I'm asking because I honestly don't know, but they seem to keep churning them out, so they must have value to someone.
I don't really have the numbers for those books, but if I were to guess I would say that those books are marketed toward the more hardcore Star Wars/Star Trek fans than the average consumer.
I'm asking because I honestly don't know, but they seem to keep churning them out, so they must have value to someone.
I don't really have the numbers for those books, but if I were to guess I would say that those books are marketed toward the more hardcore Star Wars/Star Trek fans than the average consumer.
is that they only have a few years of story behind them so there's simply not as much material to absorb for a new reader, and they usually have a limited number of creative people behind them, so the stories can be more highly controlled.
While the manga world doesn't usually have the problem of multiple creators, they are very familiar with the problem of having something that has gone on for many years. Golgo 13 has over 100 volumes and has been in print since 1973. It's a little over a decade younger than Spider-Man, but it's still easy to read the whole thing. The volumes are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4... Granted, Golgo 13 is episodic, but it doesn't have to be. One Piece is from 1997, is a continuing story, has 50+ volumes, and is still ongoing. It will probably continue until the creator dies. He's 36, so it's going to be awhile, hopefully.
My opinion of the Scott/Churba dispute in this thread is that Scott wants desperately to show that he's very much above something so pedestrian as superhero books, and that, like any other hipster, his tastes are much more refined than ours. Churba, on the other hand, seems to have a much deeper working knowledge of the industry and the reasons why these stories can have value. It's pretty much a style over substance issue, with Scott representing the style side of "Oh, I'm way too cool for superhero books."
Except for the metric fuckton of superhero books I own and have read. Want photos? Granted, it's a pittance compared to most collectors. That's mostly because I get rid of books I never plan to read again.
I think you guys are clearly misunderstanding me here. I am personally able to read and understand these superhero books. I can read something like Marvels or Kingdom Come and know what is going on. I use the Wikipedia when reading Crisis to figure out who the hell these people are that I've never seen before. That's because I'm a comic geek.
It's just that unlike other comic geeks, I'm not some sort of purist. Most superhero comic geeks I know have these strong emotional attachments to these fictional worlds that border on scary. These people take what happens in those worlds all too seriously. A favorite example of mine is how so many of them boycotted Spider-Man when Brand New Day occurred even though the quality and accessibility of the book actually skyrocketed due to the awesomeness of Dan Slott (who also wrote the excellent Ren + Stimpy comics of my childhood). I'm not going to care if continuity or history is fucked with. I just want good comics.
I also, if you haven't noticed, want to spread comics. That's what we do here, we spread geekery. By far comics, especially Marvel and DC underwear pervert comics, are the most difficult geekery to spread. Churba has spoken a great deal in this thread about how he helped many people into comics. That's exactly the problem, why do people need help in the first place? With any other entertainment we can just say something simple like, go watch My Little Pony, and it works surprisingly well. Tell someone, read the Prince of Nothing. Oh look how people get right on that. Go play this game, done! Just say the name of the thing, and people can take care of the rest.
When it comes to superhero books, you often need to give extremely specific instructions. Sure you can tell someone to buy Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, etc. But for anything else? People in this thread have expressed interest in Deadpool. Well, you can't just say go read Deadpool. On the comic shelf there is Deadpool MAX, Deadpool, and Deadpool: Fear Itself. Ok, so stick to regular Deadpool, issue number #39! Ok, so 38 issues to catch up on, not too bad. How about this Deadpool Classic trade, or Deadpool & Cable trades? Suddenly I've got to write a freaking manual for someone just to know what book to read first. Since all of them are actually so different from each other, they might like one and not another. They might start with one they don't like and shun Deadpool forever when they actually would have loved one of the other ones. If it were Deadpool 1, 2, 3, 4, all that trouble would just go away.
I want comics to go back to being read by millions and millions of people, not mere thousands. I want to see people everywhere with comics in their hands. Sadly, one of the major things preventing this is the frightening array of confusing offerings. The fact that comics are very hard to find outside of comic shops is another major problem. The ridiculously high pricing is another one.
You might not want comics to be that popular, but I do. And I recognize that in order for that to happen, there have to be big changes. It might not be the exact changes I suggest. It might be lower quality paper, loss of color, or any number of things. Those changes, whatever they are, are going to upset the existing fans. Already there are geezers talking about how they refuse to read digital because they love killing trees so mcuh. The only reason I stick with paper is because the digital comics are too expensive and loaded with DRM. I prefer my comics digital, Penny Arcade style.
See, because I'm constantly trying to spread geekery, I know how other people feel. I don't feel that way. I walk into a comic shop, and I know exactly what everything is. But I also know that of the billions of people on earth less than half a million have that level of knowledge. Even people who are pretty geeky steer clear of Marvel and DC comics. Even when showing a slight interest, they need some serious hand holding and attention to find the right comic just for them. Selling a comic shouldn't be as hard as selling a car. The fact that it is is a clear sign that there is a major problem.
I think what turned me off from DC is Superman. I have a Red Lantern-esque hatred for Supes.
I wouldn't say I hate Superman, but more that I get bored with him easily unless he's used in a really, really clever way, or he's written really, really well. You show me Superman saving the planet again? Yeah, alright. You show me Superman dying, rushing at top speed to get everything he wants to do done, but still taking time out to investigate a relatively minor situation and therefore save a young lass from committing suicide? I'm in. I straight up teared up with that one.
I would love to read some Deadpool comics, but I'll just get them in a trade, and I really want to read Blackest Night.
Do that - you can get Blackest Night in a few trades, too. Brightest day is so far good by all reports - I've not sat down with it yet - but it also isn't quite finished yet. Volume one is out (I think), but that's one that's worth reading once the collected trades are out.
I think trying to argue a way to make superhero comics more accessible is rather stupid. The only way to make them more accessible would be to have them stop being superhero comics (no long-running stories, no shared universes, no crossovers, etc.). No matter how many reboots, spinoffs, alternate universes, and sidestories there are, the superhero formula causes this. If you don't like it? Fine. It's not worth arguing about. But superhero comics are FOR the kinds of people who enjoy the crazy backstory and doing all the research, and who want a ton of comics to read. If you don't enjoy actively seeking out information in order to understand the backstory for the comic, or if you are bothered by picking up an issue and getting references to outside issues, then superheroes just aren't for you and won't be. A superhero industry without those ideas would cease to be any real kind of superhero comics.
