Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers!: Writers on Comics, ed. Sean Howe

Riveting, the subject line! (My only falsehood!) Fine work, the book! Especial praise: Aimee Bender on the value of graphic narrative! Geoff Dyer on how comics shaped his aesthetic sense! Geoffrey O'Brien on the wildness of Jim Steranko's art and our world's strangeness (I simplify, I simply . . . )! Glen David Gold on the obsessiveness of collecting (an involving story)! Chris Offutt (sing of his short fiction!) on the marginal comic character with which he connected! Myla Goldberg on Renée French (my thanks for the introduction; her blog now gives me daily weirdness) and Chris Ware! and Andrew Hultkrans's mental excursions prompted by artist Steve Ditko!

Worth noting for meanderingness: Jonathan Lethem's piece. This reader does not find himself charmed when a writer says, in effect, "Actually, I meant to say--" or "Wow, I got off track," as if the essay were spontaneously stepping full-bodied from said writer's skull and could not be altered rather than being a thing the writer actually spent time crafting and was paid to provide. Bogosity!

And whither Krazy Kat!?