Late of the 616: Mission Statement The idea behind a new series of pieces. I’ve been reading and collecting comics since roughly 1968, though comics had begun creeping in at least two years earlier, as my first comic was Fantastic Four #52, the debut of T’Challa, the Black Panther. Full of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby goodness, it was my introduction Marvel’s First Family as they and Johnny’s (the Human Torch) new college buddy Wyatt Wingfoot found themselves in a bizarre, high-tech jungle somewhere deep in Africa. Jack had a typical blast with the bizarre man-made terrain, and Stan & Jack accomplished in one issue what many of the current crop of writers would have taken at least two to do, and they did it better than any of those expanded versions would have likely been. Feel free to picture me shaking my fist at kids and telling them to get off my lawn. People of different ages will have different idyllic ages for their comics, naturally. I'm still often taken aback as I meet f...
