Dan Hagen

2 weeks ago | firstcomicsnews.com | Dan Hagen

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods, the tree enchanted by her mother’s spirit asks Cinderella: “Are you sure that what you wish is what you want?”It’s a question that seems simple at first, but becomes increasingly less so the more you consider it. Superhero comics naturally focus on the joys of awesome power, but other stories have taken a different angle.

2 weeks ago | firstcomicsnews.com | Dan Hagen

By their sixth issue (Sept. 1962), the groundbreaking superhero team the Fantastic Four faced the foes they’d inevitably been fated to meet — a super villain team. Stan Lee even extended the parallelism to alliteration — a “Diabolical Duo.”It took six issues because the FF had to meet some villains before they could team up. As an 8-year-old, I’d already read—devoured the third and fifth issues of the title, so I was delighted with Dr. Doom’s immediate return. The Sub-Mariner, I’d never heard of.

2 weeks ago | firstcomicsnews.com | Dan Hagen

We always knew what Archie Andrews was daydreaming about — girls. But Archie’s relentless obsession with romance left his pal Jughead Jones, who would never daydream about girls, free to fantasize about everything else under the sun, and he did. In fact, for three issues in 1960, Jughead’s daydreams had their own comic book title, Jughead’s Fantasy. Oddball free spirits in comics may not get the girl, but they do get to indulge themselves in the guilt-free joy of daydreams.

2 weeks ago | firstcomicsnews.com | Dan Hagen

Sometimes you simply run out of animals. That may have been Stan Lee, Ernie Hart and Don Heck’s problem when they created the much-mocked Porcupine to battle Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish 48 (October 1963). “Yes, that’s right: The Porcupine,” wrote comics historian Don Alsafi. “I’d be tempted to wonder if this newest creation is the weirdest or most laughable terror that’s featured in the pages of Tales to Astonish, but let’s remember — this is Ant-Man we’re talking about.

3 weeks ago | firstcomicsnews.com | Dan Hagen

What archer could rival Green Arrow but one he had trained? From his beginning in 1941, readers probably knew that somewhere along the line, Green Arrow would go toe-to-toe with a “Red Arrow.” That’s because, for whatever psychological and/or dramatic reasons, superheroes must inevitably face a mirror-image foe. All dramatic situations, after all, boil down to 1) a conflict with nature, 2) a conflict with other people, or 3) a conflict with one’s.