TALES OF THE TEEN #42 (May 1984) DC Comics

Brad Meltzer wrote a 9-page essay on GIVE OUR REGARDS TO THE ATOMSMASHERS called "How I Spent The Summer With the Judas Contract", describing his puberty experience with Tara Markov (he was 14 at the time).

Meltzer is a successful novelist who, as it turns out, a big fan of comics. He's currently writing novels as well as comics. His latest project is IDENTITY CRISIS... and as far as I know, have had rave reviews (although, from what I've seen, most women were unhappy about the choice of the victim).

The chapter frontspiece has George Perez's art of Tara in her makeup & smoking from TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #42 (May 1984).

The book is edited by Sean Howe and is currently only available in hardcover with a retail price of $24.95. It is a little expensive, but it is worth checking out if you're in a book store.

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GIVE OUR REGARDS TO THE ATOMSMASHERS!: WRITERS ON COMICS
by SEAN HOWE (Editor)
List Price: $24.95
Hardcover: 240 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 8.75 x 0.75 x 6.50
Publisher: Pantheon Books; (June 29, 2004)
ISBN: 0375422560

From Publishers Weekly
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 title American Flagg, and Gary Giddins traces how Classics Illustrated celebrated 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 of Tintin cartoonist Hergé on his boyhood self; and Meltzer (who's now a comics writer and novelist) discussing his near-sexual fascination with a mid-'80s New Teen Titans story line. The book includes some of today's most elegant writing on comics, a worthy companion to Lupoff and Thompson's All in Color for a Dime (1997), the previous standard in the field.
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