IT IS A PARTICULAR perversity of Anglo-Saxon culture that the comics artform is viewed, somehow, as substandard. Cheap. Adolescent. Not Real Literature. Not Real Art.

Even in francophone Quebec one must explain that, among anglophones, la bande dessinee is not considered a legitimate subject for critical discourse. The President of France personally sponsors le prix Angouleme, a major literary prize aimed only at book-format bande dessinee. Japan would suffer a national nervous breakdown if you suddenly removed the millions upon millions of manga books and magazines from circulation. Manga, in every conceivable genre from non-fiction business texts to mainstream prose to science fiction to romance to horror to pornography, keeps Japanese workers sane on their interminable commutes to and from work. Manga writers and artists are lionized celebrities, and every subway station has its "manga box" where people toss in their completed books and take new ones left by other commuters.

It would never occur to a citizen of Japan, or France, or Belgium, that superheroes and cartoon cats were the be-all and the end-all of the form. It's that Anglo-Saxon confusion between genre and medium, it's the less-than-savoury corporate origins of the comics, and the odd bifurcation of the form into daily comic strips and periodical comic books that have held the medium back in the English-speaking world.

Finally, and belatedly, comics are coming into their own. High-quality book format editions are becoming more and more popular, and the virtual stranglehold once held by the newspaper syndicates and comic book giants like Marvel and DC has been broken. Even staid DC Comics -- publisher of Superman, Batman and the rest of that superheroic ilk -- has finally bitten the bullet and begun spawning less genrified imprints like Vertigo, Helix, and Paradox Press.

Unfortunately, comics are still not generally viewed as a medium capable of encompassing different literary genres, and in many bookstores they often get lumped into the science fiction and fantasy sections, regardless of content.

Ghost: Nocturnes, a trade paperback from Dark Horse Comics, is a study in miniature of everything that is right and wrong with superhero comic books. Written by Eric Luke and illustrated by a small army of talented comic artists including superstar Adam Hughes, Ghost is clearly fighting its genre restrictions while simultaneously wallowing in them. On one level it's a dark fantasy thriller about a woman murdered before her time, reincarnated with no memory. On another it's a straight-ahead action-adventure with the requisite scenes of violence and mayhem.

Ghost also explores the issue of the sexual exploitation of women while at the same time featuring a ridiculously buxom (and dead) heroine with decolletage down to her navel. This schizophrenia is driven home on several occasions when she chastises her sister for working in a strip bar and for not respecting herself.

Violence and sexism are the faultlines of the superhero genre. By tradition they are politically liberal, and feature heroes who solve problems with their fists. They are often nominally or even overtly feminist, but still dress heroines in Frederick's of Hollywood castoffs. Ghost is not a superior superhero comic, but it is a good example of the talent -- and the contradictions -- that exist even in the middle ground.

True Swamp: The Memories of Lenny the Frog fits into no recognizable genre. Writer/illustrator Jon Lewis writes like the bastard child of Charles G.D. Roberts and Douglas Coupland, with a little Robert Crumb thrown in. He cartoons in a naive black-and-white style which, though occasionally amateurish and muddy, suits his brilliant storylines. Lenny is a frog dissatisfied with life in the swamp and disapproved of by his elders because he and his generation are into that "interspecies" thing. This is not a funny-animal comic. The animals are real, their biology is real, only the angst is editorially imposed. I highly recommend it.

Dark Horse Comics has based its commercial success on comic adaptations of classic movie properties like Star Wars, Aliens, and Predator. While their adaptations are generally superior to those from publishers like Marvel and DC, they've started to become a little tedious.

Aliens vs. Predator: War, and Predator: Big Game, and Batman vs. Predator II are all so similar as to be indistinguishable from one another. The Aliens and the Predators -- of 20th Century Fox movie fame -- chop each other and anything else in their path to bits, and it falls to dogged homo sapiens (superheroic or otherwise) to stop them. Red and yellow blood flows, but nothing much else happens.

All three of these books share another flaw: they all refer to action that happens outside the confines of the book. Aliens vs. Predator: War is virtually incomprehensible for this reason, with characters and plotlines that seem to come and go at random.

No review of comics in a Canadian context would be complete without a mention of Dave Sim and Cerebus. In continual publication since 1977, Cerebus is the longest-running alternative comic and the longest-running Canadian comic in history. Over the years, Sim's Aardvark-Vanaheim press has taken to reprinting his black-and-white periodical comics into huge omnibus trade paperbacks (affectionately referred to as the "phone books" due to their thickness and appearance). Nine have been published to date: Cerebus, High Society, Church and State volumes 1 and 2, Jaka's Story, Melmoth, Flight, Women, Reads, and Minds. The series has been running so long I won't even attempt to summarize the plots. Suffice it to say that Cerebus started out as a thin, quasi-amateur parody of sword-and-sorcery and grew into a massive, deep work of political philosophy which incidentally, still has an aardvark as the main character.

Before The X-Files there was The Silent Invasion by Toronto writer/artist duo Michael Cherkas and Larry Hancock. A brilliant little comic, illustrated in a quirky black-and-white style, The Silent Invasion is currently being reprinted as a series of trade paperbacks by NBM Publishing of New York. It's perhaps the ultimate paranoid 1950s suburban nightmare, as ace reporter Matt Sinkage sinks deeper and deeper into a morass of conspiracies within flying saucer cow mutilation conspiracies. It's a really neat juxtaposition of film noir technique with quasi-science-fictional content.

It's also worth keeping an eye on Jason Lutes. His Jar of Fools trade paperbacks and his new Berlin series are deliciously satisfying examples of comic art. The man can draw, but more, he can write convincing period pieces with no physical action to speak of, and still keep you turning the pages. Montreal's Black Eye Productions has some of the best production values in comics, and they are not wasted on the beautiful work of this Seattle native. These books prove, if proof were needed, that the comics medium can handle quiet, truly literary work and not just pyrotechnic action and adventure.

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