Silver Age Snootchie Bootchies

I've had a thought, and I don't know if it's nothing or if it's something. It's probably nothing, or at most, a very small something.

In the DC Universe of the 90s, Wally West was the Flash, Kyle Rayner became Green Lantern, Connor Hawke took over as Green Arrow, Aquaman got the metal harness-thing and harpoon-hand...and so on, yeah? The landscape looked very different. And now in 2010, most of the Silver Agers are pretty much back in the saddle, back to their Silver Age status quo. For better or for worse, for better or for worse!

Now, this usually gets traced to Geoff Johns and Green Lantern: Rebirth, and he's done an awful lot of Rebirthing, true enough. But I was thinking about it...

...does it really start with Kevin Smith on Green Arrow in 2000? Was Oliver Queen the first Silver Ager to reclaim the role from his Modern Age successor? Did that kick down the door for Hal Jordan and Barry Allen to come back? Did Smith start this thing? There's even a bit in there with Ollie telling Aquaman that he should go back to the orange shirt, and Black Manta's back in his classic gear.

Considering that Smith's Daredevil launched Marvel Knights, which got Joe Quesada the Editor-in-Chief job at Marvel that he still holds...wouldn't it be damned weird if he was, somewhere up the chain, a huge influence the other company as well?

Are superhero comics the way they are in 2010 all because of Kevin Smith?

...

It's probably nothing...

Earp-cerpt

Chuggin' along...

Now I have a gimmick Twitter account just like everybody else

http://twitter.com/YrUpstrsNeighbr

Earp scraps

I managed to squeek out a few more panels. Here is an excerpt.

A Web of Romantic Entanglements

Did I forget any?

It's kind of weird, right? When everybody gets together, it's either really awkward or really comfortable.

Earped

While Justin was living large in Miami hanging out with Dexter (thankfully sans Rita) I was slaving away drawing Wyatt Earp pages and digging my car out from under all the snow.

Man of Kleenex

Oh hai.

Last week I was on a trip to Miami for a work-related thing. It was an interesting time. I ate at Joe's Stone Crab, saw a bunch of local landmarks you'd recognize if you've ever watched Dexter (which I have not), and watched locals bundle up for 65-degree-Fahrenheit weather, knowing that when I returned to Wisconsin I would have to dig my car out of some snow.

I also got to fly on a plane, which is still an enormous treat for me. (Less exciting: Eat Pray Love as the in-flight movie.) Which brings me to my little anecdote for today.

Somebody asked me on the trip what it's like to have a baby. And my standard answer is that I don't have anything interesting to tell them, because it is just like what everybody else says it is like. You know? "Um...I don't know, man, it's like...it's the greatest thing, although all of a sudden you're more okay with the idea of handling somebody else's poop and it takes you about fifteen extra minutes anytime you need to leave the house." Really, just listen to any stand-up comedian with a baby, and whatever he says probably goes for me as well. I don't usually have much to add.

But I had five hours of plane ride back home on Saturday, and so I decided to watch some Dini/Timm Superman and Batman episodes on my iPod. One of them was the Superman pilot, "The Last Son of Krypton, Part I," which, as you may or may not remember, is all the Krypton part of the Superman origin. And I've seen this episode before. And I've read or seen countless "Jor-El and Lara put baby Kal-El in the rocket and send him to Earth before Krypton explodes" scenes.

But this time I had to turn it off, because I'm sitting on a plane and I feel tears welling up, and I don't want somebody to think I'm crying at Eat Pray Love.

Like, he has to put his baby on that rocket, man. He has to send him away and he'll never know what will become of his son. And that baby...! Kal-El has no clue. He's sleeping when he's put in the rocket; he falls asleep in his parents' arms, he wakes up someplace else and they're gone. Bruce Wayne remembers his parents and that's the whole point, but (barring some sort of super-infant-memory, which I'm sure was probably featured in at least one story over the years, right?) Superman has no memory of anything that happened there.

*hnkkk*

Man, I did not sign up to choked up about Krypton, you guys.

continuing the Earp-cerpts

bit of a spoiler