by John G. Fedoriska Jr.

Created on: July 30, 2009

One of the last things my father and I reminisced about before he died this year was his love of comics as a young boy (God rest his beloved and sadly missed soul). It was one of the few things we both shared in common during our youth.

I remember fondly the very first time he even broached me on the subject. I was nine years old at the time, and had left a copy of Marvel Comics Avengers #4 on the coffee table to read later. When I re-entered the room to retrieve it I was surprised to find him paging through the issue and could not believe it when he told me that Captain America (who's rebirth Marvel was gambling on to draw in the masses in that very same issue was also one of his favorites when he was my age.

I listened in awe as he proceeded to tell me how Cap, The Human Torch, The Submariner and even Superman, had taken on the Axis Powers before our own country did. This I learned at a time when I was just beginning to read and study in school about this War to end all Wars, WWII. Sadly, one only has to listen to Pink Floyd's The Final Cut album, with Roger Waters' dire observations about losing his gunner-man father, to realize this was not to be. Still there was no denying the comic medium's impact in prodding our nation to participate in what may have been not only Europe's but the world's darkest hour.

What ocurred to me then was that the same artist who embellished those comics for my dad was doing it for me...Jack "King" Kirby. Dad said Jack's style had changed, his characters were more muscular compared to the thin sinewy ones he drew back in his day. They have a name now for that comic period, they call it The Golden Age of Comics. I was witnessing The Silver Age.

Marvel had already created a different version of the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four, who would use his flaming finger to burn off the beard of an old hermit in a pub, an amnesiac who would turn out to be Namor the Sub-Mariner, Prince of the Realm as Stan Lee would dub him. Not only did Lee and Kirby revive the heroes of my dad's youth, they made it entirely believable when doing so.

Still there was one in particular who did not belong to my dad's generation. They may have had their Superman, but he would be nothing like the arachnid wall-crawler that Steve Ditko so aptly portrayed in positions and poses that were nothing short of miraculous for the anatomy of the character's "ahem" human body. So we traded those comics and read

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