Guest Editor’s Note: Superman’s Brother

Abstract

It was the summer of 1972 in Arlington, Virginia. My best friend and I sat across from each other in intense cross-legged dialogue. Doug proudly displayed his copy of DC’s Action Comics starring Superman. I had Dynamo no. 1 from Tower Comics (fig. 1). The calculus that informs six-year-old logic determined that his comic book was better because the quasiomnipotent Superman was universally known. In those years of lunchboxes and recess kickball, one’s stature might reside, if fleetingly, in the question of whose hero could beat up the other’s. I casually explained that Dynamo was Superman’s brother. This is my earliest memory of willful prevarication. It is also my earliest memory of what would become a lifelong fascination with comic books.