A Kryptonian Raised by Humans Superman for All Seasons Book One - Spring (July 1998) Writer: Jeph Loeb Artist: Tim Sale Colorist: Bjarne Hansen * Where we last left Superman he had died and returned to life . This had the effect of reminding most of the world how much they cared about the archetypical superhero, with a resulting jump in sales of his four monthly books. Five years later, the Superman books still had largely the same creative teams and were in a bit of a wilderness. The infamous Superman Red and Superman Blue storyline came along again as a periodic reminder to fans not to take Superman for granted. As I wrote last time, this is a ongoing problem creators have with Clark Kent's alter ego. His pure goodness is his defining characteristic and also what makes him difficult to tell interesting stories about. In the early 1990s this problem was compounded by the rise of the grim anti-hero. In the late 1990s there was a larger appetite for traditionalism, but the problem
Who is Spider-Girl? What If... #105 Writer: Tom DeFalco Penciller: Ron Frenz Inker: Bill Sienkiewicz Colorist: Matt Webb * With the Spider-Verse all the rage these days, there's one very important Spider character still waiting for her moment in the cinematic sun: May "Mayday" Parker, daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker. Spider-Girl's story is a fascinating one, both on and off the page. She debuted in early 1998 in the pages of What If... , a book that had seen much better days, and in fact was less than a year away from cancellation. She would go on to headline a small imprint of titles set in the same universe, a title that would last in various incarnations for 12 years and nearly 150 issues. Spider-Girl was the brainchild of former Marvel editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco. DeFalco had been dismissed from his position - which he'd held since 1987 - in 1994 under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Whatever happened exactly, he remained friendly with the powers-that-