, he struggled to get work because people at DC saw him as too Vertigo for the DCU while people at Vertigo saw him as too DCU to be Vertigo. That strange, unique, in-between space that in this series he managed to make his own and which made so many of us so passionate about his work. Which is all well and good, but it can be hard to actually get your foot in the door to do that, or to do it consistently enough to make a living.<\/span><\/p>\nI think some of that interest comes from being European and coming to the U.S. How many of those old Vertigo series involved road trips \u2014 <\/span>Swamp Thing, Shade the Changing Man, Sandman, Hellblazer, Preacher, The Invisibles, Outlaw Nation<\/span><\/i>. Stories no doubt full of reference photos that these Brits took wandering the highways and back roads, deserts and mountains, wide open plains and bustling cities of the Western United States. Living out hobo dreams born of old photographs and movies they saw as children and young adults, inspiring visions of escape and freedom and wide open spaces. Those things that the US has for centuries promised to Europeans who felt trapped and hemmed in by Old World values and history and geography.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nRoad trips where somewhere north of seventy miles per hour down lonesome stretches of highway, the fading light of the setting sun hitting just so that it sets the landscape ablaze, a sight that brought to mind Western movies and Road Runner cartoons, and all those four-color American comic books that helped to inspire visions of the future, of their future. That led them to the road and what it promised, that led them to this road, where cresting the Continental Divide, the horizon jumps, the dream of America and the reality crashing into each other with tectonic force.<\/span><\/p>\nCalling him Vertigo as those people did though misses Robinson\u2019s point. Because this wasn\u2019t some weird fringe idea, some mature readers concept, some wild European fun-house mirror notion of the United States and DC Comics that corporate employees born on this continent had to squint to understand. Robinson\u2019s whole point was that all of these ideas and concepts, all this strangeness and zaniness, was baked into the very DNA of the place. Though so much over the years has been changed, eliminated, elided, retconned, and memory holed. The intentional and unintentional curation of what gets reprinted and what doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s before we get into the Comics Code Authority of it all.<\/span><\/p>\nBecause the DCU is a landscape of Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday from an old children\u2019s rhyme.<\/span> The Floronic Man. Hawkman and his weird Orientalist amalgamation of past lives in Egypt, magic, strange metal, old weaponry, and aliens.<\/span> The superhero who gets his powers from being a drug addict. An ex-rail worker with a magic ring that doesn\u2019t affect wood. Zatanna and Etrigan. Balloon Buster and Haunted Tank. Tomahawk and Jonah Hex. A bondage-loving queer woman born of female pathogenesis teaching the man\u2019s world the joys of loving submission. Not to mention all the detectives, pirates, lost souls, and misfit inventors.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s easier to place all that weirdness \u201cover there\u201d in its own space so the rest of us can pretend that it doesn\u2019t exist. Those weird stories with strange artwork and designs can exist … somewhere else. That way the DCU can function in a vaguely \u201crealistic\u201d manner drawn in a vaguely realistic fashion. Comics are serious, after all. Far too serious for romance or humor or wackiness or surrealism.<\/span><\/p>\nSo much of America and Americana is strange and unusual, weird and goofy. It\u2019s the sacred and profane, the \u201ccradle of the best and of the worst.\u201d<\/span> It\u2019s always been that way. The United States is exciting. It\u2019s dumbing everything down. It\u2019s the intellectual vanguard. It\u2019s looking to the future. It\u2019s stuck in the past. It\u2019s the thesis and antithesis \u2014 and sometimes even the synthesis, as well. This is Tin Pan Alley and ragtime, jazz and blues, comic books and broadsheets, funeral dirges and hobo songs, gospel hymns and gangsta rap. This is the land of Cotton Mather <\/span>and Mickey Spillane, Emily Dickinson and Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and Nas. Not to mention Jack Kirby and Will Eisner. It\u2019s Frank King and Chester Gould and Walt Kelly and Milton Caniff and their strange, unique and contrasting visions of the nation dueling it out in the funny pages.