Time Flies By

It can sometimes be a little daunting - even scary - when you look at your comic collection and think "How long have I been buying these things?" I've got just under 6,000 or so comics and trades in my study, not counting the 300 or so that are in piles waiting for me to get my arse in gear and put them on to e-bay and while that may be small in comparison to some, it's been built up over a fairly long time.

As the old song goes, "It was twenty years ago today . . ." and, just for the hell of it, here's what I was buying all those years ago - at least, everything I still have with a cover date of April 1991.

Green Arrow #45

Back when Green Arrow had to carry a "Mature Readers" tag in order to show Ollie blood and guts. How times have changed, huh? This was still a good couple of years before Mike Grell left the series and it was quickly absorbed back into the DCU proper. I remember reading somewhere that throughout his run, Grell never actually referred to Green Arrow by that name . . . or am I confused?

Green Lantern #11

A cover for Sally over at Green Lantern Butt's Forever, I think! Gerard Jones was pretty much king of all things Green Lantern back in the early nineties and this was him focusing on Guy Gardner (and G'nort) while Hal Jordan was off recruiting new Lanterns. Jones did some good stuff back then on the GL titles.

Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn II #1

Along with the regular series, Jones (along with Keith Giffen) continued the origin story of Hal Jordan, detailing how Sinestro taught him while he served out his ninety days in jail for drunk driving as seen in Emerald Dawn. That never happened now, of course, as Geoff Johns re-did Hal's origin fairly recently. Still, it has the lovely art of M. D. Bright which I always enjoyed.

Justice League Europe #25

Giffen and Jones again, this time in the pages of Justice League Europe with pencil art by Bart Sears, another guy whose work I liked. This was still in the "Bwah-ha-ha!" days of the JLE when even stories of gigantic worms devouring whole towns could still get a few chuckles.

Justice League America #49

And if I was getting Europe, then I had to have Justice League America as well. Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis were at the end of the story that introduced General Glory, right before they entered the Breakdowns cross-over with JLE that would change both teams. Glory days, my friends.

Justice League Quarterly #2

Just before it all went a bit gloomy, though, there was still time for Justice League Quarterly and the madness that was Mr. Nebula!

Justice Society of America #1

Just five years after Roy Thomas was forced to mothball the Justice Society after Crisis on Infinite Earths, Len Strazewski brought them back. If I'm honest, it wasn't the best story ever, but it did what it set out to do and made people remember the JSA.

So there you go, that's what I was buying twenty years ago - anything with Green or Justice in the title by the looks of it!