he appeared in Strange New Worlds‘ predecessor, Star Trek: Discovery, Pike experienced his grisly future through the magic of Klingon time stones. Pike knows what’s coming and deals with this knowledge in different ways throughout the series.
We are given a number of other characters familiar to us from TOS, including Number One, a younger and more emotional Lieutenant (not Commander) Spock, and communications officer Uhura, a fourth-year cadet from Starfleet Academy. We also get to know Dr. M’Benga better, as he is the Chief Medical Officer of this Enterprise, instead of a guest star who specializes in Vulcan physiology, assisting Dr, McCoy. Even Christine Chapel is on board, as a nurse, maybe, but not simply a subordinate to the CMO. Chapel is an expert on manipulating genomes and can even make genetic disguises for the crew to blend in with alien races. This is where the old version of me would have gone ballistic.
Let’s start with Chapel. I love Jess Bush in this role. She’s spunky, she’s smart, she’s charming, and she and Spock have become good friends over the course of the season. They have incredible chemistry together. Gone is the pining nurse who can never have or know the Vulcan science officer. On TOS, Chapel appeared as if she had no clue who Spock’s betrothed T’Pring was when she appeared on the Enterprise viewscreen. Uhura even asked who T’Pring was. On Strange New Worlds, Chapel and T’Pring know each other and even worked together to deceive an alien who had taken over the Enterprise. This is clearly not a strict prequel, paying attention to what has aired before.
There are a whole lot more of these instances in the 10 episodes. Everyone, for example, seems to know about Vulcan mating rituals, where on TOS, it was so secret, McCoy didn’t tell Kirk even after he learned of Spock’s condition due to Pon Farr. “It is not for outworlders; intensely private,” Spock says. Yet the human characters in Strange New Worlds joke about being hit with lirpas, the traditional Vulcan weapons used in Kal-If-Fee, the mating ritual by challenge. All that said, I don’t care. The Vulcan episodes with T’Pring are fun, bordering on shenanigans. They even use callback music during a dream sequence with Spock fighting himself in “Spock Amok,” just as he will eventually fight Kirk in the “Amok Time” episode of TOS.
The Gorn, seen in the TOS episode “Arena,” are super fast and extremely aggressive in this show, very much unlike the Gorn captain whom Kirk defeated. They are a combination of the Xenomorph from Alien and the Predator, from the movie of the same name. Despite this retroactive continuity, this actually provides some entertaining and deeply moving psychological storylines featuring Lt. La’an Noonian-Singh, played by Christina Chong. She’s one of my favorite characters on the show, as she’s dealing with a whole lot of trauma and doing the best she can to get by. The Gorn episodes are not only reminiscent of TOS, but of the science fiction/action movies of the 80s. It’s a great addition to have a formidable villain that’s not a Klingon or Romulan, despite its lack of attention to the continuity of the franchise.
One of the most striking differences in Strange New Worlds is the Enterprise herself. The ship has a luxuriously massive interior, in no way compatible with the original Enterprise that everyone knows. Just take a look at the difference in the bridge scenes, as they look out the viewscreen.
A tale of two viewscreens
Ridiculous? Maybe, but you know that if Gene Roddenberry had had this kind of money to spend and technology to utilize, he would have. This new bridge is glorious. And thanks to Episode 10, “A Quality of Mercy,” we know that this is the same as what the Enterprise would look like in their version of TOS. We are simply being asked to accept that this is what was intended, and I, for one, am willing to go along with it 100%. Honestly the art design of this show hits me in the sweet spot, combining mid-20th-century sensibilities with a view of the future that TOS Matt Jeffries gave us almost 60 years ago. It looks like the late 1950s exploded through futuristic technology. It’s like Disneyland’s Tomorrowland on steroids and I’m here for it.
One of the best ways that Strange New Worlds ties itself to the Star Trek franchise is through the music. There are callbacks and call-forwards to other great Star Trek themes. Nami Melumad grabs cues from everywhere and melds them flawlessly with her original pieces. It really works. I’ve been waiting for this score to drop forever, and today, it finally did. I look forward to writing to this music for a long time to come.
