I would've loved this regardless. It's too smart and too fresh and trusts its reader too much for me not to love it, but would I have loved it quite so much if I hadn't read it right after finishing Batman: The Dark Knight Returns? When the lessons of this book were juxtaposed so beautifully against such an ideal trite, dated example? Impossible to know.

All I can say is that there is so much here I want to talk about...not in a review, but with someone who's read it, whose ideas will push my own in new directions. Because while I'm greatly enjoying my mind being in a bit of a froth about art and trends and boundaries in media and stories and the way stories shape us and the way stories shape further stories and how we respond to and criticize those stories and how those responses shape us, these are not the sorts of thoughts that do their best work in solitary confinement. ( )