This will serve as an introductory post to any writing on the topic of comic books and graphic novels. I’ve been an off-and-on consumer for 31 years. Much like a couple of friends of mine (hey, Lar; hi, Dave), I have come in and dropped out in phases. The damn stupid economics of the comics industry — that ridiculous distribution system — makes it incredibly difficult to be a comics fan. Do novel publishers make it hard to buy novels and be a fan of them? They do not.
Anyway, my sister got me started in May of 1976 with Superman and Howard the Duck. I was a big fan of Howard (ignore that stupid movie) and I also liked the Flash. I slowly dropped off over time, but my interest was renewed by the brilliant work (around 1986) of Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Frank Miller (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns). Then, I faded. In the early Nineties, a friend showed me the last few issues of Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man — absolutely brill — and I tracked down the rest of them. Then I got into Morrison’s work on Doom Patrol. This was around the time DC founded their Vertigo line of “mature” titles and I bought a bunch of those. And other titles, from a few other publishers, mostly following writers around. By 2004, I had stopped again.
Lately, I’ve been reading some of my old comics and also reading some collections that I had missed. It’s reminding me of what I love about the best comics and what I dislike about the bulk of them.
Let me just finish with this thought.
You may have a poor opinion of comics. You may consider them an immature art, a source of juvenile themes. You’re not entirely wrong, but you are wrong overall, looking at the big picture. However, I hate those articles that defend comics. They sound a little pathetic, a little needy. They often over praise things that don’t measure up. The X-Men are just a superhero team. Yes, the X-Men comics over the years have tackled serious themes, such as eugenics, racism and authoritarianism, but it’s just a superhero comic. But that should be enough. I’ve been reading mysteries for most of my life. Most of them aren’t great art; they tend to be formulaic and the writing is often cliché. But they are a few mysteries that are high art and nobody feels like they need to apologize for reading one.
Tags: comic books, graphic novels
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The Pop View Says:
I made a passing reference to what’s wrong with the comics industry. Turns out I missed a story in the L.A. Times yesterday that was a prime example of what’s wrong with the comics industry.
A company in Sarasota, Fla., has created a sensation among collectors by taking their comic books, both rare vintage issues and brand-new ones, and encasing them in plastic slabs that make them both unreadable and instantly more valuable.
“It’s changed the nature of the hobby, it’s turned comic books into a medium of exchange instead of a medium of entertainment,” groaned James Friel, who works at Comic Relief, the longtime landmark store in Berkeley. To Friel, who has been collecting comics since 1958, “it makes these books a sealed-up commodity. You can’t read them. It makes me sad. Some of these books will be sealed up forever.”
Frank Miller, arguably the most important comic book artist of the last two decades, has seen plenty of fans lock up his books in the slabs in recent years and he shakes his head at the whole concept.
“I think it’s all pretty silly,” said Miller, whose graphic novels “300″ and “Sin City” have led to major Hollywood success stories. “But I’m of a generation that love the feel and smell of these ephemeral old leaflets. . . . Maybe it will get to the point where I can put out comics that have blank pages inside — just covers — and no one will notice.”
Christ on a bicycle. Literature as commodity.