Strange New Worlds has a “truthiness” quality to it. It presents things as they might have been, could have been, or maybe even should again on Star Trek, and just tells good stories around them. I’m okay with that. I’m not just okay with that, I’m 100% onboard. With literally hundreds of Star Trek episodes and a dozen movies to limit story choices, at this point, are we really going to worry about the combination to the safe in the captain’s quarters? Ten years ago, I might have, but life is short, and the more I get to see of this show, the better.
It’s hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the first time I set up as an artist at C2E2. It felt like a big gamble to even see if I could get in, but I did. The timing was so incredibly tight, but it all worked out in the end. The Solution Squad print comics had just come in two weeks earlier, and I felt like I was juggling a lot. I had applied for Solution Squad to be a part of the first open-invitation round of ComiXology’s Submit program, and again, to my astonishment, it was accepted! The online comic went live on April 24, just two days before the convention. It felt like everything was falling into place.
Using our contact at Rink Printing in South Bend, who had printed our comics, we had prints made up of Jordan’s final character designs, as well as professional business cards. I borrowed a display rack from our local comic shop, bought a navy blue tablecloth with criss-cross square patterns on it, like graph paper, and off we went. How many comics should I bring with me? I had no idea, so I just brought them all. They were still in the back of the minivan.
I have to admit, we were nervous when the morning started. The table was expensive, $425, which was not a small investment. Not a lot of interest or people stopping by. Jordan and I were just kind of soaking in the atmosphere of the place. C2E2, even in 2013 was a huge convention, with easily 50,000 people in the convention hall over the three days. Jordan got a few commissions, but I was getting more and more nervous by the minute. I was scheduled to speak at a panel at 12:45, moderated by Josh Elder, of the non-profit Reading With Pictures. I had met Josh the previous summer as he spoke at the Kids Read Comics event in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he seemed very happy to meet an actual teacher interested in making educational comics. So, he invited me to be on the panel with him and Dr. Carol Tilley, the leading expert on Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, and just a general expert in comics reading history, period. Just before 12:45, I grabbed my dress shirt and my favorite Batman tie, loaded up my laptop, and headed to the nearest restroom to change.
Josh Elder, Carol Tilley, and me at our panel, “Comics and the Common Core State Standards”
To my utter amazement, when I got there, the room was packed. There were easily more than 200 people in the room, maybe closer to 300. I had never spoken in front of that many people before, let alone teachers and professionals. I have to say, I was nervous about how a comic book teaching math would be perceived by actual teachers.
Josh opened the program, talking about how comics had helped him to learn to read as a child. He always cites Transformers #4 as the specific issue. And his tagline of “Hooked on comics worked for me” always gets a chuckle. That gave me a natural segue going into my part of the presentation because my hook into reading was Superboy #165, from…a few years before Josh’s comic. I started my presentation with a very bland, but effective opening slide:
My opening slide. Always good for a laugh from teachers!
As a teacher who had had far too many Power Points read to me in my career, I knew this would get a laugh, and it did. There was even a smattering of applause. I immediately went from near-shaking to relaxed. As I went through each slide, I introduced the audience to the characters I created and explained how I used them in class to introduce and teach math concepts. There were lots of murmurs from the crowd, and laughs exactly where I hoped they would land. And when I closed with the final slide, explaining that the Squad flew around in the Coordinate Plane, I thought the place was going to fall apart. There was raucous laughter; thunderous applause. And I got goosebumps. What just happened?
Still makes people laugh!
I listened to Carol’s presentation, and I never fail to learn something from her. But I was feeling just a rush of energy that made it hard to concentrate. After the whole panel ended, I was absolutely mobbed. People rushed up to shake my hand and tell me what a great thing Solution Squad was. One teacher said, “This is the most creative thing I’ve ever seen a teacher do!” and that nearly brought me to tears. Jordan, who was at the panel, escaped to get down to the convention table. They could read the writing on the wall. And when they got to the table, there was aleady a crowd. Talk about effective marketing! We had been sitting virtually alone for two hours on the first day of the convention and now we were swamped. After 20 minutes, I finally got back to the table myself, where there was a line of people waiting to talk to me.
