The Silverage, Better Than Ever, or Why Jim's Wrong

One of the things that I enjoy most about posting after Jim is correcting all of his mistakes! Take yesterday’s post “Why The Silver Age has Become Tarnished,” which is riddled with logical fallacies. Ok, maybe not riddled but I do think his post misses the mark when it comes to the Silverage.

Jim has two basic premises: (1) the Silverage is not as good as what we have today and (2) It is more of a trip down a nostalgic lane and a place for modern writers to mine gold as the Silverage creators had tons of throw away ideas which have great potential.

Let’s start with the first part of Jim’s argument that the Silverage isn’t as good as what we have today. In a sense, everyone agrees that the superhero stories today are better than the superhero stories written during the Silverage. As Jim stated, Silverage books were written for a different audience. It was written for us when we were between 8 and 12. Now that we’re older, it’s obvious the books and stories that we read as children no longer hold the same appeal.

I’ve always like the quote, "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things," and that applies to comic books perfectly. But, what happened was the children grew up and still wanted to read comic books. Therefore, comic books have become more sophisticated to match the older readerships tastes.

If Jim had added the caveat ‘for me’ to his statement “Comic books are a lot better now then they ever have been in the US” then I could have agreed with him. But, I would argue that comic books are worse for 8-12 year old boys these days then they were in the Silverge. And I think they are infinitely worse for 8-12 year old girls.

Most of the books today are marked T or T+. I certainly wouldn’t hand my son any of the Avengers books, or Thunderbolts, or many other titles. But I can hand my son any of the DC Archives or Marvel Masterworks, and I do, he tells me what I already know. Those are amazing superhero stories.

In terms of girl readers, there is no comparison in terms of the amount of material available for, and marketed to, girls today vs. what was aimed at them during the Silverage. The current Supergirl title isn’t aimed at girls at all. It’s written by men for the boys that read it. The same argument can be made about Powergirl, Catwoman, and almost all of the other female lead books.

I have a stack of Silverage and Bronze age Millie the Model books that my daughters have destroyed. All the paper dolls have been cut out and all the puzzles done. There is absolutely nothing comparable in today’s market that holds the same appeal for young girls. SIDE NOTE: All apologies to the Boom! Kids line because my girls like that… but I’m not going to point that out while I’m bashing Jim.

So, does that mean the Silveage material isn’t as good as today’s material? I say no. I would argue that Silverage superhero material has only gotten better over the years because there isn’t any other material for an 8 – 12 year old boy or girl to read.

Do Silverage stories hold up to re-reading and are they for nostalgia purposes only? It depends on who you ask. Does the reading experience hold up for me? The answer is yes and no. Archie, general humor, and horror titles tend to hold up pretty well because they aren't comparable to today's material. There's a certain timeless quality to humor and horror and I like to read them. But superheroes, for the most part, do not. Do the stories hold up for my children? That’s an emphatic yes.

I don’t think the Silverage has lost it’s luster at all. When I read it, it still brings back many a happy hour (or three) that I spent reading them. And, from Jim's statements to me about getting excited about the new ‘Dial H for Hero’ Showcase, I don’t think the Silverage has lost any luster for him either.

Buy My Stuff... Again

Howdy one and all! The latest sell-o-thon is here. Once again I've loaded the world's largest flea market, eBay, up with super cool stuff.

This weeks offerings include a nice set of an assortment of tpb's, late GA material, some SA material, and long runs of current stuff.

In terms of tpb's, there's new stuff like Classic What If? Vol 1 from Marvel and Showcase Presents: Haunted Tank and two Flash trades collection Johns first work on the character from DC. There's Image books like Lucha Libra, and Rick Remender's Doll & Creature. From Vertigo, I have Grant Morrison's The Filth. And even some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There's the Mighty Avengers issues 6-31 complete and New Avengers 40-59 complete. As an added bonus, I've listed Secret Invasion 1-8. That's basically the last two years of Avengers for $20.

