Month: July 2025

World’s Greatest 

Back in the day, the two can’t-miss Marvel comic books every month were The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. I always made sure I had at least 24 cents in my pocket when I entered the comics store, so I could see what Peter Parker was up to and where in the universe Reed Richards, Susan Storm Richards, Johnny Storm and Benjamin J. Grimm were now. Especially the first 38 issues of Spider-Man and the first 102 issues of Fantastic Four were as good as it gets.

To be more specific, Fantastic Four #s 39 to 51 were (and remain) an absolute treasure. We moved across New Jersey when I was 10 years old, right after FF #24 came out, and it was 15 long months before we found a place that sold Marvel comics. Finding Fantastic Four #39 on a spinner rack, with Doctor Doom looming behind my favorite foursome and special guest star Daredevil, was finding water after a very long march across the desert.

The gang had lost their powers after an epic battle against the Frightful Four, and they were frantically trying to replicate their powers mechanically before some dastardly foe figured it out and came after them. Too late! Doctor Doom was just preparing an assault on his hated enemies.

With the help of Daredevil, who happened to be in the neighborhood, the Fantastic Four went on the defensive in “A Blind Man Shall Lead Them.” The story continued in issue #40, “The Battle of the Baxter Building,” in which The Thing defeats Doom in a most cathartic fashion, then quits the team, setting up “The Brutal Betrayal of Ben Grimm” in #41, the first in another epic arc that lasted the next three issues.

Before we could catch our breath, that was followed by the four-part introduction to the Inhumans, which was followed by perhaps the most legendary Fantastic Four saga of them all, starting with “The Coming of Galactus” in #48, which also introduced the amazing Silver Surfer. From the trailers, the new film borrows heavily from the Galactus trilogy.

After that came the most heartbreaking one-part F.F. story ever, “This Man, This Monster,” in issue #51. I am mortified to admit that I missed the next issue, in which yet another new character was introduced, by the name of Black Panther. But those 14 issues, which cost me $1.68 back in the day, were worth many times that in sheer entertainment value. Truth to tell, the comic continued to be excellent for many years after that, but those 14 issues were just so innovative and groundbreaking and just plain exciting. I had reconnected with the Marvel universe just in time.

When the movie Spider-Man came out in 2000, I was over the moon. Director Sam Raimi and company nailed the character and the tone of the comic books to perfection. If Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 weren’t so great, then audiences might have been kinder to the subsequent movie Fantastic Four and its sequel, which were pretty good, but they weren’t as good as the Spider-Man films or the X-Men movies that came first.

A second attempt to bring the team to life failed rather miserably in 2015. The less said there, the better.

From the reviews, the new movie Fantastic Four: First Steps comes much closer to what Marvel fans have been waiting for all these years. That makes July 2025 a tremendous month for comic book fans in general, because the new movie Superman comes much closer to what we have been waiting for all these years. The superhero movie has life after all.

Because I’m a frugal old guy, Mary and I will probably be seeing the new film on $5 Tuesday, but my expectations are high — not sky high, because the F.F. has been here before and disappointed us — but high enough that I think we’re going to have fun.

Vintage Star Trek is back

The USS Enterprise was as much a character in the Star Trek universe as any flesh-and-blood being. When Captain Kirk decided he had no choice but to destroy the venerable starship in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, my heart broke.

For nearly 60 years, the Trek universe has expanded in more than a dozen movies and almost that many TV series. I’m especially partial to the first three series — Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I’ve reacted to most of the other Trek shows with relatively mild interest, but not the same must-see attitude of those early shows — until now. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is, in my humble opinion, the best Trek TV show in 30 years.

Anson Mount stars as Christopher Pike, the captain of the Enterprise before one James T. Kirk, in a show set about 10 years before Kirk took Pike’s chair. The prequel series began its third season last week; episodes, 10 in all, will be released every Thursday on Paramount+ — and I find myself looking forward to Thursdays.

In fact, Wednesday night I found myself revisiting Season 1, Episode 1 of Strange New Worlds. I must say it has been decades since I went back to watch an episode of Star Trek over again, but Mount and his ensemble cast are that good.

I am tickled to see the Enterprise — NCC-1701 — back in one piece and serving on a five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations again. The series is slowly introducing the crew members who will eventually serve with Captain Kirk, and it’s fun seeing their younger selves begin to grow into who we know and love.

Consider this a hearty recommendation for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Return to Honah Lee

“Puff the Magic Dragon” was when I discovered that songs can make you cry.

“A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys,
Painted wings and giants’ rings make way for other toys.”

The story of how Jackie Paper outgrew his dragon friend, who then “sadly slipped into his cave,” broke my heart when I was a tadpole. (I revisited that feeling during the “When She Loved Me” scene in Toy Story 2.)

I know it’s said, “When I became a man, I gave up childish things,” and our childhood toys and imaginary friends don’t really have sentience or feelings, but the innocence in our love for childish things is so precious and so a part of who we were and always will be.

And what power music has to express that special grief for our innocence.

The other day I heard “Puff” for the first time in a while and felt the long-ago lump in my throat and that sadness for the poor magic dragon — but also that sadness for Jackie Paper, the little boy who didn’t believe in magic anymore.

In the introduction to Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury tells the story of how his nine-year-old friends shamed him into tearing up his Buck Rogers comic strips that he had collected, but after a time he realized he had given up an important part of his identity, and he went back to collecting.

“Where did that judgment and strength come from? What sort of process did I experience to be able to say: I am as good as dead. Who is killing me? What do I suffer from? What is the cure? …
“I don’t want to over-estimate this, but damn it, I love that nine-year-old, whoever in hell he was. Without him, I could not have survived to introduce these essays.”

I happen to agree that hanging on to the shreds of our childhood innocence is one way to stay sane in this nasty, cynical world.

And so I grieve for Jackie Paper as much as I do for Puff the Magic Dragon — how much was lost when that young man chose to stop frolicking in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee.