Power: the Last Word on the Funnies : Magazines: Entertainment Weekly probes the appeal of comics, while Reason takes on the ACLU, and Emerge discusses the broken coalition between Jews and blacks.

Admit it. The only reason you’re reading this now is because you got lost on your way to the funnies.

Such is the secret anxiety of every writer in this section of the newspaper: the fear that most readers only skim their articles on their way to spending a few quality moments with Mary Worth, Beetle Bailey and Mr. Boffo.

Now along comes the Oct. 5 Entertainment Weekly to further undermine any illusions about what really matters in a newspaper features section.

“There’s a power to the comics, a power both subtle and gleefully vulgar, that entertains millions of readers every day,” critic Ken Tucker writes in this 12-page homage to comics, from “Gasoline Alley” to “The Far Side.”

“The collective genius of the comics is that impressively often, while being lowdown and disreputable, they not only divert us but manage to surprise, stimulate, and even enlighten,” Tucker writes.

Articles in the package offer a bibliography to collections of comics, including such now-defunct funnies as “Li’l Abner,” “Krazy Kat” and “Little Nemo,” and an examination of the lucrative economics of comics.

But Tucker’s “appreciations and evaluations” of the strips themselves, complete with an A+ to F rating, bog down quickly.

After all, subtle and gleefully vulgar power aside, the beauty of comics is that you can’t take them too seriously. So when Tucker says that the strip “Nancy” is no longer “artfully, ironically dumb; it’s just plain dumb. And dull. And badly drawn,” he comes across more like a mean-spirited teacher dishing out cartoon child abuse than a critic. The best part of the package, of course, is the strips themselves.

REQUIRED READING

* In the last 25 years, membership of the American Civil Liberties Union has climbed from 70,000 to almost 300,000. But did the ACLU forfeit its backbone to gain those new members? An article in the October Reason magazine argues that the group fattened its roster at the expense of individual rights it had championed as constitutional absolutes.

“Greed and left-wing ideology have corrupted the union,” a critic quoted in the article charges.

According to the article, by Charles Oliver, Reason’s assistant editor, the ACLU’s national legal director now lists abortion and civil rights ahead of free speech as priorities for the group. Oliver concedes that “abortion may indeed be a civil liberties issue,” but argues that there are plenty of other groups fighting that battle.

Meanwhile, it comes as no surprise to some critics quoted in the piece that anti-abortion protesters’ civil liberties have often been overlooked by the group. In 1970, for instance, the ACLU opposed the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law (RICO), as being “one of the most potent, and potentially abusive, weapons for silencing dissent.”

Yet, “three years ago the Pennsylvania affiliate chose not to speak out against the use of RICO against abortion protesters in Philadelphia.”

Similarly, the Reason piece argues, quoting critics, that the ACLU has ignored some of the most important censorship cases lately for fear of alienating its liberal (as opposed to civil libertarian) members. In certain cases, such as the University of California’s recent ban of racist or sexist language on its campuses, the ACLU actually came out in favor of greater restrictions on free speech.

“The ACLU has become too crassly commercial,” charges Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer and 25-year member of the group.

* In the 1930s and ‘40s, American Jews and blacks shared a common vision. “By virtue of their experience in America, black people had passionately embraced the story of the Hebrew exodus out of Egypt,” Playthell Benjamin writes in the October Emerge. “They looked forward to a Moses of their own, a chosen one empowered by God to lead them out of the trials and tribulations of America. . . . “ But in 50 years, things have changed. Now African-Americans and Jews find themselves increasingly divided. Benjamin’s article, “A Shattered Alliance,” puts that alliance in historical perspective. It also offers hope that the alliance might again strengthen--only faint hope, given what he sees as the growing disparities between the two groups.

* It was Saddam Hussein and Donald Trump down to the wire, but in the end the Iraqi dictator nosed out the “short fingered vulgarian” by a hair, clinching the No. 2 position in Spy Magazine’s “Annual Census of the Most Annoying, Alarming and Appalling People, Places and Things.” The savings and loan fiasco easily took first place. But what cost Trump his place on the list? Perhaps this “Mitigating Factor:” “Trump waited until his back was absolutely against the wall before blaming his financial troubles on three Trump Organization executives killed in a helicopter crash in 1989.”

NEW ON NEWSSTANDS

A cross between a comic book and a kids’ magazine, Disney Adventures bills itself as the “Official Publication of the Disney Afternoon”--those after-school hours of each day that the Disney folks have decided to spend, via television, with your children. As if the kids don’t get enough in their daily TV cartoon barrage, the magazine features comics tied to the shows “Talespin,” “Gummi Bears,” “Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers” and “Ducktales,” presented for this generation of video addicts in TV Guide-size format. Aside from the well-drawn, full-color comics, the November premiere issue offers interesting, educational articles on the Wild West, science and nature stories, celebrity profiles and challenging puzzles and games. (12 issues, $17.95, 1145 N. Ellis St., Bensenville, Ill. 60106. Editorial: (818) 841-7235)