Tired of throwing away blue jeans when the seat ripped, I finally decided to learn to use a sewing machine. Unfortunately, my pants were so bad, they killed our machine. Rather than go without, Mom spent an ungodly amount of money on a new electronic machine that's smarter than our television. With my pants now fixed, it's time to turn my attention to my 20-year-old leather jacket.

My jacket is a copy of the costume worn by Superboy in the classic "Death of Superman" comic book storyline from 1992. That includes the mourning armband on the left sleeve. The armband I've been using for decades is the actual armband bundled in the polybagged edition of Superman #75. As you can see, it's in bad shape. (I have a hunch these things weren't really meant to be worn for 20 years.)

Rather than track down and unbag another copy of a-20th century comic book — I refuse to admit how many times I've already done this — I decided to make my own from superior materials and a 21st-century sewing machine. I got lucky that Jo-Ann's had Superman pajama fabric on sale. I was planning on having to cut my own "S" shield.

The finished product turned out pretty good, considering that the first time I'd ever used a sewing machine was two weeks ago. Now I'm ready for a bigger project: repairing the jacket pockets. I look forward to being able to carry pocket change again.

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Today I wore a Fantastic Four logo t-shirt with my Superboy leather jacket, and the sales staff at Best Buy, EB Games, and Kroger all gave me grief about wearing Marvel and DC trademarks together. I was impressed by the knowledge that these people had about comic book publishers and copyrights. Though they were admittedly all much, much younger than I am, each property had a movie in the past 2 years, so I shouldn't be too surprised, I suppose. In any event, long live comic books!

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