The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1000: Superman: Save the Planet #1, October 1998

This comic entered my collection just over 19 years ago this month. On November 4th, 1998, I walked across the road from the hospital I'd been in for the last day and a half and bought myself a couple of comics from the convenience store. Then I walked back and quietly re-entered the room where my exhausted wife and 4-hour old son were sleeping.

I wanted to read something special for my 1000th day, and this comic, though not particularly memorable as a comic, is memorable for when it entered my life.

I have to say I'm a bit amazed that I made it this far. I'm very good at starting projects but my follow-through on them leaves a bit to be desired. I suppose it just took finding the right thing to apply myself to. I have, over the last 1000 days, read some really remarkably bad comics and some really remarkably good ones, and I'm happy for both of those extremes. Some comics are so bad that they are good - it's interesting that it doesn't work the other way around.

The 90s Superman comics were a bit of a shit show, in my humble opinion. You'll see down in the bottom left corner, just above the bar code, a triangle with a number in it. If you wanted to read Superman comics in this era, you had to pay attention to those numbers, because Superman's stories were told through 4 monthly ongoing series that continued from one to another. What this meant was that it was virtually impossible to buy just Action Comics or Superman: Man of Steel, as the next part of whatever story you were reading was going to be in one of the other titles, rather than being continued in the next issue of the same series. Add to this various specials like this one, and you were dropping quite a bit of money just to keep up with the adventures of this one superhero. Not a great idea, as I've noted, but it continued for a very long time, so there must have been a few people who liked it.

The story is okay, as is the art - much as I love Superman, I've never really been into his ongoing series. I think it must be hard to write the adventures of this character on a monthly basis. He seems so much more suited to the big adventures, rather than the little, down to Earth ones that inevitably come with a monthly title. Perhaps, though, I'm not giving the character, or his writers, enough credit. Is it time to jump back into Superman comics? Maybe I'll start with Supergirl first.

So, 1000 days. Thanks to those of you who've managed to keep up with the project for a little while. I'm excited to get to some of the other bits of the collection. 1000 days seems like an awfully long time, until I realize that that is approximately 1/15th of the comics I have to read. To be, as usual, continued.