There are some Deadpool issues from the first series and a complete run of Bendis's Sam & Twitch.

There's even some great indie books like Kramer's Ergot and Abandoned Cars.

There's something for everyone and you can view all this and more here. Don't forget to bid high and bid often!

Why The Silver Age has Become Tarnished.

As I said earlier no best and worst post this week. I almost went off on a political rant about why the US Government is driving me crazy and bankrupting the country at the same time. Oh I have issues with wanting to search our underwear, to our continual waste of lives with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the abysmal Healthcare bill, the continual shenanigans of the Fed and the Treasury, too many czars and all sorts of things, but Ron Paul and I can continue our tilting our windmills on another day.

I want to instead talk about the Silver Age of comics. This is the time that is often fondly remembered as remaking comics into what they are for us today and are often derided for humor since they were written for a different time and audience.

Recently I have noticed and Lee has noted it on occasion to me also, that the silver age no longer holds up on re-reading like it used to do maybe a decade ago or maybe just a few years ago and it dawned on me that the reason is fairly simple. Comic books are a lot better now then they ever have been in the US.

The Silver Age was of course dominated by DC and Marvel. DC wrote to an 8-12 year old boy mentality with the thought process being that the audience would turn over that fast. Marvel under Stan Lee did not write down to his audience and therefore they probably generated an older audience and or inherited DC fans still hungry for super hero fantasy but had outgrown DC. Still Stan Lee’s famous Marvel way was born of desperation to produce the largest quantity of product they could. On close re-reading of some of those classic Marvel books you can see where Stan’s dialogue was pushing a story to a different place then the actual panel was showing. Also to be fair this stuff was being done at 100 miles an hour so the quality is just not going to be there.

I read when Kirby went to DC he had an agreement to produce fifteen pages of complete work every week. No artist today is expected to turn around that amount of work. Even when something is needed to be quickly finished it is usually farmed out to multiple artists. Heck even when building in gaps and trying to make things work it all falls apart today. Look at Captain America Reborn, they added Butch Guice to help cover for what Bryan Hitch could not do and the book is still way behind schedule. It is embarrassing when you think of how many high profile projects have had pinch hit artists or schedules that could make one wonder if they will live to see the end of the series.

Writers can still knock out prodigious amounts of work, when you look at Bendis, Johns, Morrison, Brubaker, Rucka and others the amount of books they produce is tremendous, but remember one page could be as simple as saying “one panel page Green Lantern is hitting Sinestro square on the jaw”, that takes the artist hours to do.

Still this digression is all in the way of setting up that today’s comics are just higher quality products. We have tons of professional writers who want to write comics and have a strong understand of visual story telling. Very seldom do we see long expositions explaining what is clearly in the panel anymore. Also the writers are able to write for an older audience. The restrictions of having to write down to a younger audience have been removed and the violence and sexual situations can be played up in the story with less fear of being edited out. The Comics Code for all intent and purposes is dead and the writers, editors and artist can bring a lot more to these stories.

The artists are given a lot more freedom to have the time to try and produce their best work. When the situation demands or the publishing schedule demands you will see fill in artists and other things done to keep the machine humming but often the George Perez, Steve McNiven, Bryan Hitch, Ethan Van Scriver and others are given the time to crank out their best work. Part of this is the page rates are now such for top tier artists that they do not have to crank out pages to just make ends meet. I’m sure artists starting out may have to do that, but I’m sure Frank Quietly is not starving if he does not produce 22 pages of pencils every month. Many writers and artists have the security of benefits and artists can sell work on the open market to supplement their income.

All of this leads to higher quality writers able to write for a wider audience, artists who have time to play with what they are doing and think about design and layouts as opposed to just cranking out work.

Add to that the higher quality production values and we have comics that are shot from pencils and then colored or pages can be photo shopped and other programs to give effects the artist of yesteryear had to produce 100% by hand.