<\/p>\nI would guess that Robinson loves all those wild strange possibilities. The almost impossible to synthesize and explain it all-ness that this country is at its best. That sense of the possible that seeps from the Jungian collective unconscious into our pop culture. In recent decades, comics hasn\u2019t liked wacky, weird possibilities. Not just comics. The national mood has darkened and so has public life. Back in the 20th century,<\/span> the 21st was something grand and mythic, filled with excitement and progress.The idea of it was almost fictional. In reality, this century has not been a vast improvement over the previous one.<\/span> While I believe that life for ordinary people in 2100 will be better than today, the next few years are going to be bleak. It\u2019s no wonder that our collective mood is dark. This is why DC has published so many rape-y and murder-y comics in the last 20-odd years.<\/span><\/p>\nArt emerges from a cultural space. I believe that culture shapes behavior, or as Heraclitus argued more than two thousand years ago, geography is destiny. In the 21st century, something like <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i> wasn\u2019t of interest. A loving couple like Ralph and Sue Dibny solving crimes wasn\u2019t of interest. Raping and murdering them, though? <\/span>DC\u2019s Identity Crisis<\/i> and Marvel\u2019s Civil War <\/i>were made while the United States was a nation at war. Stories about superheroes behaving like horrible villains in the name of righteousness. Comics about \u201cgood\u201d people doing monstrous things. That\u2019s not a coincidence. Art is not created in a vacuum.<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\nBefore we go further, since it’s been a few years since the series ended, a recap for those who forgot what the comic was about (or haven’t read it yet). Starman<\/em> was about Jack Knight, but it also tied together the stories of every superhero ever named Starman. One of whom was Jack’s father Ted, an inventor turned Golden Age superhero who is now retired. Another was Jack’s brother David, who was killed in issue #1.<\/p>\nAssisting Jack in his super heroic efforts of truth, justice, and well, stuff: The Shade, a former Flash villain who Robinson writes as a complicated antihero whose life and mysterious\u00a0past becomes central to the series. There’s Sadie, with whom Jack falls in love, and in the final issue, retires to be with her and their child. The O’Dare family, who are all cops. Charity, a fortune teller. Plus the ghost of a pirate, a superpowered ex-con, and various other figures who appear over the course of the 80+ issues.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the ledger was The Mist, a Golden Age supervillain now an aged man with a failing memory, who with the help of his two children, Kyle and Nash, stage a series of attacks in the opening story arc. A destruction-filled crime spree that included the murder of David Knight, aka Starman. Then Jack killed Kyle. Nash becomes the new Mist, swearing vengeance by planning to \u2014 well, we’ll get to all that.<\/p>\n
Much of the action took place in the beautiful, fictional metropolis of Opal City. Whose geography as I will describe, is completely unrealistic and intended to be a metaphor, but in the hands of artist Tony Harris and others, is a beautifully designed art deco cityscape that deserves an article all its own. There were also journeys to New York and Fawcett City, a lengthy sojourn into outer space (and the past and the future), that is also a tour through the strange and complicated past of the DC Universe.<\/p>\nDC’s promotional poster for Starman.\u00a0<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n I first learned about <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i> from the promotional poster, which had been placed near the doorframe of the comic shop I frequented. A cropped version of the Tony Harris cover to the zero issue with the famous Oscar Wilde quotation: \u201cWe are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.\u201d I had never heard of a superhero named Starman. I had not read <\/span>Zero Hour<\/span><\/i>, the reason why all of DC\u2019s October 1994 titles were numbered #0.<\/span> I was vaguely aware of a science-fiction film called <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i>, but had not seen it.<\/span>\u00a0I had no context for it, but I liked the image, I liked the quotation, and even if I didn\u2019t like it, it was new, so a good jumping on point.<\/span><\/p>\nHarris\u2019 art improved, as did his sense of design, over the course of his run on the series before leaving with issue 45, but it was a great first cover. An iconic image that I have always had in my mind\u2019s eye thinking back on the series, even as it clearly shows signs of being an early image, with small details changed in the comic. A great introduction to the character, perched over the city with a strange looking weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA new generation of super-hero\u201d the poster promised. In the literal sense of being the child of a Golden Age character, who I think was mostly forgotten by this point. Jack Knight was a reluctant hero. One who hadn\u2019t dedicated his life to this pursuit. He studied martial arts for a time because he was interested. He painted until he grew tired of it. He was an antiques dealer who was more interested in the past than in the present, in many regards. A person with a deep knowledge of many different subjects. A generalist in a way that brings to mind that famous Robert Heinlein quotation:<\/span><\/p>\nA human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.