When I was a little kid I never had enough pocket money to buy comics. This was a problem, because my best friend John Zedlewski not only had a comparatively luxurious allowance but also an older brother with a sizable comic collection. It was tough to keep up.

So I had to use what resources I had most efficiently, and that meant buying issues of Marvel Universe -- an incredibly dense comic book that alphabetized all of the characters in Marvel Comics' books and paired portraits with a few hundred words' worth of near-microscopic text. No storylines, just histories, known aliases and how many tons each could bench press "under optimal conditions" (for the record: The Thing, 80 tons; Hulk, 200; Captain America was only good for a downright wussy 800 lbs).

The point of this is that little boys need superhero fantasies the way drunks need booze, and if resources are scarce they will get their fix however possible. My available resources have risen, while maturity seems to have levelled off. Hence, some aesthetically defensible superhero-themed recommendations:

• Watchmen by Alan Moore is widely considered the greatest graphic novel yet produced. Stan Lee invented (or at least popularized) the angst-driven, flawed superhero. A great innovation in comics, to be sure. Unfortunately, Lee is at heart a lovable hack (I aspire to be able to apply this sentence to myself). With Watchmen, Moore takes the flawed hero theme and shows what can be done with it by a real writer. The book's final act devolves into a conventionally silly superhero story, and its focus on Cold War themes obviously feels dated, even if it's appropriate for the material. Still, I can call this art and not feel like a complete jackass. Besides, don't you want to see what comes out of the brain of a guy who looks like this?


• I don't know a lot about Hellboy other than the fact that the movie can't possibly be as bad as the trailers are making it look. I do know, however, that the movie is based on a pretty well-respected series of comics, and that some free webcomics are available online. I'm particularly fond of the corpse -- great art, and a storyline that doesn't aspire to anything
  other than being the nice mood piece that it is. I haven't had a chance to check most of them out, but there are several other comics available online for free; for a complete list, check out this page. Some of these use sound, so be sure to turn the volume down if you're at work.


• Finally, I'll throw a shoutout to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I just finished. I'm way behind on this particular piece of the nerd-fiction canon; don't tell the guys at Slashdot. An enjoyable read, although people have been stealing this book's central idea for long enough that it doesn't exactly seem fresh. Still, it's a good execution of an interesting idea, and it does scratch your inner 10 year old boy's itch for superbeings.