The superheroes we have today are beloved because they've been around so long. The only way superheroes could be any more accessible would be if no superhero story ran for more than a few years and had no crossovers. Then, the love of the characters would slowly die out as we'd just introduce new heroes and stories every few years, and companies would downsize without all the characters, spinoffs, and crossovers. While you say the industry will die if it can't pull in new readers, the people who want to go into comics are the people who love these characters. Starting the characters over might pull new people in, but if the character isn't started over again in a few years, the same issue of alienation will continue to reoccur. Also, every time a character is rebooted, fanbases are divided and lost. These kinds of gimmicks of reboots and alternate universes ARE in fact what harms the industry, and they create the glut of stories and loss of fans. If a company could just pick a single continuity and roll with it for a long time, readers would be okay jumping in at any point, especially now that superhero comics revolve around the yearly crossover events. One would simply have to understand the major events of these crossovers to start onto the next one.
This whole argument just seems dumb. Scott, you're not wrong that the reasons you present are why people outside comics have trouble breaking in. But Churba is also right in saying that for those who actually care and would actually become long-time readers, gaining the necessary knowledge is not nearly as difficult as you imply.
I actually just came up with a really great analogue. See, superheroes are just another genre of comics. Complaining that there's no accessible way for people to get into the genre is like complaining there's no accessible way for an anime fan to break into the giant robot genre. If you like giant robots, then Gundam or Evangelion will just be enjoyable to you, and you'll do what's necessary. You could watch a random Gundam show and enjoy it for what it is, researching the various timelines later if you wanted. But if you don't like giant robots, it's not the fault of the giant robot genre that you don't like it, just like it's not the superhero genre's fault that some people don't have enough of a love for the characters to just jump right in and do research as they need to. If you're not compelled by the stories themselves to jump for more, then it's just not a genre for you.
As usual, Churba presents the stronger case. One of the big differences between the books Scott likes to talk about, like The Walking Dead, is that they only have a few years of story behind them so there's simply not as much material to absorb for a new reader, and they usually have a limited number of creative people behind them, so the stories can be more highly controlled.
Comics like Scott is trying to talk about, like the Batman books, have all been around for decades and they's all had multiple creative types behind them. This necessarily means that there will be a little more history than something like The Walking Dead. If the history is a little daunting to the new reader, Wikipedia exists. Even if it didn't, the effort to break in isn't really that hard.
As long as we're talking convoluted continuities, look at Star Wars and Star Trek. We've already seen an attempt to reboot Star Trek.
It's just a function of multiple creators and history. If you have some franchise that multiple people work on for a great number of years, it will acquire some baggage. The only question is, is it worth it to become familiar with the baggage and exactly how much baggage do you need to be familiar with to enjoy a story? Personally, I find that I simply don't need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire history of The Flash to enjoy a Flash story.
My opinion of the Scott/Churba dispute in this thread is that Scott wants desperately to show that he's very much above something so pedestrian as superhero books, and that, like any other hipster, his tastes are much more refined than ours. Churba, on the other hand, seems to have a much deeper working knowledge of the industry and the reasons why these stories can have value. It's pretty much a style over substance issue, with Scott representing the style side of "Oh, I'm way too cool for superhero books."
I'm relatively new to this site so I don't know anything about Scott's hipster sensibilities or not, but I still agree with him for the most part.
I read all kinds of comic books but I tend to favor independent comics not because I want to be cool, or because I have something against superhero comics, but because I think their narrative is tighter and makes more sense. Maybe it's the difference between creator-owned versus company owned, but I got tired of reading X-Men, only to have the writer change and then the book completely change course, or for some mega-event, that I didn't care at all about, to completely derail the book. I don't want to have to read 5 different comics to follow what's going on in X-Men. I WANT to read X-Men. I want to LIKE X-Men but that book is just one giant clusterfuck. Same goes for most of the mainstream Marvel or DC books.
The rare Marvel or DC books that I read tend to be limited series or long runs by creators I like. I really enjoyed Matt Fraction on Iron Fist. I thought that Bendis's Daredevil was amazing and probably as good as Frank Miller's classic run on the title. I loved the Inhumans maxi-series. I loved No Man's Land in Batman, and the Long Halloween, Batman Year One, and the Dark Knight Returns. I bought all 6 Starman Omnibusses collecting the entire series, and I'm working my way through the Ex Machina deluxe collections as well. What do most of these comics have in common? One writer, one cohesive storyline, and a definite ending. What are most superhero comics like? Multiple writers, storylines getting interrupted for the latest summer cross-over or whatever, no real ending, and, as soon as the writer leaves, a new one comes in who can undo and change everything that previously happened.
I have no idea where to start if I wanted to read a Batman book because it is completely unrecognizable compared to what I remember, or what the movies were like. Batman died? Batman came back through time? How many Batmen are there now? How many Robins are there now? What about Batgirl and Batwoman? Huh? Bruce Wayne has a son? When did this happen? For me, even as a comic book fan, I don't really want to put in the work or the effort to figure out which books to read, what's happened in the past, or which titles to track down to understand what's going on. Give me ONE Batman comic with no cross-overs, no references to any other books, one writer for the entire run and a definitive ending, or a jumping-off point. Or, if you're going to have long story arcs with multiple books, label each volume in sequential order so I know EXACTLY where to start, what to read next, etc.
Even if I were willing to do this, most new readers won't. In my post above, my friend was a perfect example. He saw the newest X-Men book and wanted to read the comic. He was ready to give Marvel his money, but because the X-Universe is such a mess, because the comic doesn't resemble the movies at all, and because all the X-books are so intertwined, so incestuous, he didn't want to bother and ended up buying Scott Pilgrim instead. The same could be said for Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Thor, the Avengers, Spiderman, etc. Considering how well the movies seem to be doing recently, it's almost a travesty that this hasn't translated into a major boost in sales for the related comic.
That has nothing to do with hipster sensibilities or trying to be cool. Yes, my friend could have asked the owner for advice but he didn't care that much. For him, he didn't want to put forth the effort to understand an entire universe and backstory.
HungryJoe, you argue that Scott is talking about comics that have been around for a shorter period of time than most superhero books and that have fewer creative people behind them. That has nothing to do with how convoluted superhero comics are. Time does not necessarily mean confusion as long as there is a cohesive storyline which is easily identified and labelled. Fables has over 100 issues and each volume is labeled in sequential order for people to easily pick it up. Naruto has over 50 volumes and each one is labeled. The entire story, from start to (eventual) finish is laid out for a potential new reader as easily as possible. I wish X-Men were like this. I wish I knew where Age of X, House of M, Age of Apocalypse, and so on and so on fit into the cohesive X-Men storyline.
What Marvel and DC should do is end a comic after the creator leaves. Joss Wheadon is writing Astonishing X-Men? Cool, awesome, I'm all for that. Once he's done, end Astonishing X-Men. Don't continue it. Or, if you want to keep the same name, start the numbering sequence over again. If you do this, even if you go through multiple creators, there is no baggage. Even if Astonishing X-Men continues, if the numbering restarts after Joss Wheedon leaves, I know when his run on the book has ended and I can stop there if I want to.
