Paco Taylor

If I hadn’t seen the sold listings with my own eyes, True Believers, I really wouldn’t have believed it. But innocent noobs on eBay have been lining themselves up to get fleeced on second prints of Spider-Gwen #0, a comic book released by Marvel in January, 2016.

Every now and again in cool comic book fan communities on the web, like the aptly named (and popular) Comic Book Collecting on Facebook, a savvy comics aficionado will invite their fellow nerds, geeks and comic book freaks to share examples of favorite books that feature the masthead logo being smashed, mushed or mangled.

Okay, the suggestion that Bruce Lee could mop the floor with a guy like Tarantino is conjecture, of course. But it’s not something that a sane person would doubt. On TV shows, in his films, and in the lessons shared with those who studied under him when he was alive, Bruce Lee executed some of the most dynamic displays of martial arts mastery ever witnessed.

For anybody who collects comics that fondly recalls the martial arts movie mania of the 1970s, one of the forgotten gems of the era is Howard the Duck #3. Boasting a spine-tingling tale entitled "Four Fingers of Death," this issue was written by Steve Gerber and illustrated by John Buscema. It punched its way into the hands of readers in the spring of 1976.

In the acclaimed 2003 film Lost in Translation (stick with me here), Bill Murray plays Bob Harris, a lonely, middle-aged actor who’s traveled to Japan to star in a Suntory brand whiskey ad campaign. During his trip, he meets and develops a semi-intimate relationship with Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), a directionless, twenty-something American newlywed meandering towards an incredibly early pre-midlife crisis.

Dear traumatized-former-Saturday-morning-X-Men-cartoon-watchers-of-the-1990s, puh-leeze feel free to get over your not ruined childhoods already.