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Ask Slashdot: Which Comic Books To Start My 3-Year-Old With?
JeepFanatic writes "I've never been one to read comic books, but I've always enjoyed superheroes. My 3-year-old son is really into superheroes (especially Spider-man) and I thought it would be a fun thing to do together to start reading comics to him. Any suggestions on comics that would be more appropriate to start him out with?"
I've been reading collections of the first years of Spidey, the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern and such. They're probably fine for young'uns.
But I'd also look into the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic adventures. The Duckberg folks go on a lot of neat adventures. They have great stories, great artwork, and it will help show that there's more to comics than superheroes.
Fantagraphics is producing a reprint series, and previous collections are readily available.
Try Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner -- read him A.A. Milne, with individual voices for Piglet, Pooh and all the others. You'll both have a ball. Keep him as far away from Walt Disney's insipid versions as you can.
Superman = invincible person who has magic powers for no other reason than accident of birth beats up people with advanced PhDs.
That's always been the big mystery of America superhero fiction to me. The heroes are usually powerful by complete accident (just born that way, bitten by a radioactive lab animal, etc.), while the villains have a strong work ethic, work hard, are very intelligent and highly qualified, etc. And the heroes always win. The moral of the story seems to be it doesn't matter if you work hard, you can't overcome dumb luck. And that intelligence and qualifications are something to be wary of.