<\/span><\/p>\nThe first page of that first issue is a splash page of a fictional metropolis, Opal City, in all its art deco glory. An ugly modernist glass rectangle in the middle distance, an elevated train, billboards for \u201cChesterfield Tobaccos\u201d and \u201cFly Koala Air.\u201d This was a city that never was. A throwback to the old fictional DC Comics cities \u2013 Metropolis and Gotham, Keystone City and Fawcett City, Hub City and Midway City. There was a charm to them. Why not create a fictional city to play with? Perhaps that was an intentional nod to those who may have picked up the issue to tie into continuity, to the people who loved the Robinson-scripted miniseries <\/span>The Golden Age<\/span><\/i>, to past characters and series. Opening with this \u201cmetropolis of now and then and never was\u201d set the series firmly in this world bridging the past and the present before they\u2019d introduced the characters and the plot.<\/span><\/p>\nThis was all being narrated by \u2026 someone? We would of course come to learn that it\u2019s The Shade, but it was making it clear that this was a story. A superhero tale. Anyone expecting something nostalgic and comforting, would learn that wasn\u2019t on the table. If you thought a book being narrated by a villain was discordant, that\u2019s nothing compared to what Robinson had planned.<\/span><\/p>\nIn that first issue, Jack\u2019s brother David, wearing an absurd looking superhero costume, is killed by a sniper\u2019s bullet. Yes, it was the original Starman\u2019s costume, which I did not know at the time, but on rereading, it looks absurd and the color scheme is ugly.<\/span> This is the kind of costume that comes straight from the Golden Age and there is a reason why so many of those characters have been redesigned so often over the years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBack to my point, by page 4 of the first issue, the title character is dead.<\/span><\/p>\nDavid Knight dies in Starman #0.\u00a0<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Only then do we meet Jack in a flashback from earlier that day. A cynical wiseass, who mocks his brother, and by extension his father. In this initial scene Jack comes off as unlikeable. More than I remembered and more than I expected. That snarky attitude \u2014 especially coming out around family who push our buttons even as we push theirs \u2014 would mellow a little over time, but it\u2019s a striking choice. A change from the many Peter Parker clones, characters who are quiet in life but become verbose when they put on a costume. Their anonymity another superpower.<\/span>\u00a0Jack for the most part is internal when he fights. His mind flitting about in an ADHD-like jumble of obscure pop culture references, while in his day-to-day he\u2019s trying to be cool and collected as he verbally jousts with people.<\/span><\/p>\nAs introductions go, it\u2019s a good first issue, with Jack and his father both barely escaping being killed. A larger story at play. An unknown narrator. Unanswered questions, but ones with answers and just enough mystery to keep the reader in suspense.<\/span><\/p>\nI quoted Heinlein earlier, but I don\u2019t think that Robinson had that in mind. While the character may have some overlap with the wiseass\/slacker Generation X sociological cliche, the comic doesn\u2019t lean hard into that. I can only imagine that Robinson and his editor, the legendary Archie Goodwin, would have had some thoughts if that was a note they were given. Imagine how poorly the comic would have aged if they had leaned into it \u2014 and if you\u2019re not sure what that would resemble, think about how comics handled beatniks in the ’50s, or hippies in the ’60s or ’70s, and shudder.<\/span><\/p>\nThey didn\u2019t go for the cliche because they were talented and thoughtful, but also, I think both understood the series was at its heart about fathers and sons. About two men who were similar, but had been shaped in such radically differently ways that for all they had in common, they could not help but butt heads. It\u2019s a classic story. One that likely appealed to so many of us who were reading it, even if we weren\u2019t conscious of it. We knew that we were different from our parents, even if we didn\u2019t understand why or they didn’t understand how things had changed. The comic didn\u2019t need to lean into what was hip at the moment. The comic was set out of time, after all. Robinson understood that their relationship and how the characters were situated, was the key to the series, and it has remained memorable in part because of that relationship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJack mocks his brother in a scene from Starman #0.