Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!: Writers on Comics
As we always knew, 1950s scaremongers were wrong: not only does overindulgence in comic books not dissuade young readers from prose, but some very famous writers grew up addicted to comics. Howe has lined up a remarkable bunch of essayists, including Luc Sante, Greil Marcus, Jonathan Lethem and Brad Meltzer, to write about their favorite funny books. Many revisit the comics of their youth with amused distance—the Marvel vs. DC rivalry, the wonders of Jack Kirby's cosmology and Steve Ditko's crabbed mysticism. A few analyze specific series: Steve Erickson takes on Howard Chaykin's boundary-pushing '80s titleAmerican Flagg, and Gary Giddins traces howClassics Illustratedcelebrated a part of the literary canon that was dying. Some of the most striking contributions, though, are very personal pieces by self-consciously comics-obsessed writers: Glen David Gold recounting his tormented attempts to buy original comics art from a dealer who'd have nothing to do with him; Sante explaining the power of the "clear-line" style ofTintincartoonist Hergé on his boyhood self; and Meltzer (who's now a comics writer and novelist) discussing his near-sexual fascination with a mid-'80sNew Teen Titansstory line. The book includes some of today's most elegant writing on comics, a worthy companion to Lupoff and Thompson'sAll in Color for a Dime(1997), the previous standard in the field.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.