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“And may their first child be a masculine child…”

As someone who’s rapidly approaching 30, I’ve come to the realization that I’m a pretty immature person. So immature and childish, in fact, that I associate most of my major life milestones with the comic books I was reading at the time.

I’m a huge comic book fan – in fact one of the reasons I like the tabbed section markers in the magazine is because they remind me of the section markers in Batman: Black and White. This month’s “Performer Presents” ad is comic inspired, and the original, mocked-up type treatment for this month’s cover was a wacky homage to The Killing Joke.

I remember graduating high school with a copy of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns under my robe. In college, it was Alan Moore’s Watchmen. When I got my first job, it was Ghost World.

Last week, I was right in the middle of a Swamp Thing trade paperback (another Alan Moore classic), when my wife told me we’d be having our first child. I’m not the type of person who typically shows much emotion, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited (and scared shitless) in my life. The issue of Swamp Thing was entitled “Anatomy Lesson,” by the way – pretty apropos, don’t ya think? You want to know the second thought that came to my mind, after I found out the good news? (The first being, “How are we were going to afford all of this?”) I asked myself, “What should my son read first – Batman or Detective Comics?” Oh, it’s gonna be a boy, I can tell.

Anyway, we’ve got a great issue this month, as always. And I can’t wait to share it with little Jack, one day. I have a feeling he’s gonna totally love Dog Shredder…but maybe we’ll save that record until he’s a bit older. Like five.

Now, can someone tell me how the hell I’m supposed to explain the pre-Crisis DC Universe to this kid?

-Benjamin Ricci

Editor

P.S. – a few corrections from last month, sorry! In my “From The Top” letter, I mistakenly used “was” when I meant “were.” Holy grammar, Batman! We also mistakenly omitted two photo credits in the April issue. The first was on pg 40 – the photo of Not an Airplane was taken by Doug Holcomb. And on the last page of the magazine, the photo of the EMT plate reverb was taken by Samuel Rodriguez. Our apologies again on those – I don’t know where my head was at. At least this month I’ll have an excuse, right?