There is no dramatic departure for The Panther here – just a “hey, see you later, dude” sort of thing going on – but that’s just to get him out of the way for the big soap opera of Mr. America being faced with everyone who ever left him – whether by death or whim. If The Panther knew that his taking off for a few minutes – probably to get a soda and pack of smokes, maybe some potato chips or a snack pie – would cause such a mental breakdown for Mr. America, would he have done it? Would he instead have just ordered out?

I mean, just last issue, he saw his old partner The Eagle for no reason I understand, surely that was an indicator that Mr. America was plummeting down the abyss …

Given the sense of abandonment and danger in this issue, it shouldn’t seem too surprising that my parents were going through a separation at the time, but I actually don’t think that had much to do with the storytelling here. I think I just loved over-the-top drama and the kind of histrionic over-reacting that comics – most particularly Marvel Comics – dealt in. Superheroes really are little more than soap opera for boys and that’s what I was latching onto here, and in other places. I was a little kid, though, so I didn’t really understand the intricacies of what leads to such emotional turmoil, even though some of them were very obviously going on in front of my eyes.