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n This may have been easier at that particular moment in time than now, though that could be nostalgia. There was such a clear contrast between Generation X and their Baby Boomer parents and their Greatest Generation grandparents. The economic circumstances, social attitudes, pop cultural references, different childhoods and child-rearing styles, was so distinct for each generation. Also, the fall of the Soviet Union and Perestroika had marked a new era, which gave even greater weight to this.<\/span><\/p>\nOf course the precise timing and what it all means in <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i> is unclear, as the \u201ctimey-wimey stuff\u201d in comics always is. Both men are adults. Ted is a retired superhero and widower, and Jack is a businessman and a superhero. By making Ted a Greatest Generation older guy and Jack the younger Gen X guy, they\u2019ve managed to avoid dealing with the mawkish Baby Boomer nonsense that has occupied so much cultural real estate from <\/span>Field of Dreams<\/span><\/i> to the original <\/span>Quantum Leap<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\nIgnoring all that, we understood the basic outline. Jack was a younger man, his father was an older man. Along with \u201ctall, slender man\u201d and \u201cshort, stocky man\u201d, it\u2019s one of the classic duos.<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nMost Golden Age comics are bad. They were considered disposable reading material for children, and I would argue that a random picture book today is better written and drawn than almost every one of those comics. Some of us read old pulp fiction, but we\u2019re usually reading the writers who defined and transcended it. That said, I’ve read comics from that era which are so startlingly good. They have quirks and approaches that date it to a specific time and made in a style that conforms to that era, but they\u2019re so contemporary and interesting.<\/span><\/p>\nBob Kane\u2019s original Batman comic is bad, but to read the Bill Finger-scripted, Jerry Robinson-illustrated stories from just a short time later is to glimpse the ur-text of Batman comics. The gothic atmosphere. The long shadows. The wild splash pages. The comics of that era were not always well written, but you can understand why an artist \u2014 especially a young artist \u2014 would want to make comics. You had to work fast, but you could play with design and utilize different styles. You were forced to be productive. You can feel that energy in those pages decades later, like the ink had as much caffeine and uppers as was in their bloodstream for those nonstop drawing sessions.<\/span><\/p>\nPage from a Mort Meskin-drawn Johnny Quick story.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI first learned about Mort Meskin reading the letter columns of <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i>. Meskin drew some Starman comics back in the day, and he drew a lot of Vigilante<\/em> \u2014 a character that Robinson and Tony Salmons revived for a miniseries in 1995-1996 \u2014 but he\u2019s best known for Johnny Quick. A character I knew because he appeared in <\/span>The Flash <\/span><\/i>and who spoke a formula<\/span> which made him super fast. Which doesn\u2019t make any sense. But a lot of old comics (and current comics) don\u2019t make much sense.<\/span><\/p>\nMeskin didn\u2019t draw Quick the way that the Flash and other speedsters had been drawn, with lines behind them to give the impression of moving at a fast clip. Instead, Meskin would draw the character in multiple poses. An impression of speed owing more to Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cNude Descending a Staircase No. 2\u201d than to other comics. That\u2019s what made those old comics so visually interesting. These artists knew modernist art, grew up attending museums and studying at art leagues, they watched expressionist films, they studied the cinematography in Orson Welles and John Ford pictures, and they sought to pull all these influences into their comics. They were interested in light and design more than story, and if you read the stories, who could blame them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI think of those pages of Johnny Quick performing multiple tasks, a single image capturing multiple moments in time, in the context of\u00a0 James Robinson\u2019s work. Tying together all these disparate characters named Starman. Pulling together other characters, from The Black Pirate and The Shade, the Elongated Man and Black Condor, Phantom Lady and Scalphunter, Balloon Buster and Solomon Grundy, Sandman and Rag Doll. All of these ideas and tones and approaches, from the goofy to the deadly serious, existing together and making up a cohesive whole.