I've been cooking again since Christmas. I used to cook a lot when I was a kid, but it was mostly baking. You can't go wrong with a coconut bun. I also used to make a lot of puddings. My tiramisu was to die for.

Then I suddenly stopped, and looking back, I think I now know why. I became intimidated. I'd always followed recipes from a book of my mother's called the Victorian Farmhouse Cookbook, which was packed with tried and tested homespun recipes, about eight to a page. Then my mother bought a modern cookbook, a big glossy one-recipe-every-six-pages kind of a deal, and my desire for cooking just fell to pieces. Suddenly I needed a stainless steel kitchen, a Parmesan grater, a jar of oil with pimentos inside, and a huge, heavy chrome monstrosity for squeezing oranges. Everything had to be the right temperature, so I would have to buy a cooking thermometer. Everything had to be in the right measure, so I would need an atomic scale. Everything had to be exactly as it said in the book, so I would have to travel to a small village in south-west France to buy a very particular brand of walnut oil, or my life would never have meaning again.

I quit. I hung up my teatowels and learned how to make a perfect cup of tea and a perfect gin and tonic instead. That simple knowledge, and the ability to operate a microwave, got me through university.

'Everything had to be exactly as it said in the book.' Then came last Christmas, when my sister bought me a new cookbook. My first, in fact. She remembered how much I'd loved cooking when I was younger, and she knew I still loved my food, so it was a clever gift, but at first it made me a little nervous. It was called Appetite by Nigel Slater; it looked glossy, it was full of photos of what the food should look like, and it looked like there was only one recipe every three pages. I had flashbacks. I was a kid again, and I was trying to make lemon pasta. The horror, the horror, the horror.

Yet when I gave the book a closer look, I found it was actually a very sane read. It didn't demand specific amounts - it spoke in terms of 'two large tomatoes and a handful of thyme'. It did make a few suggestions about things that every kitchen should have, but the main priorities were wine and beer. It advised against gadgets, it said quite specifically that its recipes were not to be followed to the letter, and it said that the first thing to do before cooking anything should always be to pour yourself a drink. The very first glossy food picture in the book was not of some dreadful underfed pancetta salad, but of hot buttered toast!

I fell in love with this book.

One piece of advice stood out above all else, however. "Break the rules", the author wrote in his introduction. "Follow your appetite". Pleasure, the author insisted, was the whole point of cooking. Indeed, if you don't feel like cooking, the author suggests sticking a ready-made meal in the microwave. Because there's no shame in enjoying your food. That's the whole point.

And so we get to my whole point. Sometimes I want nothing more than to settle down with a big bowl of garlicky pasta, an ice-cold vodka and orange, and a big old pile of Marvel comics. Now, I know there's nothing wrong with garlicky pasta, and I'm unequivocally certain there's not a bad word to be said by sane people about vodka, but... Marvel comics? Aye, there's the rub. Not just Marvel, either, but DC Universe stuff, McFarlane comics, anything that gets a cover in Wizard - this is the stuff we're often told to feel bad about. This is what we call our guilty pleasures.

'Should I feel bad about reading these comics?' So I've been giving this a fair amount of thought lately. Should I feel bad about reading these comics? Some people say yes. These are people who say superheroes are bad, that Marvel is wicked, that reading a 'mainstream' comic is disgraceful, and I should hide my head in shame. You'll probably hear some of that on this very site, and maybe, just maybe, you'll be intimidated. You'll cower in fear of being branded an intellectual inferior, a sap, and if you're really intimidated, you'll start decrying your own pull-list, like a Hollywood Communist trying to throw McCarthy off your trail. "Yes, I do read AVENGERS. I don't know why! But I can change! The Devil made me do it!"

If that's true - if you really can't think of a reason why you're reading this stuff - then stop reading it. Break the habit. Go cold turkey. But think before you turn yourself in to the Betsy Brant Clinic for Comic Book Addictives, because if there is a reason you're reading AVENGERS, and the reason is that you're enjoying it, then woah Nelly. Don't drop a thing. You've got all the reason you need.

Let me explain a little something about guilty pleasures. The operative word there is not 'guilty'. It's 'pleasures'. Guilt is something other people make you feel. Pleasure is a feeling that you have to allow yourself. If it's a pleasure, and you're not hurting anyone, then what is there to feel guilty about? You don't have to read socially responsible comics. You don't have to read artistically sophisticated comics. You don't have to read any damned comics at all, so if you are going to read them, you should read the ones you like. Whatever they are.

'If you're going to read comics, read the ones you like.' I wrote a different column for this site a little while back, and that would have been my first column instead of this one. It was going to be about quitting. About cutting 'bad comics' out of one's life, learning to move on, and buying the comics everyone else tells you to read. I tried to put my advice into practice; I decided to drop any comic that I was buying purely out of habit. And it worked. I dropped a few titles. Some of them were superheroes, and some of them were independents and alternatives. I dropped a couple of books that perceived wisdom tells us are the best things on the market today, because I didn't enjoy them. Then there were a few other books that I didn't drop, because it occurred to me that I did like them. Yes, I'd bought them out of habit for years, but sometimes the things we do through habit are things we do because they make us feel good. Alan Davis is drawing AVENGERS, and once a month that cheers me up. I'm still buying AVENGERS. When Davis leaves, that may change, but for now, I'm enjoying myself. No-one can tell me that's wrong.

So that original column has been scrapped. Here's some better advice. Do take another look at the comics you're reading. Do ask yourself why you're reading them. If the only reason is habit, then it's time to break the habit, and if the reason is familiarity, it won't hurt to broaden your horizons and take a look at what you're missing. If there's anything you're not enjoying - and it could be AVENGERS, it could be HELLBLAZER, it could be STRANGEHAVEN - then drop it. But if you're enjoying it, keep reading it. Even if it's SPAWN. Break the rules. Follow your appetite.

Speaking of which, just how is my kitchen today? Well, it's a mess. No chrome, no gas stove, no jar of oil stuffed with pimentos. I have one heavy frying pan and three cheap saucepans, and everything gets chopped on the same chopping board with the same big knife. It's not a glamorous kitchen, and to be honest, nothing very glamorous gets cooked there. But I can make a good chilli and the most meltingly garlicky potato gratin you've ever tasted, and I've learned that the only piece of equipment I absolutely need if I want to enjoy my kitchen is a good corkscrew. After that, it's all just a matter of taste. Personal taste. Let no-one tell you any different.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

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