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GROWING UP WITH COMICS

"Growing Up With Comics" is a lovely social history of a time and place linked through the issues of maturation in which the comic stood, for a time, as a medium of exchange and a subject of general interest. I also remember it as a  subject of debate, the industry code imposed because adults thought some too  powerful for our young minds (the bums!). And the gradual increase in comics that made the buying of them a struggle rather than a reflex. And then there is the whole issue of communities that one builds, both in youth and in maturity where it becomes a cohesive element in the worlds that we built. 
 
What blew me away in the pages was the way R.G. Taylor captured the covers of the old comics themselves, not slavishly but in a manner that conveyed both the style of the comic covers depicted through the medium of this black and white's consistent styling. That's really lovely, and the use of artwork by others, noted carefully in the page, again mediated by Taylor's style so they don't stand apart from the story but are folded in, well, that is very nice indeed. 
 
Tom Koch, author.