This is, I think, one of the most discussed comic book stories of all time, so I don't know that I'm going to have a whole lot that's new to add to the conversation. What I can bring to the table is some personal perspective. I would have been 19 years old in 1986 when … Continue reading Perfect Game – BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, Book One
It's somehow a little bit too self-aggrandizing for me to talk about any of the comics I've edited over the years as a PERFECT GAME, the category that I might have featured this issue under. Given that it won the Eisner Award for Best Single Issue in 2016, though, I feel as though there's a … Continue reading Personal Best: SILVER SURFER #11
When I think abut the Christmas season, I'm often put in mind of this issue of DETECTIVE COMICS, the seminal issue #500. I bought it on Christmas eve, 1980, and I don't know that any of the gifts I received the following morning were a match for that reading experience. It's all tangled up in … Continue reading Perfect Game – DETECTIVE COMICS #500
It's a difficult thing to talk about the work of Dave Sim these days. For a start, he's fallen largely into obscurity since his masterwork, the 300-issue CEREBUS series, wrapped up in 2003. And the back half of that run was tainted by Sim's growing misogyny, his strange and often-deliberately-provocative belief that women had been … Continue reading Perfect Game – CEREBUS #36
in the final years of the 1970s, the major comic book companies realized that centennial issues and other similar anniversary issues could be upsized and uppriced and bring in a heck of a lot more money for their respective companies. And so, this was the age where the centennial mega-special was really hatched. And it … Continue reading Perfect Game – JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #200
A million words must have been written over the decades about this issue of X-MEN, the conclusion to the Dark Phoenix Saga and the high point of the fabled Chris Claremont and John Byrne run. And in the shadow of what would follow in the years to come, perhaps the book has lost some of … Continue reading Perfect Game – X-MEN #137
This is the single greatest issue of SUPERMAN ever put together in the character's 80 year history. Closer to home, it's the special Anniversary issue that I'm always jockeying against in my own mind when it comes to put together a book of this sort for the Marvel characters. Of course, I fail to clear … Continue reading Perfect Game – SUPERMAN #400
Scott McCloud's ZOT! has become somewhat forgotten over the past three decades, overshadowed by his later work on UNDERSTANDING COMICS and its sequels, and even his epic graphic novel, THE SCULPTOR. But it's a brilliant strip, very much ahead of its time. McCloud was one of the first to apply the influences of Japanese manga … Continue reading Perfect Game: ZOT! #33
Let's get this out of the way first: I don't like the cover. I understand why it was done this way--with his back turned, in the black and white Previews catalog of the era, Professor Zoom would still be mistaken for Barry Allen, his telltale chest insignia hidden. But it's still an image of a … Continue reading Perfect Game – FLASH #79
There's no such thing as a perfect comic book--or really, a perfect anything. Into any production some error or weakness is going to creep. It's inevitable, and will be so long as human beings are responsible for creative work. But that doesn't mean that on occasion perfection isn't approached. Every once in a while a … Continue reading Perfect Game – Introduction
The Tom Brevoort Experience 