Comics and cultivating nerd children

If you don't know where to find a comic book store, try googling "comic shop locator service". Diamond Comics has a site that allows you to type in your ZIP code and find comic stores near you.

I think this is the root of all my disagreements with you - with the exception of Batman, most D.C. superheroes were goody-two-shoe twits.

Well, they were certainly square, but from ages 4 to 8, which was my prime comic book period, one appreciates clarity and the absence of darkness. I think if I had stuck with comics after about the age of 9, I would have grown bored with the DC universe, and gone over to Marvel.

When I was growing up you could buy comics in the party stores, like 7-Eleven, as well as the grocery stores. I was only into the Archie comics though. Wouldn' mind reading a couple of Archies now.

I was about 13 when my parents introduced me to it. A life-changing event. I suppose, all in all, it depends on how much of it you want him to understand; there's some more subtle humor mixed in with the obvious stuff.

Comic books might not be popular anymore but I hope you've at least exposed your child to the Calvin & Hobbes treasuries? My daughters devoured those again and again. There are some graphic novels targeted to younger kids that have been a huge hit with one of my girls. The Bone books by Jeff Smith and Spiral-bound by Aaron Renier are at the top of her favorites list.

Well, they were certainly square, but from ages 4 to 8, which was my prime comic book period, one appreciates clarity and the absence of darkness. I think if I had stuck with comics after about the age of 9, I would have grown bored with the DC universe, and gone over to Marvel.

I guess I was lucky in that my Dad started me on Spiderman when I was 5 or 6 years old. I still remember it - I was home sick from school with the flu, and he came home from work with a bottle of Vernor's Ginger Ale to warm up for me, and two issues of The Spectacular Spiderman - one of them had to do with Mysterio using the ghost of Gwen Stacy, (who was murdered by the Green Goblin) to haunt Peter Parker, and the other one ended with Spidey being chained up and kicked off the top of the Brooklyn Bridge by The Tarantula. Pretty intense stuff for a little kid, but I loved it.

I first got into comics when I was around 7, through the X-Men. I've sort of drifted in and out of interest since then (I'm 24 now), though I recently picked up a few subscriptions. I was always more of a Marvel fan, largely because the Marvel heroes and their setting just made more sense to me. For a young kid who had only vague understandings that he was "different", the notion of "mutants" who have to hide who they are because normal people would hate them otherwise was an incredible revelation. That these same despised mutants could be heroes was an absolute lifesaver as I grew up.

As to the Pythons, I was introduced to them via my dad while I was still in diapers. My mom still cringes when I put on a British accent and say something absurd. A watery tart dispensing swords from a pond may be no basis for a system of government, but could she really have done any worse that what we've had these last 7 years?

Ah, the age-old question: Betty or Veronica? Mary Ann or Ginger? Bailey or Jennifer? :)

you'll be glad to know that I spotted the Complete Don Martin collection in Barnes and Noble this past weekend. will have to add it to my amazon wishlist

Ga-shklurtz!!!

Hey, when I was a little kid growing up in the Baton Rouge media market, Channel 33, the UHF station, had a Saturday night horror host, Dr. Shock. His show lasted for a few years in the early to mid Seventies; I think the debut of Saturday Night Live in '75 killed it off. Shock was a mad scientist who introduced an old horror film each week. Oh, it was glorious stuff. I learned to love saying the words "Bela Lugosi" and "Boris Karloff." I'd make my mom stay up with me -- I was five, six, seven years old -- and I'd never seem to make it to the end at midnight. In retrospect, given my extremely active imagination (and given that I was a chronic sleepwalker who would get caught up in vivid dreams and ambulate throughout the house), it was crazy for my folks to let me watch that stuff. But man, did I love me some Dr. Shock. I remember him answering a viewer's question about how one becomes a mad scientist by saying that you have to drink blood, bwahahahahahaha! Well, when I'd get a scratch, and it would scab over, I'd wait till nobody was looking, peel the scab off, and lick the wound so I could start my dream career early.

