I’m a big comic book fan, or at least I was. Now I generally pick up a graphic novel or a compilation every once in awhile (just read this and this, great writing and visuals) mostly Marvel although the Watchmen and some of the Dark Knight stuff can’t be passed up… Recently though, my wife read a book and strongly recommended it to me: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (also the author of Wonder Boys, Summerland and more)

Now, this book (like most books) isn’t really about the events taking place in the story, it is about the people involved, but it happens to take place through the birth of comics as we know them today. The author interviewed Gil Kane, Stan Lee and many others to really get a feel for that period of time. It certainly worked for me, not only did I love the book so much that I read it across only a few nights (staying up way too late) but I also went out the next day and started looking at buying comic books again (picking up the X-Men books that bring together a whole set of issues with writing by Joss Whedon)… and when I interviewed Ed from GeekTragedy a few days later and saw comic books around his studio, I just had to recommend the book to him as well!