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When I was a child I loved superhero comics. There was nothing quite like a big flashy panel with a BANG, ZAP, POW, and a couple of spandex clad steroid junkies beating each other up to make me smile. Spiderman was funny, Batman was mysterious, Superman was invincible, and Wolverine was just really damn cool. Back then it was all about the pictures and the poses; storyline was not an issue. As I got older I started to drift away from comics until finally; I quit reading them all together. They just couldn't hold my interest anymore; even if they had given Wonderwoman a new set of highly pronounced breasts and a skimpier costume.

As time went by I came back to the world of comics out of sheer boredom. I was on a combat tour with the U.S Army and there just wasn't much to do when we were not out on mission. I asked people back home if they could send me something to read and a lot of my relatives recalled that I had read a lot of comics when I was younger so that was mostly what was sent. I started sorting through the familiar titles and laughing at the feeble attempts on the part of DC and Marvel to make the comic story lines more intelligible. Basically it was cooler spandex, more violent behavior, and inane complexities that were slightly insulting to the reader.

As I reached the halfway point in my deployment I received a package from a friend of mine that contained quite a few back issues of the DC vertigo titles, and my interest was suddenly renewed. I started out devouring an entire run of Sandman and Shadows fall, and then moved into the Invisibles at about the halfway point in the series. Within a year I had read every current issue of a vertigo run series and most of the back issues to boot. That is when I started to lose interest again; this time because the art work sucked. I am mean in some books (Sandman mystery theater for instance) the artwork was so bloody awful that I found I couldn't enjoy the story.

The main problem I see with comic books on a whole is that readers just can't have their cake and eat it too; most of the time. Either the art work is good, but the story is ridiculous to the point where suspension of disbelief just isn't enough (see the DC Bloodlines saga for this), or the artwork looks like it was done by a fourth grader, but the story is excellent. There are however a few comics floating around on the market that satisfy the need for intelligent plot as well as the need for visual gratification. These are the comics that have

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