Post-Crisis Post-Script

Comics would change this freaks life.

 Unlike most people, when I started collecting comics (at the ripe old age of 8 in 1989) I started with the more adult-oriented independent comics of the 80s from now-defunct companies like First Comics, Eclipse Comics, and so on. Titles like Grimjack, American Flagg, and Crossfire were my introduction. The four-for-a-quarter bin at the local flea market was good to me.

Swayed by the adventurous protagonists, brisk stories, and fantastic artwork, like most people, I later discovered the superheroes of Marvel comics. The Punisher and The X-Men were my particular gateway drug. The heroes of DC Comics: Superman, Batman, The Flash, Wonder Woman always seemed so lame compared to Wolverine and The Punisher. Granted, to a 10-year-old, it's hard to compete with knives and machine guns.

The first DC comics I read were bought for me by my mother on a whim. At the weekly trip to the grocery store she picked up two comics and left them on my bed for when I got home from school. These two books were Batman #493 and Detective Comics #661. Two parts of a larger Batman story and I haven't missed a single issue since.

Obviously, Batman went on to become my favorite comic characters, but one of the things I enjoyed most about Batman was his place in the shared universe of DC Comics. Batman is, superheroically-speaking, a normal man and he's made for himself a place among a goddess imbued with the traits of the pantheon, an indestructible alien savior, and a man with science-fiction wishing ring. Batman throws ropes and boomerangs at people. Through Batman I would experience the whole of the DC Universe and grow to love it more. With every story I was more and more drawn in to the mythology of these characters.

Mangog is a favorite: Not DC.

It's a funny thing about mythology though: all the great classical myths; Gilgamesh, Heracles, Jason and The Argonauts, they all have definitive endings. The story ended before the myth could begin. Comic book superheroes, as much as the stories may draw me in, they're still corporately-owned, too-lucrative-to-end licensed properties. Cynically speaking, they can never be myth.

I grew up with the portion of the DC Universe affectionately know as 'The Post-Crisis.' Post-Crisis signaled a new era where writers could go off and recreate these classic characters without the burden of 50 years of continuity. Whether it was a successful experiment or not is something up to debate and surely something I'll explore over the course of these writings. Recently, DC comics declared Post-Crisis at an end and yet again saw fit to reboot their universe with a new continuity and new direction. Again, whether good or bad will be explored, but the important fact was that Post-Crisis had an ending. The versions of the characters I grew up with experienced a world-ending cataclysm in-story. The myth had an ending.

This ending was the genesis for this project: an examination, a chronicling, and an appreciation for the modern-age version of these characters. Hopefully, the telling of the myth. We'll begin in media res, record the tales of larger than life heroism, darkest villainy, loves gained, passions lost, jubilant victory, and absolute defeat: a modern myth.

Comics have destroyed ALL my interpersonal relationships.

This is a love letter to the Post-Crisis DC Universe.