SUPPORTERS ONLY: Steel Annual #1 (1994)

Steel Annual #1 (1994)

Steel's Elseworlds annual may be set during the Civil War era, but it still manages to be one of the most '90s things ever by giving him pouches on his arm-mounted machine gun. I don't think pouch technology had even developed to that point in the 19th century.

How did someone living in that time period come to own so many pouches, you ask? Or the rest of that armor depicted in the cover? That's a long and depressing story (written by Jon and Judith Bogdanove and drawn by Humberto Ramos). In this reality, John Henry Irons was born in a Virginia plantation sometime in the early 1800s and quickly became best friends with the owner's son, an adorable blond child called Arthur. John and Arthur would play knights (can't blame a kid of that name for being obsessed with slaying dragons and such) and read books together, even though it was forbidden for black kids to learn how to read, lest they get crazy ideas in their heads like "hey, maybe we shouldn't be slaves."