Like I said, fat and socially awkward. And a blood-licker! If only my parents had known. Thanks Dr. Shock!

Now, speaking as a liberal mom, we don't think our 13 year old is ready for MP & The Holy Grail. We've watched scenes on You Tube (the anarcho-syndicalist commune bit is our favorite, followed closely by "She's a witch!"), but there are some parts I'm not ready for her to see (the wedding scene [huge tracts of land], the grail beacon).

A related question is, how do you raise a smart, bookish, non-athletic boy in a culture that reveres sports and picks on kids who can't run fast or catch a ball?

Rod: "Which is fine with me: a properly cultivated nerd child should develop a healthy interest in all things Python, and I count it as a deprivation that I didn't hear about the Pythons until college. But what age is the proper age to start? I put that question to the room."

Rod, don't neglect the other excellent British programs that were around post-Python: The Goodies, Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf, The Vicar of Dibley, BlackAdder, and (after he gets a bit older) Are You Being Served, The Prisoner, and of course, Dr. Who.

Connie: "A related question is, how do you raise a smart, bookish, non-athletic boy in a culture that reveres sports and picks on kids who can't run fast or catch a ball?"

It's a bit dated, but this is a good story to tell your kids.

An answer to the eternal question "Is it better to be a jock or a nerd?"

Michael Jordan will make over $300,000 a game: $10,000 a minute, assuming he averages about 30 minutes per game.

Assuming $40 million in endorsements next year, he'll be making $178,100 a day (working or not)!

Assuming he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums dance in his head.

If he goes to see a movie, it'll cost him $7.00, but he'll make $18,550 while he's there.

If he decides to have a 5 minute egg, he'll make $618 while boiling it. He makes $7,415/hr more than minimum wage (after the wage hike).

He'll make $3,710 while watching each episode of Friends.

If he wanted to save up for a new Acura NSX ($90,000) it would take him a whole 12 hours.

If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have to do it at the rate of $2.00 every second.

He'll probably pay around $200 for a nice round of golf, but will be reimbursed $33,390 for that round.

Assuming he puts the federal maximum of 15% of his income into his tax deferred account (401k), he will have hit the federal cap of $9500 for such accounts at 8:30 a.m. on January 1st, 1998.

If you were given a tenth of a penny for every dollar he made, you'd be living comfortably at $65,000 a year.

He'll make about $19.60 while watching the 100 meter dash in the Olympics. He'll make about $15,600 while the Boston Marathon is being run.

While the common person is spending about $20 for a meal in his trendy Chicago restaurant, he'll pull in about $5600.

Next year, he'll make more than twice as much as all of our past presidents for all of their terms combined. Amazing isn't it?

But:

Jordan will have to save 100% of his income for 270 years to have a net worth equivalent to that of Bill Gates.

Nerds win!

On another note - I will always remember my first Mad magazine: a "completely nailed it" take on "The Poseidon Adventure" ignominously named "The Poopside-down Adventure". Good stuff! Many giggles!

I love "Life of Brian," and consider it a brilliant satire, but I would hold off on letting young people watch it. It's one thing to skewer religious foolishness, but it's another to mock Christ Himself or the Christian faith, and I think the movie crosses the line a few times.

Of course, that's something they wanted to do, and no doubt they don't mind offending Christians. I'm an adult and am not bothered by it. But young people might be negatively affected by such a cynical view of Christianity, before they can handle it.

One reason for the decline of comic books is the rise of movies that cater to the same adolescent mindset. I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that the daydreams of youth can find fulfillment in movies.

Just the other day I watched parts of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" again. For some reason the whole thing is available online:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4372925119476298797

You just can't beat it. Go to the 50 minute mark and see if it doesn't give you chills (at least for me it did, because I remembered the first time I saw it). That's spectacular filmmaking, and more memorable than any comic book. It fulfills the desire in all of us to be a superhero (and in this case even a bookish one).

My first thought when reading Major Wooten's post was "Waitasec, how did he get #140 in 1967 if Thor only debuted in 1962? Was it a weekly book at one point?" Thanks to wikipedia, I now know it's because "The Mighty Thor" was a re-title of the much older "Journey into Mystery".