The final layer is the depth and breadth of the independent market. While a small portion of the market they make up 20% to 25% of the market place just in the direct market. This means we have books like Scalped, Echo, Northlanders, Stumptown, Jersey Gods, Chew, BPRD, Invincible, 100 Bullets, Locke & Key, Ghoul and all the rest that attract writers from various walks of life who then get the attention of the mainstream and often work both sides of the fence.

What this has done is created a market where the professionalism and quality of the work and production has jumped light years from the silver age. Once you have been reading this, when you go back you can see that the silver age was a lesser product from an overall reading and production standpoint. Not that there are not great stories from the past that still stand the test of time, but in general the silver age is not as good as what we have today. It is more of a trip down a nostalgic lane and perhaps for writers a place to mine gold as they had tons of throw away ideas which have great potential if developed.

I still love the Silver Age, but re-reading it now has lost some of its zeal as today’s upgraded product has highlighted the flaws of that period. The good news is that we are seeing the best in graphic story telling ever in the US and I see nothing but brighter days ahead as far as high quality entertainment in a graphic form. Now whether that is digital or print as days go by and how long the direct market lasts is another question.

What I’m Getting Wednesday January 6

So after taking perhaps my longest break from doing posts for the blog, I’m back and ready to start a New Year. I won’t say I’m refreshed 100% as my real world job is still too darn busy, but it was a nice break. I got to see both of my daughters and their fiancées. As I have stated before Gwen is now engaged and my other daughter Jamie got engaged earlier in 2009 and is getting married in August to a great guy named Dallas. It was nice to see both couples and it makes me feel a little older realizing that at 29 I’m having two daughters who are making wedding plans.

Okay back to comics and what is coming out this week. January is DC’s skip month as they elected to take a break with Blackest Night #7 to give Ivan Reis a chance to keep up with the workload. I will never understand why almost no major series ever gives the artist enough lead time, but at least this should ensure that Ivan is able to do all the pencils on all the issues.

To keep us warm during the long cold winter month in January (at least here in Maryland) DC has given us a bunch of old cancelled titles that have been brought back to life for one issue. I thought it was a fun idea and I’m curious to see what these books will bring. I’m sure some will be great, some will be good solid fun and some will be what were they thinking. This week we get Suicide Squad #67 which was a natural and one I thought was an odd choice with Weird Western Tales #71. To round out the Blackest Night books we also get Blackest Night Wonder Woman #2 (of 3). The add on mini-series have been highly entertaining and to date are not mandatory to understanding the main story at all. Also they avoid forcing Blackest Night from interrupting the flow of the regular series.

It is a big week for books published by DC that are not under the DCU banner with Authority #18 leading the pack. Both Authority and Wildcats are being brought together and then split apart as each group tries to see if they can solve the problems of the world. It is maintaining the continuity from what has gone before but trying to stir the pot once again. While not a best book, these series have been entertaining. From Vertigo we have House of Mystery #21, Cinderella from Fabletown with Love #3 (of 6), the wonderful new series Sweet Tooth #5 and the newest crime novel from Vertigo The Chill. DC’s describes it this way “It's summer in New York, but a "chill" has settled over the city – a serial killer is on the loose, and the ritualized murders are becoming increasingly sadistic. The NYPD and the FBI have a suspect: a gorgeous young woman named Arlana. The only problem is that every witness provides a different description of her. None of it makes any sense to anyone except Martin Cleary, a beaten-down Irish cop from Boston with a whopper of a secret in his past – and a past that may go back a century or two.” This sounds very cool to me and I’m looking forward to it. Rounding out the non-DCU books is the last issue of The Mighty #12, a very good series for the most part and well worth your time to pick up in the inevitable trade.


The Batman and Superman corners are lightly represented with Batman Confidential #40, Red Robin #8 and Superman New World of Krypton #11 (of 12). With all the announcements from DC I think we can expect that the Superman corner, which has been good stuff but not dynamic is about to heat up. It’s about time.

Rounding out my DC books this week we have Doom Patrol #6, Great Ten #3 (of 10), Jonah Hex #51, JSA All Stars #2 and Warlord #10. I had given up on Warlord, but I like Mike Grell’s work and it appears that he is drawing the book again as it probably heads back into cancellation.

