Firstly, I spent the majority of last night writing a piece on coffee and how it relates to media spin and Big Business, and while it isn't bad, I was never able to make my point as well and as clearly as I would have to, so I spent basically 3-4 hours on it, then just drafted it...
But I woke up today and came across this piece which voices some of the things I've been saying about comic books for going on 10-15 years. It also says some things with which I stringently disagree, but I think the overall gist of the article is correct in its assessments.
The author mentions that "grim and gritty" has given way to "sour and dour," but I think that's glossing over the whole issue. Back in the late 1980s, a trend emerged toward darker, more violent characters. One Frank Miller was not only at the forefront of such a movement, it can be argued that he started it himself, what with his ground-breaking runs on Daredevil, along with his turns on the mini-series, Wolverine, Dark Knight Returns, and Elektra: Assassin.
These were great works within the field - the latter two groundbreaking classics - and they proved seminal to a fault; after their combined success (they all appeared literally within several months of one another), the entire industry took a turn toward the dark, gritty, and the violent. Curse words were introduced, first only in the direct-market, then spilling over into the mainstream (which stuck to the "safe" curse words); sexual themes became de rigeur; a big chunk of any month's titles bore the "Mature Audiences" label...
Mind you, this was a good 10 years after the Heavy Metal movie and around the time the still underappreciated Epic Magazine folded, so it wasn't like an "adult comics" market hadn't been established and wasn't there. And you can forward all sorts of reasons for this, from the fact that we fans were growing up, getting older and learning more about the world in general, ready to see more of our world reflected in what we were reading, to the more cynical (and most likely) idea that the industry just went with what was selling. But the truth is that it was a complex issue where many things came into play.
It's true that we were growing up and wanted our comics friends to grow up with us; it's true that darker, edgier comics were selling (largely because that's what we wanted to see); but it's also true that a lot of older comics fans were coming back into the hobby, as these new comics resulted in an unprecedented surge in the collectors' market, and their tastes were alternately retro and desiring of things that spoke more to them. A complex sociological matter, to be sure.
But, at some point, it really did become the fault of the industry. They turned whole-heartedly to the dark, violent antiheroes, reshaping even muscle-bound Boy Scouts into "brook-no-bullshit" tough guys with a streak of righteous vengeance. Punisher and Wolverine guest-starred in every title in the Marvel Universe, not to mention maintaining their regular appearances in the 5-10 titles they starred in. Then came Image, and with it, heroes like Spawn and Deathstrike, DC was focusing on Hellblazer and Sandman, Miller turned to Dark Horse Presents to serialize his first incarnation of Sin City, and on and on. By 1992-93, there was really only one kind of superhero: the antihero.
And then comics languished because no one was talented enough, and/or so completely burned-out, that they could think of how to change anything. Not to mention that the industry was not willing to let them because they were busy counting them beans (and agonizing over the fact that they had so few of them!).
So, don't blame the fans who take "superhero comics too seriously," because that's only a part of the overall tapestry here. A few years back, I said - quite loudly and possibly somewhat influentially - that the only way to pull the industry out of the dump was to go back to basics: it's the story, stupid! And I might have said something to the effect of, "They're just funnybooks, gentlemen," but that... that one got more grumbling than it should have. And while I certainly don't take any responsibility for the recent re-emergence of good comics - I certainly didn't actively participate in the creation of any of these fantastic new works - I like to think that I was one of a much larger group of fans and possible fans who saw basically all of the comics as the same one, because they basically were!
I'd picked up a comic about 5-6 years ago - the first I'd spent money on since my early 20s (which that was just my late 20s, but I digress) - and looked in the back to find the subscriptions page divided into three panels: Spider-Man titles, X-Men titles, and Others. Not only was I appalled by the fact that this was all they offered, but also that the Others section had so few titles! The industry had just dumped anything that wasn't bringing maximum revenue, burning out the properties and the fanbase, and complaining that that was all they could do because that was all that sold and they needed the cashflow.
I love that the writer is promoting the idea that not all comics have to be identical in their dramatic elements, but it's not all about the Elitists and their lesbian comics versus the Fanboys and Marvel Zombies, and to boil it down to that and reignite that old fray is just so Lindsay.
