The next few days, I'm going to post a mess of reviews, most of them recommendations, for new books about comic book writers and artists. A wide void is suddenly being filled, and while any book about some of these people is welcome, most of those we're getting are very good and pretty damn exhaustive. My fave so far is Bill Schelly's Words of Wonder: The Life and Times of Otto Binder. Binder was a writer of comics and science-fiction, the former including (but not limited to) a long stint as the major writer of the original Captain Marvel, followed by many years of Superman scripting. He contributed many key concepts and characters to both franchises. His Superman writing, for instance, included the first stories of Supergirl, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Krypto, Brainiac and the city in a bottle, Kandor. I never met Mr. Binder but I felt like I knew him through his scripts, and thanks to Bill Schelly, I feel like I know him even better now. Bill did the kind of diligent research job that can only be driven by passion for a subject, and he got to darn near everyone who's still around and had any info at all on the late Otto Binder. The result is a complete portrait, not only of the man but of the industries in which he worked when he worked in them. If I were you, I'd run over to Bill's website and order me a copy. And while you're there, pick up copies of any of Bill's other books that you don't have. They're all as good as they sound.