Marvel has a small week for with only Seige #1 (of 4), Marvel Boy Uranian #1 (of 3), Spider-Man Noir Eyes Without a Face #2 (of 4) and Timely Annuals 70th Anniversary Collection HC. Three of the books have my interest with Seige hopefully being the end of Dark Reign. If this is leading into another mini-series I will be ticked off as this book is one of the reasons JMS left Thor. We also have Marvel Boy Uranian #1 and it makes me laugh as Agents of Atlas are everywhere now that their own series got cancelled. Since I love that group seeing them in Hercules, Thunderbolts and a couple of mini-series is great. Who needs a regular series to follow them when Jeff Parker is guiding their destiny in various places. It is a little harder to follow, but worth the effort. Finally the Timely Annuals was a great project and I’m glad to add this material to my bookcase.

The other category is dominated by two releases in my mind, although all are good books. Stumptown #2 is a book that I have been highly anticipating. I have put this book up into the Scalped and Criminal class of great crime noir work and hope to see #2 continue the excellence that we saw in the first issue. Next up is BPRD King of Fear #1 (of 5). This series is advertised as the one that is bringing the main story line that has been ongoing since the series started to a conclusion. BPRD has been as good and at times the better then Hellboy in the Mignolverse.

Now my high praise and excitement for those books should not diminish the other great indies coming out this week with Echo #18, Gigantic #5 (of 5) (finally), FVZA #2 (of 3) – the first issue was very cool, Grimjack The Manx Cat #6 (of 6), Proof #25 and Atom Eve Rex Plode #3 (of 3).

Looks to be a solid week to begin 2010 and hopefully portends a good year to come.

A quick note the post for tomorrow will not be a Best and Worst as last week was a skip week for all intents and purposes.

The List - December '09

I waited until late in the week to get the last comics of December for the List, but with only Blackst Night #6 coming out, it wasn't really worth waiting. Ah, well. Off we go.

1. Northlanders #23 - Same as every month. Superb writing. Excellent art. With no ongoing characters and story arcs that can range from a single issue to about 8, Brian Wood presents almost textbook lessons in how to write short stories.

2. Scalped #33 - You know, you would have thought there was more than enough pathology on the Res with Red Crow, Bad Horse and the FBI, but throwing in peeved Hmong gangsters and you reach whole new levels of psychosis. Jason Aaron's finest.

3. Madame Xanadu #18 - Much lighter in tenor than the previous two, yet still a serious work. Wagner and Hadley have put together art and story that are almost perfectly symbiotic. MX is going to have to dig deep to confront her batshit crazy sister, Morgana.

4. Fables #91 - Aside from the Great Fables Crossover fiasco, I could easily make this the #1 book every month. Still, even with the first thing I see being full frontal male and female nudity, a bold choice, I think the three titles above are a bit superior this month. It may be that this is part 5 of 5 in the Witches arc but doesn't feel like the last part of an arc at all. Too many missing parts. Not that I don't think they'll be addressed shortly. It just doesn't fell like the arc should be ending here.

5. Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love #2 - And now Ala Al-Din, aka Aladdin. D'jinn, Ghors, chador wearing femme fatals? What's not to like. The tense relationship between Cinderella and Aladdin, both sexual and operational, looks to have a lot of potential. The side story of Cinderella's store assistant making a deal with the little green guys who make shoes is almost sufficient to carry a title of its own.

6. Detective Comics #860 - Rucka's finest super hero work. Williams's art doesn't hurt, either. The most innovative layouts around, or at least since the end of Alan Moore's Promethea. I particularly like the tactic of generating a solid interest in the Batwoman character before getting into her back story. Her father's involvement in her origin and hand in creating the Batwoman persona are nice touches. I'm a little curious about the secret about Batwoman's sister, though. The internal logic isn't quite working on that one, but maybe it'll get better in the future.

