I was sitting on the subway train trying to finish my new issue of "Batman: Gotham Knights" before I got back to work and stepped into reality again and I began to reflect (which really screws you up when you are trying to finish something)...

Kids don't read comic books anymore.

When did that happen? How did I get hooked into like this when I was a kid and children today only know about Pokemon comic books?

Also, on that note, kids don't collect any type of sports cards. I remember when we would blow our 50 cents (then 745 cents and then a dollar) on a pack of baseball cards hoping you would get a Mark McGwire rookie card and instead you would get the card of a guy who rode the bench so much, there wasn't even an action shot on the card (playing the field, at bat), just that corny "Bat on the shoulder because I only take batting practice or carry a bat to a real player" pose.

But I digress.

Kids don't read comic books anymore.

I remember going to the comic shop with my boy Dru or Eric and looking for that 18th cover of X-Men #1 or waiting to see ho long it would be before which X-Men had recently died would magically return. That was my childhood.

Out of all of my friends, I am the only one who still hits up the comic shop every week for the latest releases but they will ask me what's up with X-Men and what is Wolverine's origin this month (which has been sorta settled now).

Sorry, still digressing...

Kids don't read comic books anymore.

It can't be the cost of the comic because while they have gone up considerably (your average comic book goes for $2.50), they are comparable to the price of Pokemon, Digimon or Ripmyparentsoffmon cards.

Maybe it's that kids these can't read.

Because what a lot of people who knock the art form (it is an art form damnit) don't understand is that it is written by adults for a semi-intelligent constituency. I mean, reading comic books when I was nine years old and going to the dictionary trying to figure out what Magneto or Reed Richards was babbling on about helped my vocabulary greatly. Most of the malapropisms I made in grammar school, I got from Frank Miller, Jim Stalin, Chris Claremont, John Byrne and George Perez.

I would let my kids read a comic book over playing Pokemon any day of the week.

Now Spider-Man is on it�s way to be the fifth highest-grossing movie of ALL-TIME. X-Men 2 is in production. Wesley Snipes took a crap comic book and made it into a dope movie. A movie is being made for The Hulk, Daredevil, Namor, Punisher and damn near every comic book character that infiltrated my imagination�

But I go into the comic book shop and all I see are grown adults...adults who 15 years ago were getting yelled at by the Comic Book Guy to not read the comics in the store.

But not a kid in site...except when they want a Pokemon card.

Why don�t kids read comic books anymore?