The confusion only sets in when a new creator starts undoing things that old creators have done. Confusion sets in when in the middle of Brubaker's run on Captain America, he has to deal with Civil War bullshit, that has nothing to do with the story he was trying to tell. Confusion only sets in when I'm forced to read an entirely different comic to understand what's going on. A friend lent me the first couple collections of Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction, and I remember being incredibly confused when suddenly a new issue had started and Norman Osborne was in charge of SHIELD and was trying to hunt down Tony Stark, who, in just the previous issue, had been head of SHIELD himself. I had to ask my friend what the heck was going on (I guess I could have checked online) but I shouldn't need to. In a book, or a collection, or a trade paperback or whatever, it should be self-contained or at least only refer back to previous issues or volumes of the same comic. With Invincible Iron Man, I went from literally reading that Tony Stark was the head of SHIELD to him being hunted down. I was lost. That should NEVER happen.
I like the idea of a shared universe, but if a shared continuity brings confusion and trouble, I don't want it. I was entirely and completely happy with the little universe that Robert Kirkman had created in Invincible. Almost no major manga is connected to each other, and that doesn't seem to suffer as a result.
But, to go back to the original question of this topic, I think the DC reboot is a great idea but I don't think they went far enough. My friend looked at the price of a single 24 page comicbook and just laughed. There was no way he was going to pay that. Comics, at least American Superhero comics, as much as we don't want them to, are dying. Numbers are down. Fewer and fewer younger readers are buying them because of cost and because of the time and effort to understand what's going on.
The reboot only addresses some of these issues. Renumbering all their comics is only a short-term solution. Renumbering only works for so long, but eventually an "event" number will pop up, like X-Men 500, or something, and then the companies will go back to their original numbering because fans want the "important" issue. If it were up to me, I'd remove numbering from comics, or at least sequential numbering long term. I love what Hellboy does with numbering. There is no Hellboy issue 75 or 100 or whatever, each miniseries has it's own numbers. Wake the Devil 1-6, Seeds of Destruction 1-6. No confusion, no collectibility, no bullshit. Comics shouldn't be collected, they should be read. As long as we have this mentality that comics are some rare hobby, people won't take them seriously. The majority of people don't collect books (for the most part), they read them. You collect stamps and baseball cards and beanie babies. I don't want to collect anything. I want to read, I want to enjoy.
Another problem with the reboot is that even if they renumber all their comics and make them more new-reader friendly, unless new readers have access to the comics, no one will buy them. How many dedicated comic book stores are there left in the US? 2,000? 3,000? I don't know, but not many. New readers won't go into a comic book store and they certainly won't pay 2.99-3.99 for 24 pages of content.
If DC really wanted to make some serious changes, they would kill the 24-page floppy as a medium and go straight to trades, or drastically lower the price of floppies. If you want to sell floppy comics, sell them for .99, cheap enough that a kid can walk into the supermarket and buy 5 or 6 at a time; Cheap enough that a kid's parents won't say no if their son or (gasp!) their daughter asks them for money to buy a comic. If you want to keep floppies, use them as loss-leaders for trades. Trades are sold in comic shops but they're also sold in bookstores and other places. More people go to book stores than to comic stores. There's a reason why younger kids and teens flock to manga instead of superhero comics, and it's not because of the stories. It's because they're more easily accessible, and cheaper, and kids get more for their money than with superhero books. It's because most American comics are geared towards their audience of aging mid 20's and upwards readers while most manga in the US is geared towards teens and younger (which is a problem for manga).
Any kid who likes manga, who reads Harry Potter, or the Hunger Games, or any other series like that would LOVE comic books if given the right thing to read. Marvel and DC are like the music industry: they're too scared and too stupid to change, and have their heads so far in the ground and are catering to their die-hard fans only, that their business is slowly dying around them.
DC also didn't go far enough with their digital comics initiative. There's no way that I'm going to spend the same amount of money for a digital comic as for a real one, even if it's released on the same day. I don't know if the iTunes 99 cents is the magic number, but something like that is more appropriate. I should also be able to subscribe to a comic for an entire year at a discount and have it automatically download. I should be able to buy older comics for a HUGE discount. DC should sell gift cards similar to iTunes and World of Warcraft subscription cards IN comic book stores, supermarkets, and other places so that kids who don't have credit cards can buy them.
Well, if it's a list of things that never cross over, almost every manga ever is on that list. There's no point in even listing them.
Read Akira fools!
I meant superhero comics, Scott. Akira is only tangentially "super," I'd argue. Yeah, there's tons of psionics, but they're not the driving point of the story in the way that Nanto Seiken and Hokuto Shinken are in HnK.
I've gotta admit, I was raised into comics. Like I mentioned before, my grandpa and uncle were both comic book readers. So even as a lad, even if I couldn't read the words, I liked the pictures. The funniest part having both of them explain why grandpa's Green Lantern and Flash looked different from uncle's. So I absorbed a lot of the comic continuity over the years, but now, with other interests and time being an issue, I'll admit to being a bit lazy on reading comics. I'll check out what is on the shelves at the bookstore.
After some time to mull over it, I think I'll give DC a chance with the relaunch.
jlawson, do you really think that because Fables has been around for some 100 issues, it is comparable in the least to Superman or Batman? As far as continuity, that book now has a spin-off that features incidents that affect characters in the main book, so I guess that book will soon be too complicated for your friend, too. Also, the things cited by Scott, like My Little Pony or The Prince of Nothing are discrete stories with nothing like eighty years of history behind them. Of course they're easier than comics.
Axel is right. If people want to read the superhero stories, they will. People like Scott have been predicting that superhero books will die since the 60s, but they keep going, because there are always enough people who are willing to digest the continuity or sometimes just not care about parts of the continuity.
Also, Axel kind of hit on something that comics people actively rejected. In the first couple of decades or so, continuity in comics was limited to single stories. After a story ended, everything was reset to zero. No one crossed over into any other book. The problem is, when you have a few years of those one-shot stories, they tend to get stale and repetitive. Allowing for characters to remember their history and have things that happen in one book affect things in another gives us a level of complexity that makes more and better stories possible. But, as with anything else, some of the backstory is good, and some of it is bad. But it's all just a story. It's not holy writ and it's not written on a stone tablet. You don't have to digest the entire continuity to start enjoying the stories.
Remember when Bane broke Batman's back? How important is that particular piece of information to stories today? I submit, that to pick up the thread of a Batman story, today, you simply don't have to know things like that. Just start reading. It'll all come to you organically through the stories.
However, I wouldn't go to a comic shop to start. Manylibraries have sheves and shelves of trade paperbacks you can check out for free. Also, you can torrent the entire back catalog of both Marvel and DC. Start reding some of those books to see what you like before you start spending money.