7. Secret Six #16 - Bad guys. Not bad guys acting as good guys or good guys protending to be bad guys. These are really bad guys. That they're worried about adding Black Alice to their team is telling about how dangerous she is. She's all new to me and looks really interesting. Simone's really got a great thing going here. The cover this issue is particularly arresting, too.

8. Invincible #69 - On time in '09 has been great. Not because the books are on time. Because the more Kirkman at his best that I can get in a given year, the better. Now we have a new threat coming in at the same time as the ever popular Sequid threat. Throw in some pregnancy related (most likely) powers problems for Atom Eve, and we're in kick ass mode. Our new threat reminds me of classic Marvel space queen threats. Only hotter, which is a neat trick for someone who's a sort puke yellow color skin tone. Ottley, Rathburn and Plascencia somehow make jaundice sexy. That's some skills.

9. Invincible presents Atom Eve & Rex Splode #2 - Now, I've never been much of a Rex Splode fan, and Kirkman isn't even writing this, but this mini-series is shaping up very well. I'd say it's better than its predecessor, Invincible presents Atom Eve, which had some weak moments. I'm not overly wild about Bellegarde's art at times, his propensity for somehow making Eve unattractive at times being an ill advised choice or simply an inability to draw a grimace that doesn't make Eve outright ugly.

10. Gotham City Sirens #7 - Easily the best Christmas special of the season, and it wasn't even pushed as such. Harley Quinn's family visits and Poison Ivy's trek to the Amazon were great stories. The somewhat cameo appearance of Batman and Robin, the latter at his psychotic finest, was nicely tied in, almost offhandedly, with their appearance in Batman Streets of Gotham. Dini has a great feel for the characters in the Bat world. Even the trite ending of family being what we make of it came across nicely.

11. Batman Streets of Gotham #7 - See above, to some extent. Another Christmas related tale, but not so light. Really, kind of the opposite side of the coin, as this involves the depressing discovery of a knife fighting ring that pits kids against one another. Even the hard core Robin is disturbed by the dead kids found floating in a river. Dini shows how to write two vastly different Christmas stories in one month of publications. The Manhunter backup is good, too, but I haven't yet gotten into that character.

12. daytripper #1 - This has the potential to move up the list very quickly. It appeals to my usual like of stories set in other cultures, this time in Brazil. I've seen someone else write that our featured character isn't dead and will be in future stories, but I'm damned if I can figure out how. This isn't super heroes and he's stated straight out to be dead at the end, so I don't see how that'll happen. Anyway, Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon have a great concept that I'm really looking forward to watching develop.

13.The Unwritten #8 - Carey and Gross continue a fascinating tale of where fantasy ends and reality begins. They take a look at what the stories mean to the readers, particularly kids, in this issue.

14. Action Comics #884 - Some say this is boring for not having Superman in it. Me, I think it's much more interesting. Rucka has a fine pair of leads with the Kryptonian Firebird and Nightwing. Their story of hunting down sleeper Kryptonians while hiding from US military persecution and overcoming health and romance issues is great. The travails of Lois Lane and the Daily Planet during this near dictatorial moment in US history is appealing to me, particularly while we're in the midst of Dick Cheney's rants that anyone who doesn't support his view of a US free of the encumberances of civil liberties is a traitor. I wouldn't be surprised to see Cheney show up as a character in this story. He so embraces a Darth Vader persona, he's already a cartoon. A leap to comic book villain isn't much of a stretch.

15. Unknown Soldier #15 - This new arc is shifting gears. At least it seems to be. Less war on the Lords Resistance Army. More detective hunt. A much more dangerious mileu for an African detective than Mma Ramotswe in Botswana. Like Alexander McCall Smith, Joshua Dysart really knows the environment of which he writes. Maybe our lead can actually survive, but I still have my doubts.

