In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!

I continue a month's worth of I Love Ya but You're Strange's (as a sort of "April Fool's" month) with a spotlight on Marvel's bizarre 1984 experimental one-shot, the Generic Comic #1

The gag for the comic, of course, is that it is meant to be the most generic comic book that you could possibly think of, without any stand-out traits, to the point where the cover itself is basically blank, consisting only of a box describing the generic plot of the comic book...

The comic book was the brainchild of Larry Hama, who was the editor of Marvel's Crazy Magazine, which was their version of Mad Magazine. Crazy had ended a year earlier, and I suppose Marvel allowed Hama to try out some other humor-themed ideas in the absence of Crazy and here, Hama brought in Steve Skeates, who was one of the very first members of what is now known as the second generation of comic book writers (basically, the people who grew up reading comic books, which obviously was not the case for the Stan Lee and Jack Kirbys of the world). Skeates did a little writing for Marvel, but mostly spent his time at Charlton Comics and DC Comics. He was making a bit of a comeback in the 1980s (he would do Spider-Ham's comic book after this) when Hama tapped him for this project.

The hero of the story is a young man hoping for a promotion at work so that he can finally get married to his loyal girlfriend and pay for the operation that his kid brother needs (his kid brother is in a coma). The young man collects things that glow in the dark and obviously, over the years he collected perhaps too many radioactive items as he gained superpowers over night, as his hair also turned white...

He now had super strength among various other powers...

He went to a superhero costume store, but because he was down on his luck (and did not have the truly stunning costume design and sewing skills that Peter Parker apparently had), he had to buy the cheapest superhero costume there, an all-white number without a logo...

Eventually, he proved his mettle by fighting some muggers, but he was then accosted by a real life supervillain who can mess with people's brains...

In the rematch, he used a special football helmet jury rigged to a walkman that played self-affirmations on a loop...

Of course, this being a generic comic book, his actions ultimately hurt him in the end, as the crime ring he defeated was actually owned by his own boss, and with his boss out of the way, our hero's nemesis would be in charge of the office and the chances of promotion were slim to none...

What a fun but odd comic book.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You're Strange, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Again, we're going to have a whole month of these, so, well, more suggestions would be great!