The way I look at it, for my own reading pleasure, continuity can be taken or left. For instance, there was a whole thing in the Batman books a few years ago about an earthquake devastating Gotham. I somewhat followed it, but certainly didn't buy every book. These days, it's mentioned rarely, and when it is mentioned, it's just in passing. If I'm reading a story that mentions it, I say, "Oh yeah, the earthquake. I remember that", and go on. I don't feel the need to recite the entire history of the earthquake. Batman has a son? Well, let's read a story about that. We don't need to know the kid's blood type or anything, just read the story. If you need backstory, the son was conceived with Talia, the daughter of Rhas-Al-Ghul, and he's a bit of a little brat. That's all you really need to know. Wow, that's hard, right? That's a lot of content to digest.
Why should everyone read comics? Comics aren't for everyone, just like civil war reenacting isn't for everyone. I don't care if someone reads comics or not. I think this "everyone should read comics" is just another example of authoritarian thinking, like "everyone should be a non-smoker", or "everyone should be an atheist".
Axel is right. If people want to read the superhero stories, they will. People like Scott have been predicting that superhero books will die since the 60s, but they keep going, because there are always enough people who are willing to digest the continuity or sometimes just not care about parts of the continuity.
When we predict they will die, we aren't wrong because they haven't died yet. The death is very slow. They will die when the fans who grew up in the silver and bronze ages die. The doctor's prognosis gives them quite a few decades.
Allowing for characters to remember their history and have things that happen in one book affect things in another gives us a level of complexity that makes more and better stories possible
Then how come the greatest comics of all time tend to be the ones that are not steeped in this history? If founding your story on the universe makes a book so much better, then how come none of the creators working in those universes can even come close to the works of Eisner or Tezuka? According to you, they have an advantage that makes their stories better, and they're not even close to these two dead guys who didn't have that advantage. How about Joe Kubert who has worked in those universes plenty, but all his best works have been original graphic novels? I mean, Sgt. Rock is alright, but Fax from Sarajevo is on another level. Or how about Brian K. Vaughn who worked on plenty of X-Men and Runaways, but kicked his own ass with Y: The Last Man, Ex-Machina, and Pride of Baghdad?
Why should everyone read comics? Comics aren't for everyone, just like civil war reenacting isn't for everyone. I don't care if someone reads comics or not. I think this "everyone should read comics" is just another example of authoritarian thinking, like "everyone should be a non-smoker", or "everyone should be an atheist".
This is exactly the problem we were discussing earlier. Television, movies, music, books, video games, these aren't hobbies if you are consuming them. Producing them is a hobby, or even a job. Consuming is just consuming. Yet consuming comics is compared to hobbies like civil war reenactment, open source software development, or model train building. Hobbies are creative and productive activities, and one person can only be involved in so many of them at once. Entertainment is a purely consumptive activity, and it should be for everybody.
Imagine if suddenly 99% of all movies in the movie theater were romantic comedies. Other genres of movie could only be found in specialty shops an theaters. Not only that, but the romantic comedies themselves are all the 12th+ sequels, and all the first movies in those series came out in 1955. The fans of those movies wouldn't see any problem with that, and would be strongly opposed to change.
But how greedy is that to take an entire medium of entertainment and reserve it just for one portion of the population? Comics are an amazing entertainment medium, but it is one controlled by an insular and selfish group of nerds that keep it all to themselves. Everyone but the romantic comedy fans would fight to break such a cartel in the movie theaters. Everyone but the superhero fans would fight to break the cartel in comics, but that battle has been long lost. They already don't care, and of the billions of people on earth, only a few mere tens of millions will ever know the joy of comics. Meanwhile, much younger entertainment mediums, like video games, are enjoyed by billions of people. Yet you act like it's a good thing because it means you get to keep your precious superhero universes you love so much.
Also, DC has 52 titles? Marvel has even more? Only a very few of those titles are going to be doing anything of significance or quality. The overwhelming majority of them are male power fantasies with violent conflict resolutions. We only need like, 5 of those.
So, your prediction.that superhero books will die is valid because all things die eventually? Then I predict Anime will die. However popular it may be now and in the coming decades, it will for because nothing lasts forever.
Fanboys please note that I am not saying anything is wrong with Anime. I'm just showing how absurd and useless Scott's assertion is. Everything in the temporal world is impermanent. If, as Scott says, comics are dying, but it will take them decades in which to actually die, I'm not very concerned.
Also, Scott, I never said that continuity makes for the best stories of all time. It allowed for better stories than existed before, when everything was reset at the end of every story, but as I said in the post, sometimes the results are good, and sometimes not so good.
Finally, I never said I had any interest in restricting access to comics. What I said was, I don't care. If Andrew doesn't like comics, that's fine. If Churba does, that's fine too. I don't care. All I ask is that non-comics types afford comics types the tolerance and respect they deserve. Whining that "superheroes are antiquated" doesn't help matters, and judging from the box office sales of recent superhero movies, this is an opinion most people do not share.
It's like sushi. Your like or dislike of sushi has no effect on my enjoyment of sushi. It is foreseeable, at the end of history or some such thing, that sushi will die and there will be no more sushi. This possibility is so remote that it doesn't bother me at all
So, your prediction.that superhero books will die is valid because all things die eventually? Then I predict Anime will die. However popular it may be now and in the coming decades, it will for because nothing lasts forever.
Fanboys please note that I am not saying anything is wrong with Anime. I'm just showing how absutd and useless Scott's assertion is.
As we have said many times before. Anime has the exact same problem as comics in the US. Instead of making more anime that the entire world can enjoy, such as the works of Miyazaki, they are making shows that appeal to a small but extremely dedicated fanbase of scary otaku. These shows just happen to be extremely perverted disgusting crap like Chu-bra, which is literally about girls underwear and middle school girls.
Finally, I never said I had any interest in restricting access to comics. What I said was, I don't care. If Andrew doesn't like comics, that's fine. If Churba does, that's fine too. I don't care.
I do care. I think it's a travesty that there are people spending vast creative resources to produce joy for a very small number of people when they could be bringing that joy to the entire world. It's an opportunity cost is extremely high and being spent on a handful of nerds.
I have never bought (papery) comic books regularly before. They did a good thing. Myself, and several of my friends are stoked about this. I really like the idea of Hawk and Dove, so I'm gonna get it, despite the shit art. Red Hood and The Outlaws looks like it has awesome art, plus it's about an ex-Robin, Starfire, and Arsenal, on the run from the fucking law. I'm gonna buy multiple subscriptions. So are my friends. we will share them. It'll be a GRAND OLE TIME. It's working, to a degree. Also, Suicide Squad will probably be awesome, because HQ is actually dressed like a friggin insane woman, and there's gonna be a talking shark. Like Evil Jabber Jaw. Cyborg's on the Justice League. Is that new? My friend and his Dad are gonna get all 7 or 8 Batman comics, so that leaves me and my other friend to subscribe to stuff like Superman, and Firestorm. And Static Shock. God. I'm so stoked. Justice League Dark looks grand, and I'm generally abuzz with excitement. Scott, what website do you order comics through again? I have little to no income as a teenager, and I need discounts.