<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nStarman<\/span><\/i> debuted in 1994 and over the years it has often been compared to the Image Comics of the era. The bad Image Comics, or rather, the best of Image Comics, which emphasized style over substance and focused on the art to the exclusion of the writing, which tended to be poor. Not unlike those old Golden Age comics. Today comics are generally defined by writers, who are now seen as the primary \u201cauthor\u201d and dominant voice of the comic. I say this as a writer, but arguably the best comics \u2014 the purest comics, if you will, from classic Archie Comics, old superhero tales you can read without pausing to linger over the word balloons, the initial runs of <\/span>Spawn<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>WildCATS<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Cyberforce \u2014<\/span><\/i> are all defined and shaped by the artists.<\/span><\/p>\nStarman was, unlike those Image comics, a book defined by the writer. A novelistic approach to comics, with a beginning, middle and ending. It is an approach to comics that has become more commonplace in the years since, but at the time it stood out as something unique. There were series that were defined by the writer\u2019s sensibilities before and after, but they tended to be unusual. They were also written about repeatedly because they appealed to other writers and people trained in literary studies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe nature of the writing in <\/span>Starman<\/span><\/i> is important. Comics has a complicated relationship with their history and legacy and in the decade after <\/span>Crisis on Infinite Earths<\/span><\/i>, DC was interested in how to pass the torch and handle the legacy of their older characters. They did so in a variety of ways that ranged from <\/span>Hawkworld<\/span><\/i> to <\/span>The Spectre<\/span><\/i> to <\/span>Supergirl<\/span><\/i>. Barry Allen died and so Kid Flash\/Wally West became The Flash. In the hands of Mark Waid, the cast of the book grew to include multiple generations of characters. There was a Batman family that expanded. Some characters were established as being older, with stories that existed in the past that could be mined, and play a supporting role in newer stories. A new Supergirl was created from scratch. Hal Jordan went crazy and became a villain and Kyle Raynor became the new Green Lantern. His girlfriend ended up in a refrigerator.<\/span> The response to that by some fans was to create a club called H.E.A.T.<\/span>\u00a0and send death threats to the creators. The sales of <\/span>GL<\/span><\/i> comics went up, but this must have impacted DC when it came to making changes.<\/span><\/p>\nIt was in this context that Robinson made a book that was not about the previous Starman, Will Payton, whose comic ran for 45 issues, from 1988-1992, before the character was \u201ckilled\u201d in the miniseries <\/span>Eclipse: The Darkness Within<\/span><\/i>. It was a comic that was not about Ted Knight, the Golden Age Starman. It features the death of Ted\u2019s son David, the new Starman, in the opening scene. It\u2019s easy to say that Starman was a character few people cared about or that Robinson did it really well\u2013 both of which are true\u2013 but these choices were likely scrutinized at the time, even if not publicly.<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nI have never read the Douglas Coupland novel <\/span>Generation X<\/span><\/i>, which became the name to those born between 1965 and 1980.<\/span> I know many of the other Gen X texts that helped to define the culture and the era. While he was a timeless archetype in so ways, Jack Knight emerged out of that era.<\/span><\/p>\nThe film <\/span>Slacker<\/span><\/i><\/a> stands out in my mind as defining the era more than any other work.<\/span> The term was co-opted and reused in different ways, but in its original meaning, the reason why Richard Linklater named his 1991 film that, is one that Jack would have appreciated. Jack would have been one of those characters, engaged in a deep, passionate conversation about something of no real importance, but deeply meaningful to them. Of course most of the characters in <\/span>Slacker<\/span><\/i> were engaged in doing very little (\u201cI may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work to do it,\u201d said one character in the film) and Jack is far too busy to be a slacker. That\u2019s before he became a superhero.<\/span><\/p>\nIn retrospect, the obvious analogue for Jack is Rob from Nick Hornby\u2019s <\/span>High Fidelity<\/span><\/i>, although the novel wasn\u2019t published until 1995 and the film version starring John Cusack came out in 2000. Looking back on the character, reading old letter columns, that\u2019s who I think of. For both Jack Knight and James Robinson, I suppose. It\u2019s easy with the benefit of hindsight to call Rob and Jack otaku.