Out of curiosity Maester Steven, might one please ask if any works produced by the “Distinguished Competition” have ever secured a hold on your affections? (as a long-term DC Deadhead who still has plenty of room in his heart for the MCU and Marvel comics, one would love to know if your fondness for Earths Mightiest Heroes leaves any room for their Peers from another Publisher).

Question: does Vertigo count? 

If not…to give some background to my comics background: when I was a kid, I didn’t have a comic store nearby. So I didn’t have a regular pull list. What I did have was a guy in the neighborhood who sold stuff off a card table. And that stuff was the most 90s stuff imaginable – foil covers, holographic covers, spurious #1s, you name it. Which meant I kind of jumped into the Big Events of the 90s – Knightfall, Death of Superman – completely out of context. After the fact, I’d say that the former stuck with me a lot more than the latter, in part because Knightfall’s scenario was way more psychologically troubling whereas Doomsday was a giant punchy thing. 

However, I also had bookstores that sold graphic novels, although the comics companies weren’t nearly as good at collecting everything into continuous runs as they are today. When it came to DC, my starting point was Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, and the various decades books. The stuff that stuck with me there: Alan Moore’s “For the Man Who Has Everything,” Denny O Neill’s “"Death Strikes at Midnight and Three.”

But seriously, my favorite DC is Denny O’Neil/Neil Adams Batman.