Finally, I never said I had any interest in restricting access to comics. What I said was, I don't care. If Andrew doesn't like comics, that's fine. If Churba does, that's fine too. I don't care.
I do care. I think it's a travesty that there are people spending vast creative resources to produce joy for a very small number of people when they could be bringing that joy to the entire world. It's an opportunity cost is extremely high and being spent on a handful of nerds.
Why? That's a little like being mad that Maria Callas didn't sing Broadway show tunes. Another example might be getting upset that Ken Burns doesn't make zombie movies. In both cases, the artists are or were creating art that was enjoyed be relatively few people when, if they did the other thing, their talent may have been enjoyed by more people.
I'm actually going to a speech/presentation tomorrow night being given by Ken Burns about his new documentary, Prohibition. Shall I ask him for you why he wastes his talent doing documentaries that few people watch when he could be making zombie movies that many more people would watch?
I have never bought (papery) comic books regularly before. They did a good thing. Myself, and several of my friends are stoked about this. I really like the idea of Hawk and Dove, so I'm gonna get it, despite the shit art. Red Hood and The Outlaws looks like it has awesome art, plus it's about an ex-Robin, Starfire, and Arsenal, on the run from the fucking law. I'm gonna buy multiple subscriptions. So are my friends. we will share them. It'll be a GRAND OLE TIME. It's working, to a degree. Also, Suicide Squad will probably be awesome, because HQ is actually dressed like a friggin insane woman, and there's gonna be a talking shark. Like Evil Jabber Jaw. Cyborg's on the Justice League. Is that new? My friend and his Dad are gonna get all 7 or 8 Batman comics, so that leaves me and my other friend to subscribe to stuff like Superman, and Firestorm. And Static Shock. God. I'm so stoked. Justice League Dark looks grand, and I'm generally abuzz with excitement. Scott, what website do you order comics through again? I have little to no income as a teenager, and I need discounts.
Yeah, you can tell from the lack of interest shown by this kid that comics are a dying medium.
Unless . . . you're not being sarcastic, are you kid? It would make me very sad if all that post was just snarky sarcasm.
Why? That's a little like being mad that Maria Callas didn't sing Broadway show tunes. Another example might be getting upset that Ken Burns doesn't make zombie movies. In both cases, the artists are or were creating art that was enjoyed be relatively few people when, if they did the other thing, their talent may have been enjoyed by more people.
It's not even close. This isn't a situation of any individual artist making a decision about what they want to create. This is a cartel where the overwhelming majority of artists all do the same thing and a corporate duopoly locks it in. If one band wants to switch from metal to dubstep, good on them. What if every single band decided to do dubstep and the major record companies produced 90% dubstep albums? Even though the sales figures on those albums are low and getting lower, they refuse to try to produce music in any other genre. All the people in the world who might enjoy music other than dubstep just gave up on listening to music entirely. In a world of billions of people, maybe a few million listen to music. Music itself ends up becoming a niche that only a few people care or know about, and it's only available in rare specialty shops in only a few countries in the world.
Yeah, you can tell from the lack of interest shown by this kid that comics are a dying medium.
Data is not the plural of anecdote. There are always going to be some kids getting into it, but the numbers are extremely low. If there were a Logan's Run carousel right now DC and Marvel comics divisions would be closed within a couple months, even if the artists, writers, and editors survived.
There are always going to be some kids getting into it, but the numbers are extremely low. If there were a Logan's Run carousel right now DC and Marvel comics divisions would be closed within a couple months, even if the artists, writers, and editors survived.
Yawn. That's just your standard, predictable, "the only people who like the things that I don't are old people" argument you use when you know you have nothing left to say. That's a sad little argument for the tremendous and frequent use you try and make of it.
What's that URL, Scott?
URL of what?
He really wants the URL of the company you buy comics from because, since he's young, he has no interest in comics.
Joe has missed the point -- every point -- of this argument, so thoroughly -- so precisely -- that I'm starting to think that he's doing it on purpose.
But how greedy is that to take an entire medium of entertainment and reserve it just for one portion of the population? Comics are an amazing entertainment medium, but it is one controlled by an insular and selfish group of nerds that keep it all to themselves.
PAN PAN PAN, INCOMING MORAL ARGUMENT.
But anyway, enough of making fun.
Part of the problem here, it seems, is that there seems to be some confusion between "Comics" and "Superhero comics".
Comics are a medium, and Superhero comics are a Genre. What you're doing is basically - to make a very rough equivalency - is that Television is terrible, because Bold and the Beautiful, Home and away, Neighbours and the like are horrendously complex. There are shows which are simple and easy - like Secret life or us, or The Wire, or The Thick of it - but much of the genre, and certainly the longest running parts, are horrendously complex.
You know what? I don't like Giant Robot shows that much. Does that mean Anime is terrible? Nope. I just don't like Giant Robot Shows.
You want to get into Superhero comics? Cool! Read some superhero comics, and if you don't know as much as you want or feel you need to, ask someone, or look something up. You don't want to read superhero comics? Good for you! Go read other comics! There are tons of them, find something you like and hook in. And that's that. There is nothing more to it - Guess what? This isn't the kindergarten, and you don't get a prize just for showing up.
Only one problem remains -
Television, movies, music, books, video games, these aren't hobbies if you are consuming them. Producing them is a hobby, or even a job. Consuming is just consuming. Yet consuming comics is compared to hobbies like civil war reenactment, open source software development, or model train building. Hobbies are creative and productive activities, and one person can only be involved in so many of them at once. Entertainment is a purely consumptive activity, and it should be for everybody.
Hobby, As defined by the oxford English dictionary - an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure. Example: Her hobbies are reading and gardening.
Mirriam Webster - A pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.
The Free Dictionary - An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
Dictionary.com - An activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation. Example: Her hobbies include stamp-collecting and woodcarving.
I believe a Brief musical interlude is in order -
Okay, a lied a little before. NOW that's enough making fun.
The idea of the superhero is antiquated and does not relate to me in any way. Maybe if I grew up during the 40's and 50's I would feel differently.
That's okay! There are comics out there that I think would be more to your taste.
