SOURCE: Rose, Lloyd. “Comic Books for Grown-ups.” Atlantic 258, no. 2 (August 1986): 77-80.

In the following essay, Rose discusses the development of the modern graphic novel, citing the works of Frank Miller, Dave Sim, and Howard Chaykin as satirical representations of society and culture.

Howard Chaykin has seen the future, and it's full of garter belts. In his comic-book series American Flagg!, which is set in the mid-twenty-first century, Chaykin's women have the requisite amount of pop-cultural post-feminist toughness: they fly jets and perform emergency operations on lunch counters and tote the occasional automatic weapon. But what one can only refer to as their gams—the kind of legs found nowhere on earth except Las Vegas and in comic books—are upholstered and decorated with an assortment of hose and garter straps that would make Frederick (of the Hollywood Fredericks) look twice. This silky-seeming legwear must be made out of...