All I really need to know I learned from the Hulk

Dan Brown, online editor of the London Free Press out of Ontario, credits Marvel Comics for teaching him some of life's important lessons:

Marvel Comics also taught me something about the workings of the human imagination. Pencillers such as John Byrne and scripters such as Bill Mantlo had to take blank pages and turn them into a fully realized universe. That’s no easy task. Yet Marvel’s roster of creators seemed to have little trouble coming up with engaging characters galore, and I still admire how they were able to invent fresh story ideas month after month.

Marvel Comics borrowed from science-fiction books and films, as well as the pulp fiction of yore. The members of the Marvel bullpen used these and other sources and mixed them with their own (drug-inspired?) dreams, defining the superhero genre of the 1970s in the process (Marvel wasn’t called the House of Ideas for nothing). I like to think that, through some sort of osmosis, I absorbed a tiny bit of that creativity, which I apply to my work as a journalist today.

It's a fun, nostalgic read; go check it out.