I have never bought (papery) comic books regularly before. They did a good thing. Myself, and several of my friends are stoked about this. I really like the idea of Hawk and Dove, so I'm gonna get it, despite the shit art. Red Hood and The Outlaws looks like it has awesome art, plus it's about an ex-Robin, Starfire, and Arsenal, on the run from the fucking law. I'm gonna buy multiple subscriptions. So are my friends. we will share them. It'll be a GRAND OLE TIME. It's working, to a degree. Also, Suicide Squad will probably be awesome, because HQ is actually dressed like a friggin insane woman, and there's gonna be a talking shark. Like Evil Jabber Jaw. Cyborg's on the Justice League. Is that new? My friend and his Dad are gonna get all 7 or 8 Batman comics, so that leaves me and my other friend to subscribe to stuff like Superman, and Firestorm. And Static Shock. God. I'm so stoked. Justice League Dark looks grand, and I'm generally abuzz with excitement.
I'm really glad, man. Cyborg being in the justice leauge is not hugely new, but relatively recent - since about the...Cry for Justice arc, I think?
I'm really looking forward to JL Dark too, Hellblazer is one of my old favorites, so they already had me on board with John Constantine.
Comics are a medium, and Superhero comics are a Genre. What you're doing is basically - to make a very rough equivalency - is that Television is terrible, because Bold and the Beautiful, Home and away, Neighbours and the like are horrendously complex. There are shows which are simple and easy - like Secret life or us, or The Wire, or The Thick of it - but much of the genre, and certainly the longest running parts, are horrendously complex.
You know what? I don't like Giant Robot shows that much. Does that mean Anime is terrible? Nope. I just don't like Giant Robot Shows.
Name any other medium that is as dominated by a single genre.
Comments
I think you guys are clearly misunderstanding me here. I am personally able to read and understand these superhero books. I can read something like Marvels or Kingdom Come and know what is going on. I use the Wikipedia when reading Crisis to figure out who the hell these people are that I've never seen before. That's because I'm a comic geek.
It's just that unlike other comic geeks, I'm not some sort of purist. Most superhero comic geeks I know have these strong emotional attachments to these fictional worlds that border on scary. These people take what happens in those worlds all too seriously. A favorite example of mine is how so many of them boycotted Spider-Man when Brand New Day occurred even though the quality and accessibility of the book actually skyrocketed due to the awesomeness of Dan Slott (who also wrote the excellent Ren + Stimpy comics of my childhood). I'm not going to care if continuity or history is fucked with. I just want good comics.
I also, if you haven't noticed, want to spread comics. That's what we do here, we spread geekery. By far comics, especially Marvel and DC underwear pervert comics, are the most difficult geekery to spread. Churba has spoken a great deal in this thread about how he helped many people into comics. That's exactly the problem, why do people need help in the first place? With any other entertainment we can just say something simple like, go watch My Little Pony, and it works surprisingly well. Tell someone, read the Prince of Nothing. Oh look how people get right on that. Go play this game, done! Just say the name of the thing, and people can take care of the rest.
When it comes to superhero books, you often need to give extremely specific instructions. Sure you can tell someone to buy Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, etc. But for anything else? People in this thread have expressed interest in Deadpool. Well, you can't just say go read Deadpool. On the comic shelf there is Deadpool MAX, Deadpool, and Deadpool: Fear Itself. Ok, so stick to regular Deadpool, issue number #39! Ok, so 38 issues to catch up on, not too bad. How about this Deadpool Classic trade, or Deadpool & Cable trades? Suddenly I've got to write a freaking manual for someone just to know what book to read first. Since all of them are actually so different from each other, they might like one and not another. They might start with one they don't like and shun Deadpool forever when they actually would have loved one of the other ones. If it were Deadpool 1, 2, 3, 4, all that trouble would just go away.
I want comics to go back to being read by millions and millions of people, not mere thousands. I want to see people everywhere with comics in their hands. Sadly, one of the major things preventing this is the frightening array of confusing offerings. The fact that comics are very hard to find outside of comic shops is another major problem. The ridiculously high pricing is another one.
You might not want comics to be that popular, but I do. And I recognize that in order for that to happen, there have to be big changes. It might not be the exact changes I suggest. It might be lower quality paper, loss of color, or any number of things. Those changes, whatever they are, are going to upset the existing fans. Already there are geezers talking about how they refuse to read digital because they love killing trees so mcuh. The only reason I stick with paper is because the digital comics are too expensive and loaded with DRM. I prefer my comics digital, Penny Arcade style.
See, because I'm constantly trying to spread geekery, I know how other people feel. I don't feel that way. I walk into a comic shop, and I know exactly what everything is. But I also know that of the billions of people on earth less than half a million have that level of knowledge. Even people who are pretty geeky steer clear of Marvel and DC comics. Even when showing a slight interest, they need some serious hand holding and attention to find the right comic just for them. Selling a comic shouldn't be as hard as selling a car. The fact that it is is a clear sign that there is a major problem.
The superheroes we have today are beloved because they've been around so long. The only way superheroes could be any more accessible would be if no superhero story ran for more than a few years and had no crossovers. Then, the love of the characters would slowly die out as we'd just introduce new heroes and stories every few years, and companies would downsize without all the characters, spinoffs, and crossovers. While you say the industry will die if it can't pull in new readers, the people who want to go into comics are the people who love these characters. Starting the characters over might pull new people in, but if the character isn't started over again in a few years, the same issue of alienation will continue to reoccur. Also, every time a character is rebooted, fanbases are divided and lost. These kinds of gimmicks of reboots and alternate universes ARE in fact what harms the industry, and they create the glut of stories and loss of fans. If a company could just pick a single continuity and roll with it for a long time, readers would be okay jumping in at any point, especially now that superhero comics revolve around the yearly crossover events. One would simply have to understand the major events of these crossovers to start onto the next one.
This whole argument just seems dumb. Scott, you're not wrong that the reasons you present are why people outside comics have trouble breaking in. But Churba is also right in saying that for those who actually care and would actually become long-time readers, gaining the necessary knowledge is not nearly as difficult as you imply.
Scott, I think Axel just pimp-slapped us both to the floor. Dude is talking more sense than either of us have since we started arguing about it.
I'm calling it - for my side, at least - I concede to Axel's argument, no further points.
I read all kinds of comic books but I tend to favor independent comics not because I want to be cool, or because I have something against superhero comics, but because I think their narrative is tighter and makes more sense. Maybe it's the difference between creator-owned versus company owned, but I got tired of reading X-Men, only to have the writer change and then the book completely change course, or for some mega-event, that I didn't care at all about, to completely derail the book. I don't want to have to read 5 different comics to follow what's going on in X-Men. I WANT to read X-Men. I want to LIKE X-Men but that book is just one giant clusterfuck. Same goes for most of the mainstream Marvel or DC books.
