Glad to be gone.

I don’t read comics much anymore.

Well, maybe I should qualify that. I read comics but only what I am able to get through the library (Locke and Key.... amazing).

I don’t miss the expense. I don’t miss trucking to the comics shop each week (although that is less the thing now with e-readers). Most of all, I don’t miss comics.

Again, a qualification.

I don’t miss Marvel and DC for the most part.


The reason for this are many, a big one being that comics has developed into something particularly bad these days. The funny thing is is that it is a great time to be a comics fan. There are so many movies and TV shows out there now and surprisingly enough, they get it right MORE THAN THE COMICS THEMSELVES DO!

Why is that?

Well, a large part of it likely has to do with event comics and another part of it has to do with comics eating itself.

Event comics just destroyed comics. Each year now comic fans are treated to some kind of major story arc that goes across a whole line of books and promises to be ground-shaking, earth-shattering! I think DC has rebooted the DC universe three or four times in the last few years (if what I hear is correct).

I do know I recently picked up four or five Justice League softcovers from the library and they were unreadable. The art was muddied and overworked. The story was just atrocious, so incredibly lacking in any kind of decent character development and the portrayal of the characters so far afield from their core as to be painful.

I’m not singling out DC either because Marvel is just as guilty.

I read something recently that made me so happy I don’t read comics regularly - Captain America is a Hydra agent and has been for some time. What’s next, Superman is a sexual deviant?

There is something to be said for responsibility and stewardship, neither of which are in evidence here. Marvel likely would argue, “Hey! It’s working! We’ve got people talking about Captain America! They’re interested again!”

Count me out.

And again, herein is the big issue I have with comics... what we witness is akin to keeping a person on life support long after they should have been let go off. If you ever had an older relative who was ill for a prolonged period of time you know what a difficult decision this can be, letting go. Recognizing that the time has come to let something pass - the comics business is a commercial enterprise though and as such can’t see it’s way clear to do that or figure out a way to get out of the box it is in.

That’s where I stopped.

So, let’s talk about some good things that have happened incomics to offset the rant...

Miles Morales.

Really, single best character to come down the pike in a long time. This actually gives us a sense of WHAT COMICS SHOULD BE DOING.

When I say what they should be doing I don’t mean jumping Miles Morales over to the normal Marvel Universe and plastering him on to an already burdensome continuity weighing what was good of the character rdown with a load of shit that’s unnecessary.

Rather, it’s taking something and injecting some life back into it and making it relevant for today.

You know what else is good about comics?

Ms Marvel - Kamela Khan.

Why? Because she takes that sense of wonder that is inherent in the medium but also gives us a window into other people’s lives in a way that makes us look at them as less of an outsider.

This is a good thing.

I’m a big one for the teenage hero.

Up until round about the time they made him Kid Flash I thought Impulse was one of my favorite character because I loved everything that was new about Bart Allen. Same thing goes for Blue Beetle and the Tim Drake Robin book... both of them really captured the things that made Spider Man great in the very beginning.

Comics though doesn’t get it.

The guys who are smart get it... Bendis is one, Straczynski is another (wicked smart and entertaining guy - I actually wrote an article about him way back), Ellis on a good day, there are others.

I had just seen where DC bought the Authority and other Wildstorm characters into the DC universe... such a bad move.

The one thing comics has to do if it is to remain relevant is to jettison the past.

Bill Watterson at one time had given a speech that spoke to how comics kept regurgitating the past but I couldn’t readily find it. It’s not a question that continuity in and of itself is bad as much as the ‘reboot’ is.

What did in comics for me was ‘Brand New Day’ a reboot that came after an especially good run on Spider Man by JMS. JMS had done wonders for injecting some vitality into the book but I imagine that wasn’t enough for Marvel and so they took an easy way out.

Maybe I’m too old to get it anymore, I wonder about that sometimes but then I look at someone like Jack Kirby and he managed to hit it out of the park for years. Good storytelling is just that, good storytelling, it seems so simple but comics companies keep bogging it down with the past.

Seems like the few things that are really good are the ones that look to the future, you would think ‘comics’ as an industry would’ve absorbed that lesson by now.