Howard the Duck sent up the ’70s and parodied Marvel’s purple prose style (“The ghastly rumble of the explosion reverberates off the Pocono mountainsides—a sonorous death burp echoing into eternity. …”), but the book grew into something deeper. Howard raged against the glorification of violence, had a nervous breakdown, lost Beverly to Dr. Bong, was transformed into a man, and, in the end, rejected his friends and bitterly set out on his own, trying to forget a past of pointless superfights. One issue was all text; another took place entirely on a long bus trip. These were surreal flights of fancy with razor-tipped wings, America’s answer to Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

What I like most about the piece is that it dispenses with the post-Kavalier and Clay veneration of golden and silver age comics and recognizes that, at heart, they aren’t much more than fun cultural artifacts:

The clunky comic books written for Marvel and DC (the two biggest comic book companies) in the 1960s and ’70s may have acquired a certain retro chic, yet they bear almost no relation to the comic books of today. Marvel was the House That Squares Built, and in the kingdom of the unhip, Gerber was the only writer who had a clue.

[large snip]

Gerber was the amphibian stage in the evolution of comic books, from when they swam in the funny-book oceans to the modern age, when graphic novels walk the earth and earn glowing reviews in the New York Times.

The early superhero books were obviously important to their historical contexts. And I like a good old-school Justice League of America 100-Page Super Spectacular as much as anyone. But the deification of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Siegel & Shuster, et. al. can be tiresome. This is a nice, if minor, corrective.

In other comics news, I’m definitely going to get this book.

But tonight, after reading another of the many annoying encomiums to suddenly retired Bob Knight (typical gist: Sure the Texas Tech coach was a jerk, but what an old-school winner!), I dug out an old piece that’s among the 30 percent of less-embarrassing stuff. It’s an editorial I wrote for The Diamondback in September 2000, when Knight was fired as Indiana’s coach. I’m reproducing it here because even my 20-year-old self seems to have been more mature (if not a tad more naive) than the sportswriters who now, as then, ultimately excuse Knight’s idiocy for his wins. Even this column at SI.com, which ostensibly blasts Knight, is really just faulting him for quitting on the team. So hop into the wayback machine, do a little Wayne’s World dream sequence hand-dance, and check it:

*****

It took 29 years of looking the other way, acting out of greed instead of with maturity, and putting success ahead of common decency, but Indiana University’s powers-that-be have finally decided to grow up.

The school’s trustees stood up to men’s basketball coach Bob Knight on Sunday, firing him after years of condoning his inappropriate, offensive, hurtful and childish behavior to put a winning team on the court. The decision is a victory for college students nationwide, because in firing their living legend Indiana’s trustees had to stop looking at basketball as a business and Knight as their perpetual meal ticket, and put students’ interests above their own financial concerns.

Knight enjoys nearly universal recognition as both a basketball mastermind and an unparalleled jerk. Until Sunday, he also enjoyed nearly total immunity from this latter condition; as long as he was winning games and selling seats, nobody much cared if he threw chairs, strangled players or cursed out subordinates.

Besides, he was just a coach — it’s not like he was a role model for students.

Does anyone seriously think, if a professor or other university administrator did any of the things Knight was accused of, that he or she would not be fired instantly, run out of town and sued for millions of dollars? It’s a great lesson for college students: Your professors can’t treat you badly, but don’t worry about that renegade lunatic basketball coach. After all, he wins championships! …

Of course many college coaches are notorious for their tempers; just look at Terrapin men’s coach Gary Williams. But there’s a difference between Williams — and John Thompson, Bob Huggins and other fiery coaches — and Knight: By most accounts, Williams is an amiable person who treats others, particularly his players, with respect.

There is a fine line between yelling and acting like a madman in the name of competition and just behaving like a jerk. But when it’s clear that the line has been crossed, as was the case with Knight for many years, ignoring such behavior undermines the primary goal of any college or university: to help its students become better adults.

It’s hard to do that when the people in charge act like little kids.

But with the “lyrics” consisting of sung-chanted portions of an actual Obama speech, and with the participants not once winking (see: Scarlett “Yeah, I Made a Tom Waits Covers Album” Johansson singing at a sibilant-dulling mic screen), the video basically is a cross between “Voices That Care” and the brilliant Ali G sketch where he beatboxes to a nuclear protester’s embarrassingly dreadful protest song.

Observe:

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Still, none of them holds a candle to the best celebrity song of all time: Rockers to Help Explain Whitewater.