Thank God I found a job where this sort of obsessive retention of seemingly pointless information is actually useful.

Cathleen, alas no. I can only suggest the wonders that are E-bay and Craigs list. Now, back to work! (Swore I wasn't going to get sucked in today ......)

Oh and thanks to Richie, I STILL want to get my helicopter pilot's license some day.

I was never a big comics fan, but once in high school, loved Monty Python, though I could never bring myself to watch the Life of Brian. A singing Jesus on the cross was more than I could bear.
My husband and I have slowly introduced scenes of Monty Python's The Holy Grail to our daughters on Youtube. I think I'll wait until they're in their mid to late teens to let them see the whole thing, both for their understanding of satire and irreverence, and because they both have an uncanny ability to quote lines of movies after just one viewing. I really don't want to have to explain to neighbors, Sunday school teachers, grandparents, et al, why my daughters are saying, "Spank me!", "No, spank me!"

Jim -- I work in medical billing. Dealing with the insurance and healthcare infrastructure in this country requires an ability to memorize and recall countless bits of arcane and counterintuitive (and often counterproductive) rules, regulations, exceptions, etc. The ability grasp complex systems of obligation and expectation that have no relationship with reality or logic helps too.

Incidentally, these were also useful skills in college as a Religious Studies major.

My dad used to watch Python Sunday nights. I can remember sneaking out of my room when I was really little, this had to be 1973 or 1974 when I was three or four years old, hiding in the hallway where I had a good view of the living room television set, and trying not to make any noise so I wouldn't be caught. Luckily, dad was very hard of hearing, the television set's volume was turned way up covering every laugh. Between Python and my parents' shared love of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror on TV, I got warped very early on.

The comics... they came as soon as I had a disposable income from a larger allowance. I started with Marvel's Star Wars because the story lines were easily accessible, and I can remember how excited I was when one of my letters to the editors got published in Star Wars #95. I got interested in X-Men and all the spin-offs in high school. Marvel always was much more interesting than DC for me; the story lines were much more nuanced than DC's. And then there were the indies. One boyfriend (who also professionally trained at the Joe Kubert School later on in life) got me heavily into Cerebus the Aardvark (Dave Sim). Another boyfriend and I visited the Mad Magazine office in NYC one afternoon, got in... and hung out and met some very cool people!

I met Terry Gilliam one day while he was browsing through the toy store where I was working. I was too stunned to let him know that I knew who he was, and how he was directly responsible for warping my young nerd-girl brain.

Thanks for the great post, Rod!

" 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' or however Wordsworth put it, remembering the Marvel comics equivalent of his day." - Major Wootton

Wordsworth was hymning thus, in "The Prelude," the French Revolution, whose rivers of blood prompted a rethink before long. Next line: "But to be young was very Heaven."

I was, c. 1969-74, a Harvey Comics lad - Sad Sack, Richie Rich, Hot Stuff, Little Dot, Little Lotta, Stumbo the Giant, Jackie Jokers (a pint-sized standup-comic), Little Audrey. Before inflation both general and in paper costs jacked up prices and shrunk page counts, I'd hie me down after delivering the Star and Tribune to the local (Burnsville, MN, near Minneapolis) convenience stores, Tom Thumb and PDQ, for my weekly fix, including Jolly Rancher and Now and Later candies, and the Wacky Packages stickers Sheilagh mentions above. We'd trade the latter with each new series - a Mob-themed takeoff on Ronzoni pasta - called "Run Tony Shells" - featured a wiseguy fleeing a rain of bullets, and was so rare I had to fork over about 40 lesser cards such as All-Brain
(bowl full of pinkish, wrinkled matter) and a Drano spoof called Dr. Ono...

The kiddie-show horrormeisters I can remember include Sir Graves Ghastly (lower Michigan) and The Cool Ghoul (Cincinnati; more an afternoon cartoon host, I think, than horrowshow proper).