One of the people waiting to talk to me was young fourth-year Chicago teacher Amy Hopkins, who bought an entire class set of 30 comics from me. Amy used Solution Squad in her class and even had her students write letters to me about how much they enjoyed the comic. Amy and I have been good friends ever since.
I made another friend that day in Bob Cassinelli, who worked at Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin Illinois. Bob invited Jordan and me to appear at his comic book show, Comic Book Mania, which we were pleased to do. I set up at that show for years afterward.
And I can never forget Bruce Nelson. Bruce was a teacher in Indianapolis who specialized in STEM education. Bruce told me about the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship, a $10,000 fellowship for Indiana teachers that would allow me to fund my creative pursuits for a summer project. He told me all about how to apply. I did, and I won one of the 100 Fellowships. Less than a year later, I had a check for $10,000 in my hand. I guess the $425 convention table paid off!
After this convention and specifically my panel appearance, Josh Elder invited me to work with him and Reading With Pictures more closely as they tried to complete their work on The Graphic Textbook. I was brought in as a math consultant first, to work with de facto editor Tracy Edmunds, who became yet another good friend, then as a letterer for some of the anthology’s stories, and even an uncredited assistant editor of sorts, making corrections to some of the art in the book. I ended up designing the Teachers Guide using my very limited skills in InDesign, and co-editing that book along with Tracy Edmunds. Thanks to a shift in the Common Core State Standards, which moved prime numbers from a sixth grade standard down to a fourth grade standard, I was asked if my Solution Squad story could be included in the book, which I immediately agreed to. Later, this book would be bought by Andrews McMeel and published as Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter, which got me my own author entry in the Library of Congress.
This one fateful event changed my life in myriad ways, leading to many more panel and convention appearances, inspiring me to travel all over the country talking about comics and education, making friends and earning accolades as I went. My life in comics was a cascade of new experiences, friendships, and uncountable rewards.
All told, we sold 83 copies of Solution Squad #1 that weekend, and even though those were respectable numbers for an unknown comic book about math heroes, I still remember posting on social media, “I feel like I’ve caught lightning in a bottle.” It was one of the best feelings of my entire life.
When my mother died a few years ago, we had been estranged for a long time. In fact, we were so estranged that I didn’t even know she had moved back to Michigan. To the best of my knowledge, she was living in a house that she and my late sister bought together in Utah. When I was given the unwanted task of taking care of her estate, I put the address in Google Maps, and was stunned. She hadn’t just moved back to Michigan; she had moved back to Hastings, Michigan, a town where we had lived for a number of years before and after she and my dad had split up. I honestly didn’t even need Google Maps when I saw which street she lived on. We had lived in two different houses not three blocks away from where her new house was.
We lived in one house on Grant Street in 1969, the year before I started kindergarten. It was a two-story house at the top of a hill overlooking the elementary school that I would someday attend, Northeastern. It was my parents’ second house. The first one was a tiny house right across from my Grandma and Grandpa McClain’s house in nearby Delton. This one was large enough that I could have my own room. It was red with white trim and a pretty house. I had happy memories there.
Me, riding the Batcycle down the sidewalk by Grant Street. I always wore a cape.
One of the great things about downtown Hastings back then was that they really went all out when decorating for the holidays. I loved Christmas. Heck, I still love Christmas, in part because of the memories made here. There were tinsel decorations, and trees, and lights everywhere you went, and there was a little hut that was open in the evenings where you could sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you wanted for Christmas. Santa would give you a little candy cane when you were finished. I love candy canes and peppermint, really, to this day. My mom took me numerous times to tell Santa what I wanted for Christmas. She was making a list for the grandparents and for the aunts and uncles. I was the only grandchild on my dad’s side of the family. I was the oldest of only four on my mom’s side of the family. The problem was, I only ever asked Santa for one thing that year: a Meijer truck.
Now, if you’ve never heard of Meijer, it’s understandable. It was a regional grocery store chain started in Greenville, Michigan in 1934. It expanded over west Michigan fairly quickly, and one of our weekly things to do when my dad got paid was to get groceries at Meijer Thrifty Acres, as they billed it, in Battle Creek. Well, really it was a suburb called Urbandale, but you’ve probably at least heard of Battle Creek. One of Meijer’s charming qualities was that every store had Sandy, the electric horse that you could ride for a penny. Due to my dad’s influence, I was all about that cowboy life. I used to watch The Lone Ranger with him on Sunday mornings. It was his favorite show as a kid. So, every time we got groceries, I rode Sandy.