The rare Marvel or DC books that I read tend to be limited series or long runs by creators I like. I really enjoyed Matt Fraction on Iron Fist. I thought that Bendis's Daredevil was amazing and probably as good as Frank Miller's classic run on the title. I loved the Inhumans maxi-series. I loved No Man's Land in Batman, and the Long Halloween, Batman Year One, and the Dark Knight Returns. I bought all 6 Starman Omnibusses collecting the entire series, and I'm working my way through the Ex Machina deluxe collections as well. What do most of these comics have in common? One writer, one cohesive storyline, and a definite ending. What are most superhero comics like? Multiple writers, storylines getting interrupted for the latest summer cross-over or whatever, no real ending, and, as soon as the writer leaves, a new one comes in who can undo and change everything that previously happened.
I have no idea where to start if I wanted to read a Batman book because it is completely unrecognizable compared to what I remember, or what the movies were like. Batman died? Batman came back through time? How many Batmen are there now? How many Robins are there now? What about Batgirl and Batwoman? Huh? Bruce Wayne has a son? When did this happen? For me, even as a comic book fan, I don't really want to put in the work or the effort to figure out which books to read, what's happened in the past, or which titles to track down to understand what's going on. Give me ONE Batman comic with no cross-overs, no references to any other books, one writer for the entire run and a definitive ending, or a jumping-off point. Or, if you're going to have long story arcs with multiple books, label each volume in sequential order so I know EXACTLY where to start, what to read next, etc.
Even if I were willing to do this, most new readers won't. In my post above, my friend was a perfect example. He saw the newest X-Men book and wanted to read the comic. He was ready to give Marvel his money, but because the X-Universe is such a mess, because the comic doesn't resemble the movies at all, and because all the X-books are so intertwined, so incestuous, he didn't want to bother and ended up buying Scott Pilgrim instead. The same could be said for Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Thor, the Avengers, Spiderman, etc. Considering how well the movies seem to be doing recently, it's almost a travesty that this hasn't translated into a major boost in sales for the related comic.
That has nothing to do with hipster sensibilities or trying to be cool. Yes, my friend could have asked the owner for advice but he didn't care that much. For him, he didn't want to put forth the effort to understand an entire universe and backstory.
HungryJoe, you argue that Scott is talking about comics that have been around for a shorter period of time than most superhero books and that have fewer creative people behind them. That has nothing to do with how convoluted superhero comics are. Time does not necessarily mean confusion as long as there is a cohesive storyline which is easily identified and labelled. Fables has over 100 issues and each volume is labeled in sequential order for people to easily pick it up. Naruto has over 50 volumes and each one is labeled. The entire story, from start to (eventual) finish is laid out for a potential new reader as easily as possible. I wish X-Men were like this. I wish I knew where Age of X, House of M, Age of Apocalypse, and so on and so on fit into the cohesive X-Men storyline.
What Marvel and DC should do is end a comic after the creator leaves. Joss Wheadon is writing Astonishing X-Men? Cool, awesome, I'm all for that. Once he's done, end Astonishing X-Men. Don't continue it. Or, if you want to keep the same name, start the numbering sequence over again. If you do this, even if you go through multiple creators, there is no baggage. Even if Astonishing X-Men continues, if the numbering restarts after Joss Wheedon leaves, I know when his run on the book has ended and I can stop there if I want to.
The confusion only sets in when a new creator starts undoing things that old creators have done. Confusion sets in when in the middle of Brubaker's run on Captain America, he has to deal with Civil War bullshit, that has nothing to do with the story he was trying to tell. Confusion only sets in when I'm forced to read an entirely different comic to understand what's going on. A friend lent me the first couple collections of Invincible Iron Man by Matt Fraction, and I remember being incredibly confused when suddenly a new issue had started and Norman Osborne was in charge of SHIELD and was trying to hunt down Tony Stark, who, in just the previous issue, had been head of SHIELD himself. I had to ask my friend what the heck was going on (I guess I could have checked online) but I shouldn't need to. In a book, or a collection, or a trade paperback or whatever, it should be self-contained or at least only refer back to previous issues or volumes of the same comic. With Invincible Iron Man, I went from literally reading that Tony Stark was the head of SHIELD to him being hunted down. I was lost. That should NEVER happen.
I like the idea of a shared universe, but if a shared continuity brings confusion and trouble, I don't want it. I was entirely and completely happy with the little universe that Robert Kirkman had created in Invincible. Almost no major manga is connected to each other, and that doesn't seem to suffer as a result.
The reboot only addresses some of these issues. Renumbering all their comics is only a short-term solution. Renumbering only works for so long, but eventually an "event" number will pop up, like X-Men 500, or something, and then the companies will go back to their original numbering because fans want the "important" issue. If it were up to me, I'd remove numbering from comics, or at least sequential numbering long term. I love what Hellboy does with numbering. There is no Hellboy issue 75 or 100 or whatever, each miniseries has it's own numbers. Wake the Devil 1-6, Seeds of Destruction 1-6. No confusion, no collectibility, no bullshit. Comics shouldn't be collected, they should be read. As long as we have this mentality that comics are some rare hobby, people won't take them seriously. The majority of people don't collect books (for the most part), they read them. You collect stamps and baseball cards and beanie babies. I don't want to collect anything. I want to read, I want to enjoy.
Another problem with the reboot is that even if they renumber all their comics and make them more new-reader friendly, unless new readers have access to the comics, no one will buy them. How many dedicated comic book stores are there left in the US? 2,000? 3,000? I don't know, but not many. New readers won't go into a comic book store and they certainly won't pay 2.99-3.99 for 24 pages of content.
If DC really wanted to make some serious changes, they would kill the 24-page floppy as a medium and go straight to trades, or drastically lower the price of floppies. If you want to sell floppy comics, sell them for .99, cheap enough that a kid can walk into the supermarket and buy 5 or 6 at a time; Cheap enough that a kid's parents won't say no if their son or (gasp!) their daughter asks them for money to buy a comic. If you want to keep floppies, use them as loss-leaders for trades. Trades are sold in comic shops but they're also sold in bookstores and other places. More people go to book stores than to comic stores. There's a reason why younger kids and teens flock to manga instead of superhero comics, and it's not because of the stories. It's because they're more easily accessible, and cheaper, and kids get more for their money than with superhero books. It's because most American comics are geared towards their audience of aging mid 20's and upwards readers while most manga in the US is geared towards teens and younger (which is a problem for manga).
Any kid who likes manga, who reads Harry Potter, or the Hunger Games, or any other series like that would LOVE comic books if given the right thing to read. Marvel and DC are like the music industry: they're too scared and too stupid to change, and have their heads so far in the ground and are catering to their die-hard fans only, that their business is slowly dying around them.
