Fortress of Solitude

The Human Torch was the Invisible Girl's younger brother, and the Invisible Girl was married to Mr Fantastic, and Ben Grimm was The Thing and Alicia was his blind girlfriend, a sculptress who could honestly appreciate his hideous but monumental body, and the Silver Surfer was Galactus's emissary and Galactus ate planets but the Silver Surfer had helped the Fantastic Four protect Earth, and Black Bolt couldn't open his mouth because a single syllable of his speech was so powerful it might crack the world apart -- Croft and his mother explained it all to Dylan, word balloons in the bright panels on the pale yellow paper, while Vendlemachine moved her lips silently and eventually dozed in her chair...

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Dylan was really horrified to learn he'd let so much time slip past, so much essential cultural history. Forget what you thought you knew. The Silver Surfer, for example, was a situation you couldn't really understand if you came in too late. Mingus only shook his head. You didn't want to try to explain something so tragic and mystical.

New comics arrived at newsstands on Tuesdays. Mingus Rude would have an armload, bought or stolen, Dylan didn't ask. Some were bimonthly, some monthly, you learned by reading the letters page, you built up anticipation for special issues, too, oversized Annuals and one-time special events like the Avengers-Defenders Wars or Origins. In Origins you learned how superheroes got started, the answer generally being: radiation. In the Annuals and Wars you satisfied, at least provisionally, the question of who could take who. Hulk and Iron Man would face off for a page or two, always vowing to settle it for good another time.

Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen, had been killed by the Goblin, it wasn't funny in the least. That's why Spider-Man was so depressed all the time.

Captain Marvel wasn't Shazam, it was confusing. He'd been revived to assert a copyright on the name, and nobody could say whether he really fit into the Marvel Universe all that well. DC Comics, Marvel Comics' antithesis, presented a laughable, flattened reality -- Superman and Batman were jokes, ruined by television.

In truth, Superman in his Fortress of Solitude reminded you all too much of [protagonist Dylan's artist father] Abraham in his high studio, brooding over nothing.

Swamp Thing was a rip-off of Man-Thing, or vice versa.

An uneasiness hung over certain titles. Different artists drew the same characters different ways -- you could hurt your eyes trying to account for it, to grant continuity to these hobbled stories. Weaker superheroes were propped up with guest appearances by Spider-Man or the Hulk, confusing chronology terribly. An Einstein could lose his mind trying to explain how the Fantastic Four had helped the Inhumans fight the Mole Man when by clear testimony of their own magazine they were trapped in the Negative Zone the whole time.

The Incredible Hulk, if you followed him closely over time, lost the use of pronouns.