But MAD also held pride of place: Al Jaffee's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" was a favorite. Man sees another with mouth ablaze: "Is your food too hot?" One answer among several: "It's hard to tell with a mouthful of seared flesh."

As for the immortal work of Don Martin, the Washington Post's resident George Steiner, Michael Dirda, paid tribute last December:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602820_pf.html

"In these bountiful pages, one can duly enjoy variation after variation of Rapunzel, discover dozens of dismaying outcomes when the Princess kisses a frog (in one, a frog kisses the new prince back into frogginess), and return again and again to a firing squad or a medieval dungeon or an innocent-seeming encounter at a park bench. Many sets of drawings bear generic titles: "One Fine Day at the Corner of South Finster Boulevard and Fonebone Street" or "Early One Morning on a Desert Island" or, less simply, "One Night in the Acme Ritz Central Arms Waldorf Plaza Statler Hilton Grand Hotel."

Finally, The Onion did a fine straight-news parody of the MAD universe:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27813 [don't miss the file photo]

Body Of Missing Mad Magazine Reporter Found In Blecchistan

...Though many of the specifics regarding Fonebone's murder remain unclear, some details are known. The body was badly decomposed, but coroners identified it by its oversized, folded-over feet. As for the identity of the perpetrators, reports suggest the involvement of one or more mysterious, trench-coated espionage agents dressed in either all-white or all-black clothing, and described as "angular, birdlike males with wide-brimmed, pointy hats."

...At the time of his capture, Fonebone was tracking down members of the al-Jaffi terrorist network, a group widely believed responsible for the devastating Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions Atrocities, a string of May suicide bombings intended to undermine efforts to establish democracy in Blecchistan. Asked if they knew anything about rumored al-Jaffi involvement in the Fonebone murder, suspects detained in connection with the bombings replied only with a series of three sarcastic variations on "No," leaving a fourth response blank for State Department officials to fill in themselves...

"Phil Fonebone was a tireless crusader in the fight for a free press," managing editor Roger Kaputnik said...Time and time again, Mad has faced the threats of oppression and tyranny...We have taken plenty of lumps—tall, elongated lumps circled by chirping birds and musical notes—yet we've never given in. Or folded in...Phil Fonebone's death was truly a 'Ker-Schlumpf!' heard 'round the world."

Rod: My son (6) in the past year got into comics because of Spider-Man. We went to a couple of comics shops to look for stuff, and, my god, the comics on the shelves now seem almost demonic in their stories, artwork and the depths of violence/sex/immorality they sink to. I know Spiderman and the traditional comics had violence too, but not like many have now. I don't know how many times I had to steer my son away to another section to look. We ended up having to buy comics from the 60's and 70's to find anything decent for him to read. I actually started looking for Classic Comics and wondering why someone doesn't try to revive that. I didn't mind buying the older comics, it's just funny I had to go that far back to find something almost worthwhile. For all the closet comic-geeks, please don't respond to defend the genre-I really don't care about comics, and thankfully, my son has drifted on to more simpler pursuits like LEGO (thank God).

As for Python, I grew up listening to their albums and occassionally seeing them on PBS at about 8-9 years old. Perhaps a bit young, but it hasn't scarred me too much. What I can't stand about the Python fans is that sooo many people's knowledge of Python consists only of the Holy Grail. My goodnes, there's so much other great(er) stuff they did than that movie. My brothers (all six of them) and I can quote entire sketches and episodes of the tv series and their albums, and yet we almost never quote Hoy Grail, probably because everyone in the world does (and badly I might add).

The first round of kids saw Holy Grail at 11, 12 and 14; we skipped over parts of the Castle Anthrax, too, and waited until the little ones were in bed (we thought. Our then-2-yr-old went around saying "Dona eis requiem" and smacked himself in the head with a book, for weeks.) Daughter #1 does a great "She turned me into a newt!" "A newt?!" "Well, I got better." There are so many good lines, it's a shame to not be able to use them on a teenager: "Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?" Our bedroom remodel involved reinforced shelves to accomodate his collection.

