Benjamin Woo, a super-sharp scholar of comics and culture at Simon Fraser University, has posted a review of Hand of Fire to his site, BenjaminWoo.net. It’s very encouraging. Woo calls the book “smart and sharp and learned, but accessible to the interested layperson and shot through with genuine love for the material.” Nice to hear!
Also, Gary Picariello’s review for Yahoo! calls Hand of Fire “enjoyable and thoughtful reading” that “makes the reader think.” I particularly appreciate his description of the book as “critical thinking at its best.”
Meanwhile, Rob Steibel, over at his Kirby Dynamics blog, has nicely sounded the trumpets! Thank you, Rob.
Reader response has started to appear on amazon.com, of course, with the usual mixed results (heh). Nothing like contrasting doses of ego-boosting affirmation and skull-rattling provocation all at once!
HAND OF FIRE 
Hi Charles, got yer newsletter, got my copy ordered, should be here this week, looking forward to it, have been told I would like enjoy yer tome. Been snowed under with vintage comics “work;” meant to write back since re that what I sent you. what did you think of it?
Bob, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet! (You mean your essay on Goodman, Marvel, Kirby et al. that just appeared on the Kirby Dynamics blog, right?)
Snowed under with teaching duties at the moment. I’m looking forward to reading the piece! Thanks, and sorry for my slowness.
Charles, As there is no comment field associated with your “Man vs Mouse” article I assume you aren’t inviting comments on that?
Ah, look again, Patrick!
I had disabled comments trying to work out the larger design of the site, and, truth to tell, I was hoping to funnel comments into the Journal section, just to keep the site looking clean and uncluttered. But when I decided to post on Kirby v. Marvel, I knew I would need to allow a dedicated space for readers’ comments. I just forgot to make the change.
So, a tech error. The Kirby v. Marvel page is now open for commenting.