I'm all about extolling comics' virtues, and pointing out all that's right and good and honest and wonderful about this dear art form and the industry that serves it. I really am. Still, we need to work on things to the point where any adult reader can walk into any decent comic shop once a week with a $5 bill and walk out with a comic at least as good and satisfying and appealing and with as much integrity as the one depicted above. Not a $30 hardcover and not a mini-comic; not a fun superhero book and not some asshole's high concept movie script in comic book form; not a reprint of an old title or a collection of an iconic newspaper strip from 1928 -- although God bless every single one of those things, too. No, what I'm talking about is a compelling, idiosyncratic, lovingly and not too radically formatted, honest-to-goodness well-crafted comic book that wants nothing more than to be a comic book. Our art form's first kiss. Fifty-two times a year. Remember what that's like?
