MY FAVORITE COMICS - Captain America #235-237

Everybody who dies in superhero comics eventually comes back to life... even Bucky. After all, Marvel and DC have got to keep those characters in print if they are to retain their rights. Nevertheless, when I was a kid, I didn't know better. Back then comics were still terra incognita to me and it would take me years to realize that the main driving force behind these worlds wasn't the imagination of the writers and artists behind them, but the profit generated from sensationalist cheap tricks done in order to increase revenues and please the board of shareholders. ANYWAY, back when I didn't know better, the death of Sharon Carter hit me in the gut - this was Cap's beautiful girlfriend and he had failed to save her! For an eight year old kid, this was heavy stuff... and I'm posting the cover of the original brazilian edition where I read it because I still find it awesome - it was THAT cover that convinced me to buy the magazine :-)

MY FAVORITE COMICS - Marvel Treasury Edition The Astonishing Spider-Man #18

This one was my gateway into the Marvel universe way back in the late 1970s and I must say I was scared. I still couldn't read but I was smart enough to follow the story though the drawings and they generated strong emotions in me. Nowadays I'd probably list this as horror fiction and like the best horror it made me feel simultaneously repulsed and attracted to this strange world. I already knew Spider-man from the animation tv series with the catchy intro song (Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can ...) and all the related merchandise but seeing him on print felt different: I found him scary! The guest-heroes on this book (the original X-Men, the Werewolf, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist) seemed like monsters and the villains... well, if the heroes were scary, then the villains were the stuff of nightmares. To this day I can still remember the unmasking of The Orb, villain on the Ghost Rider adventure, and the strange fate of Drom, the Backwards Man, villain on the Iron Fist segment. There are so many images from this comic that I still find haunting like the covers by Bob Budiansky and Ernie Chan or the initial splash page of the X-Men crossover, pencilled by Gil Kane and featuring Peter Parker having a nightmare with Morbius the Living Vampire. Imagination unbound!