[LostInBayport]

Somehow, we started talking about how we learned to read and write.

Incentive. I wanted to know what Spider-Man was saying and what the villains were saying back to him in my comic books. The villains (and J. Jonah Jameson) always had lots of ways to insult Spidey's intelligence and I had to ask my parents what those words meant. Cretin, dolt, menace, democrat, nuisance, pest, insect...

[Jamestown1630]

Comic books were very big in our house, too. I remember whole summers lost in Wonder Woman and Superman - in between that era’s version of romantic historical novels.

The writers of comic books in those days were actually educated people; a lot of real wit and literacy went into comic books.

-JT