DC also didn't go far enough with their digital comics initiative. There's no way that I'm going to spend the same amount of money for a digital comic as for a real one, even if it's released on the same day. I don't know if the iTunes 99 cents is the magic number, but something like that is more appropriate. I should also be able to subscribe to a comic for an entire year at a discount and have it automatically download. I should be able to buy older comics for a HUGE discount. DC should sell gift cards similar to iTunes and World of Warcraft subscription cards IN comic book stores, supermarkets, and other places so that kids who don't have credit cards can buy them.
After some time to mull over it, I think I'll give DC a chance with the relaunch.
Axel is right. If people want to read the superhero stories, they will. People like Scott have been predicting that superhero books will die since the 60s, but they keep going, because there are always enough people who are willing to digest the continuity or sometimes just not care about parts of the continuity.
Also, Axel kind of hit on something that comics people actively rejected. In the first couple of decades or so, continuity in comics was limited to single stories. After a story ended, everything was reset to zero. No one crossed over into any other book. The problem is, when you have a few years of those one-shot stories, they tend to get stale and repetitive. Allowing for characters to remember their history and have things that happen in one book affect things in another gives us a level of complexity that makes more and better stories possible. But, as with anything else, some of the backstory is good, and some of it is bad. But it's all just a story. It's not holy writ and it's not written on a stone tablet. You don't have to digest the entire continuity to start enjoying the stories.
Remember when Bane broke Batman's back? How important is that particular piece of information to stories today? I submit, that to pick up the thread of a Batman story, today, you simply don't have to know things like that. Just start reading. It'll all come to you organically through the stories.
However, I wouldn't go to a comic shop to start. Manylibraries have sheves and shelves of trade paperbacks you can check out for free. Also, you can torrent the entire back catalog of both Marvel and DC. Start reding some of those books to see what you like before you start spending money.
The way I look at it, for my own reading pleasure, continuity can be taken or left. For instance, there was a whole thing in the Batman books a few years ago about an earthquake devastating Gotham. I somewhat followed it, but certainly didn't buy every book. These days, it's mentioned rarely, and when it is mentioned, it's just in passing. If I'm reading a story that mentions it, I say, "Oh yeah, the earthquake. I remember that", and go on. I don't feel the need to recite the entire history of the earthquake. Batman has a son? Well, let's read a story about that. We don't need to know the kid's blood type or anything, just read the story. If you need backstory, the son was conceived with Talia, the daughter of Rhas-Al-Ghul, and he's a bit of a little brat. That's all you really need to know. Wow, that's hard, right? That's a lot of content to digest.
Why should everyone read comics? Comics aren't for everyone, just like civil war reenacting isn't for everyone. I don't care if someone reads comics or not. I think this "everyone should read comics" is just another example of authoritarian thinking, like "everyone should be a non-smoker", or "everyone should be an atheist".
Imagine if suddenly 99% of all movies in the movie theater were romantic comedies. Other genres of movie could only be found in specialty shops an theaters. Not only that, but the romantic comedies themselves are all the 12th+ sequels, and all the first movies in those series came out in 1955. The fans of those movies wouldn't see any problem with that, and would be strongly opposed to change.
But how greedy is that to take an entire medium of entertainment and reserve it just for one portion of the population? Comics are an amazing entertainment medium, but it is one controlled by an insular and selfish group of nerds that keep it all to themselves. Everyone but the romantic comedy fans would fight to break such a cartel in the movie theaters. Everyone but the superhero fans would fight to break the cartel in comics, but that battle has been long lost. They already don't care, and of the billions of people on earth, only a few mere tens of millions will ever know the joy of comics. Meanwhile, much younger entertainment mediums, like video games, are enjoyed by billions of people. Yet you act like it's a good thing because it means you get to keep your precious superhero universes you love so much.
Fanboys please note that I am not saying anything is wrong with Anime. I'm just showing how absurd and useless Scott's assertion is. Everything in the temporal world is impermanent. If, as Scott says, comics are dying, but it will take them decades in which to actually die, I'm not very concerned.
Also, Scott, I never said that continuity makes for the best stories of all time. It allowed for better stories than existed before, when everything was reset at the end of every story, but as I said in the post, sometimes the results are good, and sometimes not so good.
Finally, I never said I had any interest in restricting access to comics. What I said was, I don't care. If Andrew doesn't like comics, that's fine. If Churba does, that's fine too. I don't care. All I ask is that non-comics types afford comics types the tolerance and respect they deserve. Whining that "superheroes are antiquated" doesn't help matters, and judging from the box office sales of recent superhero movies, this is an opinion most people do not share.
It's like sushi. Your like or dislike of sushi has no effect on my enjoyment of sushi. It is foreseeable, at the end of history or some such thing, that sushi will die and there will be no more sushi. This possibility is so remote that it doesn't bother me at all
I'm actually going to a speech/presentation tomorrow night being given by Ken Burns about his new documentary, Prohibition. Shall I ask him for you why he wastes his talent doing documentaries that few people watch when he could be making zombie movies that many more people would watch? Yeah, you can tell from the lack of interest shown by this kid that comics are a dying medium.
Unless . . . you're not being sarcastic, are you kid? It would make me very sad if all that post was just snarky sarcasm.
But anyway, enough of making fun.
Part of the problem here, it seems, is that there seems to be some confusion between "Comics" and "Superhero comics".
Comics are a medium, and Superhero comics are a Genre. What you're doing is basically - to make a very rough equivalency - is that Television is terrible, because Bold and the Beautiful, Home and away, Neighbours and the like are horrendously complex. There are shows which are simple and easy - like Secret life or us, or The Wire, or The Thick of it - but much of the genre, and certainly the longest running parts, are horrendously complex.
You know what? I don't like Giant Robot shows that much. Does that mean Anime is terrible? Nope. I just don't like Giant Robot Shows.
You want to get into Superhero comics? Cool! Read some superhero comics, and if you don't know as much as you want or feel you need to, ask someone, or look something up. You don't want to read superhero comics? Good for you! Go read other comics! There are tons of them, find something you like and hook in. And that's that. There is nothing more to it - Guess what? This isn't the kindergarten, and you don't get a prize just for showing up.
Only one problem remains - Hobby, As defined by the oxford English dictionary - an activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure. Example: Her hobbies are reading and gardening.
Mirriam Webster - A pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.
The Free Dictionary - An activity or interest pursued outside one's regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure.
Dictionary.com - An activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation. Example: Her hobbies include stamp-collecting and woodcarving.
I believe a Brief musical interlude is in order -
Okay, a lied a little before. NOW that's enough making fun. That's okay! There are comics out there that I think would be more to your taste. I'm really glad, man. Cyborg being in the justice leauge is not hugely new, but relatively recent - since about the...Cry for Justice arc, I think?
I'm really looking forward to JL Dark too, Hellblazer is one of my old favorites, so they already had me on board with John Constantine.