By Jeff Hughes

When I think back in my days in school as my friends and I hid our comics in our desks or lockers so the teachers would not confiscate them or we would get a lecture of how comics would rot our brains

"These books have zero educational value!"

But I can tell you that comics actually enhanced my learning in such subjects as: English and Grammar, Teachers always thought that their were a lot of slang words and a lot of misspelling, however comics were and still are proof read and checked for misspellings, grammar and punctuation. Also while there is some slang words, this could be a good topic to bring up since comics can reflect the language of the time.

Comic Books peeked my interest in reading, and they also helped me in the subject of English,

Crossover!

Is there any more exciting word in the English language to a comics fan?

Or one that fills them with so much dread and so many bad memories?

In honour of DC's Identity Crisis - (a self-contained mini-series that will spill over into a number of other books such as Teen Titans and Outsiders), the Batman family's upcoming War Games event (where for three months, no less than eight Bat-related books will be taking part in a numbered crossover (only the excellent Birds of Prey escapes, because it isn't under editorial control of the Bat-office), and even Marvel's non-crossover Avengers Disassemble (which runs from now until October in a number of Marvel's books - although its not a crossover, it's a number of thematically linked stories), I've decided to dedicate the next few week's column to some of the 'great' crossovers of yester-year.

In the silver age of comic books, comic book companies took ordinary, though highly skilled, super heroes and placed them in rockets, visit alien worlds and fight for the good no matter what type of society there was.

The silver age of comic books lasted approximately from the late 1950's to the early 1970's and during this period, a few attributes of comic book characters started to develop.

It was during this time, that the most interesting developments was the incorporation of science fiction into the storylines. With science fiction at the helm, it was possible to inject a myriad of stories. The ability to stretch the known boundaries put a new spin on tales. In the silver age of comic books, Batman and Robin (who were not super powered) could be placed anywhere, literally anywhere, and they were not confined to earth.

By placing our super heroes in an interplanetary situation, raises the issue that the target society in these other worlds clearly had good versus bad situation. In the silver age of comic books, they took human traits and manifested them in aliens who had special abilities that transcended humans and were perpetually war-like. It was necessary for there to be conflict in the new society, to provide reason for our super heroes to justify their existence.

By fusing science fiction into the comic book format, super heroes and villains could be transformed, or mutated, much more easily. Even the weapons in use could make even Superman pause.