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNot in the original meaning of the word in Japanese, but the term as it has come to be known. Of being a learned expert in a subject. A particular kind of topic. We don\u2019t talk about professors as being otaku. That’s a term reserved for junk dealers and record store owners, bookstore employees and zine makers, old website designers and copy shop workers, who can talk at length about forgotten television shows, old comics, obscure crime novels, underground films. The kinds of thing you couldn\u2019t write a paper on at school.<\/span> The kind of thing that wasn\u2019t written about in newspapers. This was learned about and shared through conversation. Information and knowledge that wasn\u2019t accessible and had to be cobbled together from different sources.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI can\u2019t speak to Robinson. I won\u2019t say that he wrote the character as himself, but in the way that many artists have drawn characters to resemble themselves \u2014 that way they could use a mirror to get a reference image \u2014 the obsessions and interests of writers often seep in whether intentional or otherwise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA villain discusses Raymond Chandler adaptations in Starman #15.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThat can be deceiving. Robinson may be interested in collecting and make Jack a dealer with a deep knowledge of such things, but just because the pop culture ephemera that is in Jack\u2019s head came from Robinson\u2019s pen doesn\u2019t mean it has any relation to Robinson. In issue #15 a villain is monologuing about Raymond Chandler film adaptations, and it would be a mistake to see any of those opinions as Robinson\u2019s. Though he clearly possesses a deep knowledge of the subject. This was the ’90s and pop culture monologues were all the rage. Blame it on Tarantino. After <\/span>Pulp Fiction<\/span><\/i> came out in 1994, it was years before audiences and Hollywood tired of the derivative dialogue driven crime films of this era.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOn the other hand, who would suggest that Hoagy Carmichael sings his songs better than anyone, including Ray Charles? Who remembers Julie Newmar\u2019s nude scene in <\/span>MacKenna\u2019s Gold<\/span><\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\nThis was the era of the collector. VHS giving way to laserdiscs and then DVDs. People bought compact discs to update and replace their music collections. Sure, there were collectors before, but it was easier than ever. I won\u2019t say the ‘<\/span>90s were better. But we had stores. We left the house and we went out in public and we bought physical objects. Bookstores and music stores with new items. Used bookstores and second-hand shops and flea markets. Sometimes we read in the store without buying anything, and sometimes we shoplifted.<\/span> There was something physical about life back then which allowed for us to discover writers and artists by accident.<\/span><\/p>\nThe collector, the obsessive, the otaku, was a defining figure of Gen X. More than the slacker, I would argue. Because in those pre-internet or nascent internet days, finding things, learning things, took work. We believed that the truth was out there. This was how so much of the internet was built. Message boards and fan sites and people trading information and sharing knowledge. In the days before music and movies could be downloaded and shared online, people were accumulating physical media and sharing it. Desktop printing and copy shops fueled the zine boom.<\/span><\/p>\nThese works were available but they were hard to find. You had to know someone. Stumble across the right store at the right time. Catch it on television when it aired at an odd hour. Answer an ad. This was how we bought and rented and borrowed comics and movies and TV shows. We didn\u2019t have wikipedia or Shazam. We set the VCR to record shows broadcast in the middle of the night. We transcribed song lyrics listening to the radio. We listened as people, some patient some not, explained books or movies to us giving us a context we never would have known. Learning about books and shows and films long before we would ever have a chance to watch or read them. When there was no guarantee that we would even get a chance to read or watch them. This is when I began my lifelong habit of making lists.<\/span><\/p>\nI always felt like I didn\u2019t know enough back then and was always frustrated that I didn\u2019t know more. I feel the same way now. It was just different back then. As L.P. Hartley put it, \u201cThe past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nJack meets Charity in Starman #2.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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