Santa Claus was good to us this year, as usual. All sorts of neat stuff came our way. Among the many great gifts we got were two more issues (17 and 18) of the Dark Horse Presents comic book anthologies, with more installments of the Phil Stanford Portland crime stories (which start in 16) in them. Stanford's got his usual splendid narrative and fine dialogue -- you'd expect nothing less -- and there's spectacular drawing by somebody name Patric Reynolds. We understand there's a fourth installment out -- maybe we'll get it for our upcoming birthday.

Anyway, after savoring every panel of the Stanford stories -- they translate exceedingly well to this medium -- we found some other neat stuff between the covers of the 80-page mags. For example, there's a stunning series called "Deep Sea," about an undersea exploration expedition that winds up in a time warp -- so well written, so well drawn.

It's hard to believe that in our old age, we're heading back to an art form that we haven't touched since we were a boy. But this stuff is simply too good to pass up.