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