My 40-year-old husband buys comic books and rocks on Ebay (as Internet problems go, it's pretty tame); lots of Neil Gaiman, X-men, and all the Justice Leagues. I used to read some of them when we were first married, in order to show an interest in his interests, but then I read some of the letters to the editor. Do you know that there are "adults" who spend time concerned about comic book continuity? That is, the next version of Hawkman has to somehow fit in with all the previous versions. I just can't imagine that ever getting to the top of the 'to-do' list.

cb,
Betty AND Veronica
LOL.
The Joe Simon book does sound interesting - as does the recent "Our Gods Wear Spandex". (For the record, I'm Betty, Bailey and Mary Ann all the way. Simple pleasures, that's what I like - like "peasant food", from pretty much any culture you care to name.)

Jim,
Bailey was one of my first youthful media crushes (the others being Teri Garr in "Young Frankenstein" and Marilu Henner in "Taxi")... Jan Smithers was the Tina Fey of our generation, as far as I'm concerned.

You really should check out Green Lantern... I also recommend *some* Wonder Woman, most especially the George Perez era ('87-'92).

Sheilagh,
Wacky Stickers! I had a notebook full of them! They were brilliant. "Air Raid deodorant - destroys the body odor... and the body!"

As a confirmed Betty/Mary Ann/Bailey man m'self, and a quadra-cylindrical blend of each male on Gilligan's Island [Gilligan's ingenuous holy-foolishness, Skipper's girth (in progress), the Professor's know-all polymathic finesse (purest fakery in my case), and Thurston Howell's clench-jawed patrician drawl], I'd think it a shame if this thread died without a single torch hoist aloft in knightly fealty to Betty Rubble, that wasp-waisted, raven-coiffed jar of Stone Age honey who had every nine-year-old propeller-beanie'd lad from Ketchikan to Keokuk choking on his Milfy Way bar, pining with a fever neither seen nor heard till the Judge in Sweeney Todd hymned his hellfired torment over his ill-gotten ward, the fair Joanna...

Speaking of MAD, the magazine CRACKED, which was to MAD what MAD TV was to Saturday Night Live, recently posted "5 Retro Commercials Companies Would Like You to Forget":

http://www.cracked.com/article_15852_5-retro-commercials-companies-would-like-you-forget.html

The video-Prousts *recherched* within feature the Flintstones and Rubbles dragging the line in Stone-Age tobacco, Jello trying and failing to pull a Rawlence of A Labia in going native with our gelatinophile neighbors from the East, a Folgers spot wherein hubby warns wife she might lose the family conjugals to his tight-skirted stenography pool if her way with the morning java fails to perk up, and Armstrong's bid in asbesto-seven series to ensure that tobacco alone had no monopoly in evoking litigiously Lungian argghhetypes.

Ah, to see Bedrock's finest hawking smokes - those were the days - when a couple of cave men could steal away for a Winston, so as not to be tortured by the sight of the wives whacking carpet and trimming bush...

I remember going to Robb's Drug Store when I was really small, like four or five years old, and buying comic books and a cold bottle of Coke -- the little six-ounce (or was it eight-ounce?) bottles they used to sell -- out of an old-style vending machine. I can still hear the ka-chink of the vertically-stacked bottles as they moved into position when the thirsty customer pulled one out. There was really nothing quite as satisfying to kindergarten me than holding a small stack of new Richie Riches and Archie Comics Digests and Supermans in one hand, and an ice-cold bottle of Coke in the other, and following my mom to the cash register. And if I got a Snickers bar out of the deal too, well, hell man, I immanentized the eschaton right there!

Ah Erik - you and I could be best buds methinks.

- I have the George Perez era Wonder Woman issues - loved 'em!
- Ditto Terri Garr

And double-ditto wacky packages! I loved me my "Koduck film for ducks - smile at the birdie!" sticker and "Slaytex Gloves" and countless others plastered on my book covers and binders. (For those not aware of this bit of pop culture, I refer you to www.wackypackages.org/bestof/weakies.html for a sampling of some of the classics)

My 4th grade speech therapist was rather ingenious in getting her pupils to work on speaking by having us design and present our own spoof advertizements.

