The curse of the mainstream: At CBC News, Dan Brown writes that, in their struggle to be embraced by popular culture, comic books have become too slick and respectable:

"I don't remember my parents coming out and telling me that they disapproved of all the money I blew on comics (and it was a lot), but they didn't have to verbalize their distaste. I just knew. And I don't blame them – after all, comics in the '70s were still suffering from the smear they had suffered two decades before, when it was generally understood they were the root cause for both juvenile delinquency and homosexuality. But here's the thing: I liked that my parents looked down on my favourite reading material. I think my friends liked it, too.

"Knowing we were partaking in something scandalous just reinforced the feeling that comics were a world apart from parents and their rules. We loved them because they allowed us entry into a universe in which we were the authorities, the experts. I could tell you, for example, exactly why my favourite X-man, Wolverine, didn't get along with the team's leader, Cyclops. I may not have been good at math when I was in Grade 4, but I knew all about mutants."