But I woke up today and came across this piece which voices some of the things I've been saying about comic books for going on 10-15 years. It also says some things with which I stringently disagree, but I think the overall gist of the article is correct in its assessments.
The author mentions that "grim and gritty" has given way to "sour and dour," but I think that's glossing over the whole issue. Back in the late 1980s, a trend emerged toward darker, more violent characters. One Frank Miller was not only at the forefront of such a movement, it can be argued that he started it himself, what with his ground-breaking runs on Daredevil, along with his turns on the mini-series, Wolverine, Dark Knight Returns, and Elektra: Assassin.
These were great works within the field - the latter two groundbreaking classics - and they proved seminal to a fault; after their combined success (they all appeared literally within several months of one another), the entire industry took a turn toward the dark, gritty, and the violent. Curse words were introduced, first only in the direct-market, then spilling over into the mainstream (which stuck to the "safe" curse words); sexual themes became de rigeur; a big chunk of any month's titles bore the "Mature Audiences" label...
Mind you, this was a good 10 years after the Heavy Metal movie and around the time the still underappreciated Epic Magazine folded, so it wasn't like an "adult comics" market hadn't been established and wasn't there. And you can forward all sorts of reasons for this, from the fact that we fans were growing up, getting older and learning more about the world in general, ready to see more of our world reflected in what we were reading, to the more cynical (and most likely) idea that the industry just went with what was selling. But the truth is that it was a complex issue where many things came into play.
It's true that we were growing up and wanted our comics friends to grow up with us; it's true that darker, edgier comics were selling (largely because that's what we wanted to see); but it's also true that a lot of older comics fans were coming back into the hobby, as these new comics resulted in an unprecedented surge in the collectors' market, and their tastes were alternately retro and desiring of things that spoke more to them. A complex sociological matter, to be sure.
But, at some point, it really did become the fault of the industry. They turned whole-heartedly to the dark, violent antiheroes, reshaping even muscle-bound Boy Scouts into "brook-no-bullshit" tough guys with a streak of righteous vengeance. Punisher and Wolverine guest-starred in every title in the Marvel Universe, not to mention maintaining their regular appearances in the 5-10 titles they starred in. Then came Image, and with it, heroes like Spawn and Deathstrike, DC was focusing on Hellblazer and Sandman, Miller turned to Dark Horse Presents to serialize his first incarnation of Sin City, and on and on. By 1992-93, there was really only one kind of superhero: the antihero.
And then comics languished because no one was talented enough, and/or so completely burned-out, that they could think of how to change anything. Not to mention that the industry was not willing to let them because they were busy counting them beans (and agonizing over the fact that they had so few of them!).
So, don't blame the fans who take "superhero comics too seriously," because that's only a part of the overall tapestry here. A few years back, I said - quite loudly and possibly somewhat influentially - that the only way to pull the industry out of the dump was to go back to basics: it's the story, stupid! And I might have said something to the effect of, "They're just funnybooks, gentlemen," but that... that one got more grumbling than it should have. And while I certainly don't take any responsibility for the recent re-emergence of good comics - I certainly didn't actively participate in the creation of any of these fantastic new works - I like to think that I was one of a much larger group of fans and possible fans who saw basically all of the comics as the same one, because they basically were!
I'd picked up a comic about 5-6 years ago - the first I'd spent money on since my early 20s (which that was just my late 20s, but I digress) - and looked in the back to find the subscriptions page divided into three panels: Spider-Man titles, X-Men titles, and Others. Not only was I appalled by the fact that this was all they offered, but also that the Others section had so few titles! The industry had just dumped anything that wasn't bringing maximum revenue, burning out the properties and the fanbase, and complaining that that was all they could do because that was all that sold and they needed the cashflow.
I love that the writer is promoting the idea that not all comics have to be identical in their dramatic elements, but it's not all about the Elitists and their lesbian comics versus the Fanboys and Marvel Zombies, and to boil it down to that and reignite that old fray is just so Lindsay.
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