I would never have started reading comic books if not for Howard the Duck. 1976 - fresh out of high school - I read about the character in the Notes and Comment pages of The New Yorker. Here was evidence that the comics had grown up, that genuine social comedy was possible within the framework of a commercial comic book. It was great while it lasted...

Segar was the first, the original, the greatest: he remains the best proof that "cartoony" comics can function as drama, that they can oftentimes carry more dramatic weight than their more "serious" counterparts. The genius of Popeye is that he was the first comedic cartoon character who wasn't funny: instead, he was deeply, utterly human.

If Howard the Duck showed me that comics were growing up, Doctor Strange proved it. Here was genuine mysticism, not the fake stuff Hollywood gives us. Pretentious without ever failing to be entertaining, full of faux intellect and soap-opera dramatics, Dr. Strange was a magical combination for a lad in his early twenties.

Most writers -- including the much-vaunted Peter David -- simply don't know what to do with the Hulk. Probably his series should have been cancelled years ago. But oh, in its day... when the Hulk was not a rampaging beast, but simply a child given ultimate power and pursued by establishment figures bent on breaking, controlling, defeating that child...

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