16. The Walking Dead #68 - Kirkman's second best work. We're heading into Maryland and DC on the trek to find a secure location, my own back yard. Our cast of survivors is much disillusioned after the recent disclosure that the basis of the quest was all a fraud, so strangers holding out a helping hand are getting a harsh welcome. Carl is developing into one kick ass kid, and no one does character exposition better than Kirkman. Few comics writers can have characters just sitting around talking and keep the story interesting. Kirkman does.

17. Irredeemable #9 - This has to be reaching an end, and I'm looking forward to how it's resolved. Charybdis's dismay at the press reaction to his announcement that he's going to save everyone from the Plutonian was perfect.

18. The Mighty #11 - This one definitely is reaching its end. Our other dystopian Superman is now in a knock down, drag out with his former government liason, who's now as powerful as he is. We're hanging amid battle at the end of this one.

19. The Astounding Wolf-Man#20 - It's too bad this one's coming to an end. Not as strong as Invincible, Wolf-Man is still excellent Kirkman writing. It's reassuring to his partners at Image, I'm sure, that Kirkman is clear eyed enough to call an end to one of his own when it's not selling well. I'm going to miss the machinations of Zechariah, though. His motives and goals have never been clear, so he's a great cypher.

20. Blackst Night #6, Green Lantern #49, Green Lantern Corps #43, Adventure Comics #5 (508), and Outsiders #25 - I lump these all together, again, because they're all part and parcel of the same story. I think I'll have to move these up soon, because Johns really has the main story in the first three titles coming together. The latter two are stand alone and have really nothing to do with the Johns story, but I enjoy them all the same.

21. Incorruptible #1 - A spin off of Waid's Irredeemable, it's too early to say how good this one is. As much as I like Secret Six, I figure I'm bound to like a bad guy gone good. Kind of reminds me of the O'Neil Question stories, but I'm not sure it's going to be that good. An underage girlfriend with superpowers, who's named Jailbait, is about as funny a villain name as I've seen in awhile. Considering that Max Damage was supposed to be an unrepentant killer prior to seeing the Plutonian doing the same thing on a larger scale, I can't buy into the Plutonian's change being the impetus for Damage's change. I'll give it a few issues to see if it gets past that.

22. The Warlord #9 - I'd have to call this one the booty issues. Every single major character, at least on the hero side, is getting laid in this issue. That's mostly what's going on. This one's all Mike Grell, on both writing and art, so it looks great and flows well, but it doesn't advance the story. Actually, I'm not sure what the story is, but it looks like Archer has revived Deimos, so we'll not be seeing any happy sexual escapades for awhile.

23. The Great Ten #2 - The Chinese government is still the heavy, but we're moving into better things with the back story of Celestial Archer, his ties to the old Chinese gods and his guilt for having gone to work for the Politburo rather than to revive interest in the old gods. The government's rather futile attempts to prevent the populace from finding out about the presence of the old gods is spot on to Chinese government behavior.

24. Haunt #3 - Kirkman is billed as the writer, but McFarlane, who's doing the inks, has top billing over Kirkman on the cover credits. Hopefully Kirkman's putting more direction into this than McFarlane. It's an engaging story, and we have a nice new turn with a mole in the agency for which the dead half of Haunt used to work, as well as a revelation that's devestating to the living half of Haunt.

25. Justice Society of America #34 - I'm a little disappointed with this series right now. The split off of half the team to JSA All-Stars isn't what I had hoped for. That being said, the ongoing gag of everyone thinking Liberty Belle and Hourman have called it quits on their marriage because they're on different teams is amusing. I can see this one heading in a good direction.

26. The Brave and The Bold #30 - I tried this again because Straczynski's writing it, but I don't think I'll stick with it. It's a nice story. Touching, even. I'm just not sure it's worth my $3 to continue with the book.

27. JSA All-Stars #1 - Only because I'm reading JSA. I don't think I'll keep going, though. There are just too many characters in this team that I don't like. Magog is a tool. King Chimera is all holier than thou attitude. Citizen Steel is just boring. Cyclone is annoying. Power Girl is all tits and thighs. Granted, that last is appealing, but there's not much personality to go with it. Really, I like Hourman, Judomaster and Damage, and one of them doesn't really speak much or have any personality. Wildcat II still whines too much about his relationship with his namesake father. Really, Magog alone is enough for me to call it quits on this.

