Fanboy #1

History

Fanboy was written by Mark Evanier and drawn by Sergio Aragonés, the long-running creative partnership responsible for Groo the Wanderer, and it represented their primary collaboration under the DC Comics banner. Aragonés and Evanier had previously roasted the DC line in the 1996 one-shot Sergio Aragonés Destroys DC, and Fanboy extended that irreverent relationship into ongoing serialized storytelling. The series was edited under DC's mainstream line; Tony Bedard is credited as editor on at least some issues, with Mike Carlin also carrying an editorial credit. The distinctive split-art approach — Aragonés handling Finster's mundane reality, while an all-star roster of guest artists (Jerry Ordway, Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Timm, Neal Adams, Frank Miller, and many others) illustrated his superhero fantasies — required assembling an unusually large pool of contributors for a humor book.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Finster (real name unrevealed in issue; known only as 'Finster'), a high-school student and comic-shop clerk created by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés, cover-dated March 1999.
• Superman (Clark Kent) appears in the issue's fantasy sequence, in which Finster imagines saving Earth after four alien villains abduct Superman, then the story mirrors that daydream in Finster's real-world actions at a beach party.
• Issue #1 was written by Mark Evanier with art by Sergio Aragonés (real-world sequences); the fantasy sequence art was provided by Jerry Ordway, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons, and Bernie Wrightson (inks, two pages). The cover is by Ordway and Aragonés.
• Fanboy #1 launched a six-issue monthly limited series running from March to August 1999, published by DC Comics.
• The series' formal conceit divides each issue between Aragonés's cartooning for Finster's everyday life and sequences drawn by a rotating roster of celebrated artists replicating the style of classic DC eras — a device sustained across all six issues.
• The full series was collected into a trade paperback published by DC in 2001 (ISBN 1563897245), making the content continuously available beyond the original monthly run.
• Also debuting in this issue: supporting characters Kimberly, Sandy, Mr. Grudge (Finster's comic-shop boss), and Weasel, as well as antagonist Tom Hotchkiss — the main cast of the miniseries.
• Fanboy is described in Sergio Aragonés's own bibliography as 'a six-issue mini-series on comics and society's reaction to them, from the point of view of a self-described fanboy,' situating it as a commentary on fandom culture rather than a straightforward superhero narrative.

Cast · 2 characters

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