Ask any adult what comic books they used to read as a child, and you get a slightly sheepish smile of remembered, mildly illicit pleasure. Uncle Scrooge McDuck. Archie & Veronica. Superboy. And of course a Classic Comic or two. A Tale of Two Cities, with the final half-page panel, "It is a far, far better thing I do.," or Moby Dick, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Two Years before the Mast. Yet comics-or any kind of abridgement-almost never lead people to the real book. They make sure you know that the real book exists, and to some extent they familiarize you with icons of our culture like the white whale or the guillotine or Quasimodo. Film versions do lead people to books; Jane Austen and The English Patient are much in evidence on buses and subways just now. But comics don't. That's not what they're for.

The art in The Halifax Explosion isn't too bad, the story moves along well, with a pleasant number of highly coloured emotive combinations like "AAARRGH!!", "KRAAASSH!", "tikka, tikka, tikka", and of course "BAWOOOM!" It's nice and short, too, and is broken up by regular pages of advertisements, as every comic book ought to be. Remember the Atlas Body Building ads? Nowadays it seems to be ads for action figures and video games or, in the case of this comic book, more of McClelland & Stewart's publications for children.

M & S's publicity sheet about their True North Comics Series says that they "hope.to give Canada's youth a sense of just how exciting Canada's past is." The Halifax Explosion, both the event and the comic, are exciting. The one distressing thing about the comic is that it has ideas above its station. Children can scent attempts to do them good from miles away, and the whiff of the educational and patriotic about the True North project is more than somewhat evident. There's nothing wrong with doing comic books, and if Canadian history excites you, and the comic-book genre is what you want to work in, go for it. But don't be sanctimonious. Just have fun. 

Alison Sutherland's comics of choice used to be Wonderwoman and Aquaman.