Sandy, still ready to ride for a penny!
Grocery shopping was such an integral part of our week, we always went out to eat before we went. Sometimes we would eat in Battle Creek at the Ritzee, sometimes back in Hastings at Dog ‘n Suds. It was always a place where we could eat in the car.
Look how fancy it was!
After dinner, we’d go get our groceries. I always looked forward to the cereal aisle, where I’d get to choose my cereal for the week. What was it going to be? Coco Puffs? King Vitaman? Ka-Boom? Quisp or Quake? Sugar Pops, maybe? On the way out, I’d get to ride Sandy, and the adventure concluded. My dad worked third shift, so that was most of our family time for the whole week. It’s no wonder those trips remain in my memory! On the way home, I would try to figure out what all the illuminated signs were for. I knew the Meijer sign well. It had a distinctive M shape, and started with the same letter and sound as McClain.
Meijer logo, 1966-1984
I would ask what each store sign was when they were all lit up, and my mom or dad would tell me. I started to memorize them so I could recognize them instantly. I played the same game with my Grandma McClain. And when I saw a Meijer truck, delivering a load to the grocery store, I knew that one for sure, every time! One one particular trip to get groceries, Meijer had their own Tonka truck for sale for Christmas. I loved Tonka trucks. I begged for the Meijer truck on every trip. My mom and dad would put me off. “Maybe for Christmas,” they’d always say.
So, back in Hastings when I went to visit Santa in his little shack (I actually called it an outhouse, because we had one at my grandparents’ cabin in northern Michigan), the only thing I would ask for was a Meijer truck. My mom must have been so frustrated. This kind of obsession is still one of my personality traits. Once I get the notion that I want something like that, I will get it, no matter what.
And lo and behold, what did I get for Christmas? That’s right, a Meijer truck.
I’ll be on the lookout for one of these at vintage toy shows. I think it would make a fine addition to my memorabilia shelves in my new office.
The entire idea of collecting comic books for monetary value was foreign to most kids in 1978. They were cheap reading material. But the appeal of the recent #1 issues from DC Comics, Firestorm and Steel the Indestructible Man was hard to pass up. So, when a #100 issue found its way to the stands, it was also a rare day, because most of the popular comics of the time from DC were in the three hundreds or even four hundreds. That’s not why I bought Showcase #100.
Showcase #100, art by Joe Staton
Showcase #100 got my attention because of the sheer number of characters on the front cover. I didn’t even care what the story was about, I just had to know what was going on to bring all these characters together. I knew the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Atom, and Adam Strange from Justice League of America, and I knew the Spectre from various JLA/JSA crossovers and teaming up with Batman in Brave and the Bold. But then there was the Creeper, who I remembered from my early childhood, as well as the Hawk and the Dove! Way up there in the corner were the Metal Men. And look! Far in the back center were the Teen Titans! With this many characters, the adventure had to be serious.
The fabric of space and time seemed to be tearing as characters from every location and era seemed to be gathering at once in the same place. And then it was revealed inside that there were even more characters than depicted on the cover. Such an odd mishmash of heroes! Even the Inferior Five were involved. Well, as it happned, the Earth was being ripped from its orbit and being carried away, and it was up to this hodgepodge to fix it!
After a satisfying, though quick conclusion, everything was safe again, and it was only then that the secret of the colossal team-up was revealed. These were all characters who had either been introduced in the Showcase title, or had been revamped in Showcase! That’s when I remembered the Hawk and the Dove appeared in Showcase #75, which I had when I was very young, back when comics were just 12 cents.
Showcase #75, art by Steve Ditko
I had just gotten Showcase #94 the previous summer with the New Doom Patrol, so I kind of wondered what had happened to the title that it was only up in the 90s over ten years later. Still, I thought that was a pretty cool gimmick, and admired whoever thought of it. We didn’t use the term “meta” back then, but this was as “meta” as it got!
