I’m continually weirded out by the ink devoted to the comic industry of late. Folks who shop for comics find fewer and fewer places to buy them, but the crit is apparently booming. The Times sums up the weird duality in its holiday book review special, which devotes a full page (!) to new books of "Comics History".

Example:

In GRAPHIC NOVELS: Everything You Need to Know (Collins Design/HarperCollins, paper, $24.95) the major examples (and some obscure ones) - from Will Eisner's groundbreaking "Contract With God" to Daniel Clowes's "Ghost World" and scores more - are astutely summarized and parsed in illustrated capsule reviews. The author, Paul Gravett, a critic and lecturer on comics, covers all the established genres, from horror (Charles Burns's "Black Hole") to autobiography (Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis") to journalism (Joe Sacco's "Palestine") and even the superhuman (Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns").

Emphasis mine. What kind of comic reviewer would ever find the inclusion of spandex optional?

Spandex is the aorta that all these other arteries split off from ("With the exception of the old horror comics," says the dorkbrain.).

Proof of aorta status comes in the arts section of the Sunday Times, which reports that the fellow behind Lost is writing this month's Hulk vs. Wolverine limited series.

This is a guy who can come up with pretty good ides, but he’s not writing a comic about a guy who sits on the subway all day writing bad NIN lyrics. He’s not producing a book filled with grotesquely drawn people. The guy who's making the best network TV show in years is writing six issues of one guy with adamantium claws stabbing another guy who turns into a giant in purple pants. And for this, Marvel shall get another $4 from me.