Oh man, there was nothing quite like fifth-grade comics love.

I would hustle down the stairs at P.S. 166 and trot with my buddy Peter to the soda and newsstand at 91st Street and Broadway. We’d squeeze past old Viennese ladies drinking coffee and the white-haired couple who owned the place. Bunched on a low rack were the latest comic books, with Batman, Legion of Super-Heroes (Saturn Girl!), Superman and Spider-Man.

We plunked down a pile of quarters and darted down Broadway, working out how we would sneak our troves past our parents, who imagined we’d be better off reading novels. In a fashion we only half intuited, we were reading about New York in all its disguises.