Lastly, I will join Scott in a toast to Betty Rubble - being the sentimental chap that I am, I remember absolutely bawling the first time I saw the cartoon where Betty cries on Barney's shoulder that they didn't have a baby (problem solved when Bam-bam arrives at their door). Made a big impression on me - misting up a bit as I type this :-) Poor Mom always said I was "sensitive" :-)

Ah, yes - Charlton Comics - the bottom of the comic book pecking order. They were generally awful but don't forget the great stuff Steve Ditko did for them in "Captain Atom" and "Blue Beetle." And there was Charlton's last gasp in the 70's with "E-Man," whose trusty sidekick, Nova Kane, was likely the first "erotic dancer" to appear in the comics.

Also in terms of hysterically funny, my husband and I came across The Vicar of Dibley's Christmas pageant late one night.

Truly funny.
Herod: No no don't kill the children. I said kiss them. Here's some candy.
Preschool Children "We love you Herod."

It was great.

We could finance our kids' college educations today on all those old (1960-1968) DC Comics that I eventually threw away. It *kills* me that I let go of them, but no one thought in terms of "collectibles" in those days.

I dunno about Monty Python or Blackadder for kids. For one thing, who here can raise their hand and say they even *get* all the jokes? To me, a lot of Monty Python is highly UK-local; based on regional jokes, accent jokes, etc. Our kids got a few tapes from the library, but didn't find it engaging (mostly because some of the routines were really obscure.) They did like the Holy Grail though (it was self defense to a certain degree, just so they could know what their parents were talking about...)

At about age 13 or so, ours lost their taste for American comics and started reading manga - which are *very* different from their US counterparts.

"Vicar" rules!

And, yes, Betty Rubble as well.

Jim,

- I have the George Perez era Wonder Woman issues - loved 'em!
- Ditto Terri Garr

You have Teri Garr?! ;)

Erin,
I have to agree... for my money the Spanish Inquisition sketch was always a little overrated. You have to get a little deeper into the catalog - "Upper Class Twit of the Year", "Philosopher's Football Match", and of course brilliantly geeky "Argument Clinic", to get the prime comedy.

"I came here for an argument!"

"Oh, sorry, this is Abuse."

Decades before the Internet, they predicted it so clearly -- truly, the Pythons are modern prophets.

Bloom County -- man, what a great, great strip that was. Remember how Berke Breathed nearly died in some kind of sports accident, and when he came back from his hiatus the strip wasn't funny anymore? A similar thing happened with The Far Side; Gary Larson took a sabbatical, and when he returned, bam, his muse had deserted him. Wonder why? The two greatest strips of the 1980s, and the bottom fell out overnight.

I loved Bloom County even though I was already defining myself on the other side of the political spectrum by the time I was reading it. As for The Far Side--a class of its own, really; all you have to do half the time is say things like "That one where the malevolent bird is sitting in a nest full of binoculars--and you're looking at him *through the lenses of a pair of binoculars*...." and people remember.

My brother and I once combed through a stack of "Calvin and Hobbes" books trying to remember who it was who had the most mind-numbing job on the planet. (Archaeologists, as it turned out.) Newspaper comics just haven't been the same in recent years--though I'm finding "Pearls Before Swine" rather intriguing, if only because their author seems like a seriously-disturbed-in-a-good-way sort of writer/artist...

Calvin and Hobbes is awesome for bright young boys.

Id have him watch "The Princess Bride" first brfore Python.

Steve

Lio definitely gets my nod for favorite new MSM comic.

Just did the Lio Shuffle m'self, at

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

and liked what I saw, about a month's worth. Favorite moments: kids on school bus, laughing gobs in fullest cavernous bore like Bart and Lisa Simpson watching Itchy and Scratchy; missing bagel supplying spare tire for stranded Pillsbury Doughboy, Poppin' Fresh,

http://www.uspto.gov/go/kids/soundex/76163189.mp3 ['hee-hee!']

and Lio's aeronautic upending of the running-with-scissors diktat.

