“Let’s blow their little minds.”

From Michael Chabon’s keynote speech at the 2004 Eisner Awards, about what comics for kids should be:

Let’s blow their little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are good things. But a mind is blown when something you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.

Of course, it helps if those little minds are twelve years old.

Full text of Chabon’s speech at The Comics Cube.