I have been writing science fiction most of my life, beginning as soon as I was old enough to walk to the library and take out books such as the Oz books and something called The Light At the End of the Tunnel, whose author I do not remember and whom I have never been able to find anywhere online.

But before science fiction there were comic books, which I began reading at the age of 9 with an anthology comic called Tales of the Unexpected. It consisted of punchy little science fiction stories, sort of a cross between The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. They were great stuff, but a few years later DC Comics underwent their superhero revival with the return of Green Lantern, Flash, Justice League of America, and endless others, so I naturally drifted in that direction as the anthology comics gradually faded away.

A few science fiction comics continued, such as Mystery in Space and Jim Starlin’s fabulous Dreadstar, but they were much fewer than previously. Recently DC Comics has begun issuing a series of 500+ page books containing collections of stories mostly from the 1960s, and a few of them have sf themes. Today I received Adam Strange–which was a science fiction comic about a character influenced by Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars–and Challengers of the Unknown, which was equally parts non-super-heroes and sf. I have not bought–but may do so eventually–The Great Disaster, featuring post-apocalyptic stories, and House of Mystery, which is more horror than sf, but featuring many of DC Comics' best writers and artists.

You can take the comic books away from the boy, but you can never truly take the boy away from the comics.