With its enticing question splashed across the cover, Hillary Chute's Why Comics? invites the reader to consider the connections among comics, comics creators, and the medium's everexpanding audience. Through ten chapters all prefaced by “Why” (“Disaster,” “Superheroes,” “Sex,” “he Suburbs,” “Cities,” “Punk,” “Illness & Disability,” “Girls,” “War,” and “Queer”), Chute examines why the shape-shifting form of comics continues to serve as the perfect vessel for visual storytellers attempting to capture the complexity of the human condition.

As one of the many fortunate and grateful subjects of Hillary Chute's writing over the past few years, I feel ethically compelled to recuse myself from any discourse regarding her most recent book simply because it would seem, well, unsightly. (And in comics, where reading and seeing operate at parity, being unsightly is patently undesirable.) Here's what I can tell you, though: She gets it. And she gets it right. There are few, if any, other writers on comics who so minutely and more thoroughly understand the psychological, aesthetic and perceptual complexities of deploying images as words and drawing as writing—but then quickly go beyond all that stuff to get at the human and humane essence of the works considered. Because comics are essentially just another mode of storytelling, stories are almost always Hillary's focus, and I've known her long enough now—about a dozen years—to know she also believes that of all stories, life itself is the most important one. I'm glad she's ended up being a part of mine, and that, in print, she's also a part of yours.

I'm gratified that the most widely circulated journal in literary studies has solicited the skill and attention of nine such erudite interlocutors, including both critics and creators, to formally respond to my book Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere. It's also a bit of a surprise, albeit a pleasing one, since Why Comics? is my first single-authored book not aimed at the readership of PMLA.