28. House of Mystery #20 - Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I liked this for a good while, but now, it's on the death spiral. It seems to have reached an end point I can live with, so that's it for this one.

29. Air #16 - This, too, has reached what I consider an end point and is to be no more for me. Not surprisingly, our fickle heroine is all better now that she's back with the guy she pined for.

30. Image United #2 - This just sucks. I don't know squat about who anyone is or what's going on. Kirkman is shackled by the creators who are his partners so that all these characters have to maintain whatever their creators gave them. I don't know most of them at all, so I'm largely in the dark. There are so many characters that each one gets nearly a nano-second of face time. But for buying the issues with Witchblade's oddly nippleless tits prominently featured, there'd be no redeeming value whatsoever to these two issues. DOA. No mas. I suppose this explains why I didn't read any Image titles until learning about Kirkman's original work.

This month's publisher count (something new): Boom 2, DC 16, Image 6, and Vertigo 10. DC's a little artificially inflated with the three main Blackest Night titles I wouldn't normally get.

Salute to a Writer

Technically, it's the beginning of '10, but this is my shot at writing a little something for the end of '09. Many stories at this time revovle around who has died in the preceding year. I'm going to ride that train and take it to extol a writer who got a late start as a celebrity.

Frank McCourt died July 19 at 78 ,of menningitis and skin cancer. McCourt became famous with the publication of his memoir, Angela's Ashes, in 1996, a mere 13 years ago. That, and the sequel, 'Tis, told the story of McCourt's deprived Depression era childhood in Ireland and subsequent career as a teacher in America. The former won him a Pulitzer.

Now, McCourt was not a comic book writer. Nonetheless, any writer, be it comic book, book, screenplay, or play, should take the time to read these two books. McCourt tells stories better than anyone. Stereotypically, that could be attributed to being Irish, but truthfully, not every Irishman can string together a good story. Still, a culture that celebrates the storyteller doesn't hurt.

While the US in the Depression was in a bad way, in Ireland it was phenomenally worse. McCourt performs the magic of conveying that misery, while telling the funniest stories. He takes a childhood that could be nothing but depressing and finds the humor in the daily trevails. He conveys emotion without being maudlin.

I read far fewer books than I'd like. Fortunately, McCourt's books were given to me as gifts. Along with Alexander McCall Smith, who has probably an even greater skill with the English language, McCourt should be read by all aspiring writers. If any of them learn even a modicum, their own works will be that much better.

A fond farewell, then, to Frank McCourt. He lived a much longer life than a child in Depression era Ireland had a right to expect. He turned adversity into strength. He told tales as well as anyone.

Coincidentally, Douglas MacKinnon, a former White House and Pentagon official who now fanices himself a novelist, provides a succint example of how not to write in the December 31 Baltimore Sun. Well, it's a perfectly fine way to write, if all you're interested in is being snide and critical with no actual solution to a proposed problem. He writes about how the US government is incapable of providing security from terror attacks on US soil. This has been a constant refrain since 9/11/01, particularly from those who think we should surrender all civil liberties in the name of security. MacKinnon, though, isn't even as honest as Dick Cheney, as he never says that's his view. That he only picks at the Obama administration is the only clue a reader has to his prejudices, or bona fides, I suppose, if you're inclined to agree with him. People like MacKinnon never seem to grasp that doing away with our civil rights in the name of physical security is tantamount to surrendering to al-Qaeda and its ilk. If we don't have the freedoms that make us the US, then we're just another power exercising bald power to control others for our own selfish ends, rather than something unique in the history of the world.

Let 2010 Begin

HAPPY

NEW
YEAR'S

From all of us at Comics And..., we wanted to thank you for your support and many, many comments over the past year. We also want you to know that have have much more insanity and general comic book talk planned for the coming year so stick around.