Fun for all ages, nostalgic and futurist at once.

mm:

But we Romans are rich. We've got a lot of gods. We've got a god for everything. The only thing we don't have a god for is premature ejaculation... but I hear that's coming quickly...Boy, when you die at the palace, you really DIE at the palace!

www.imdb.com/title/tt0082517/quotes

Wow, IK, any five-paneler with an episode that ends like this -

http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/migrnboy5.jpg

can't be all bad...

[see top row, rightward five, out of order, at http://tinyurl.com/2lph6k]

Rod,
I just had to reply to this. Long time comic geek here. Every month my daughters and I await my shipment from dcbs.com. I was the managing partner of a comic store for almost 10 years and I it sad that a specialty store is almost the only place a kid is gonna find comics these days. It is also sad that so many of them aren't appropriate for kids. Unless you have a helpful and knowledgeable clerk/friend/parent it can be difficult to navigate. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being able to read stories that are appropriate for my age, but it should be easy for a parent or a kid to go in and get something decent. Now for some short recommendations for kid friendly comics.
DC-DC has an Johnny DC line that are comic versions cartoons such as scooby doo, powerpuff girls, Legion of Superheros, etc. Some of them are better than their "older" counterparts.

Gemstone has been reprinting a lot of the old Carl Barks Donald Duck stuff. Classic.

Bone by Jeff Smith of Course.
Thieves and Kings-great mix of traditional comic art/writing with long bits of prose writing.
Asterix the Gaul (If you like TinTin, probably already familiar with these)
Amelia Rules
Allison Dare (girl archeological adventure)
Leave it to Chance (Female Johnny Quest, if your dad was mystical protector of earth, instead of scientist)
Pakkin's Land (Narnia like)
Mouse Guard (great for boys)
Groo the Wander by Sergio Leones
Akiko
Ranma 1/2 is pretty tame and a lot funny. My girls think it's a riot when he gets turned into a girl. But use caution, some nudity.
Abadazad by J.M Dematteis . Great book but he has a tendency to insert hinduism into his writings.
Zondervan had recently come out with a very good line of Christian comics (and trust me I have seen plenty of bad ones) My oldest daughter's (8) favorite so far is Tomo:I was an 8th grade Ninja but she is waiting to check out the superhero one.
There are more I could list of great historical comics, biographical comics, classics illustrated, even one called Action Philosophers. I love comics and really think it is worth the effort to get kids reading them. 30 years from now, they won't remember playing their gameboy, but setting reading comics with dad will stick out in their minds, as well as other things I hope.

As to the Python question. I would say 10. Can't say how old I was when I saw the beginning of The Meaning of Life as the second feature of the drive in theater. The office building/pirate ships was weird and cool and I was disappointed when my mom and her friends decided this movie looked to weird for their kids.

M from A,
Thanks for the list! You have a few I don't... [scurries off to dig them up]

My daughter actually liked Mouse Guard as well (she also loves the Redwall books), and just this weekend I passed her my Groo collection. My wife and I enjoyed Ranma, but will wait a little longer before sharing it with her. On the anime front, we also loved Kamichu, as well as (of course) most of Hayao Miyazaki... daughter is especially fond of The Cat Returns (which is not Miyazaki, but is from the same studio).

M from A,
A question on Tomo - how "Christian" is it? i.e., does it preach doctrine or is it more a "values" type comic?

Thanks,
Erik

Franklin,

There's the Elektra:Assassin mini-series by Miller with art by Bill Sienkiewicz too! Another master-work. Between that and the Watchmen series, what a wonderful summer that was for a comics junkie!

One more post, then I'll let this topic go... :)

I just couldn't let it die without sharing the truly remarkable "Gaslight Justice League" - steampunk/gaslight reworkings of the main Marvel pantheon action figures:
www.sillof.com/C-Gaslight.htm

M from A,
Yes it does - thanks! I've seen enough material aimed at kids where the main purpose is prosetylization that I've become wary.

my husband,son and daughter all read comics,and i-and my kids-watch monty python-!!!!