ALL MY HEROES ARE DEAD
First of all I love comics, all kinds of comics, and have worked and read, and perhaps even breathed comics for most of my life. They got me through High School, they prompted me to become a graphic artist, they destroyed my first marriage (well, they helped), and were a firm condition on all my relationships since, I wouldn’t have met my current wife (Married fifteen years this year, thank you!) if it wasn’t for her LOVE of comics- she’s got more long boxes than I do!I LOVE comics, but all my superheroes are DEAD.
All the heroes were systematically killed off, all in various ways and forms, and replaced with soulless zombies (Which may explain the market’s current hunger for hungry walking dead comics, their favorite superheroes have been zombies for some time now, so why not read about the real thing?). Like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers the souls of all the icons in these superhero universes died and have been replaced with “pod people” walking dead; zombies forced to live out the rest of eternity walking lifelessly through the motions of their former selves, left to constantly rise from whatever future “deaths” they are forced to endure to pace through the same motions yet again, only this time just a little bit more decayed and lifeless than the last.
Oh sure, most current fans would just say it’s “reality” creeping in, comics have to keep pace with the “times” (whatever THAT means!) and be more “mature” and realistic, more dark and “hardcore”, that these characters must face a reality that creeps ever closer to the one the reader is in. I’m here to tell you that they definitely do NOT need to, and that American superhero comics, as an art form, are so, SO badly crippled because they do, perhaps to the point of the entire genre’s death.
How else do you explain Spider-man meeting The Green Goblin the first time, what at least four times over now? Batman has found Robin how many times? The Justice League has formed what, at least three times now, and don’t even try to explain Captain Marvel to me, from EITHER company because the ones I loved died about three incarnations ago apiece. Plots are now tirelessly recycled “made more realistic” slowed down to a near lifeless crawl, and repeated almost with each new writer of the title.
Sure comic sales are going up, SLIGHTLY, but so is the cover prices and the “events”- you know those crossovers that will change the superhero universe FOREVER-or at least until the next major “event”- artificially making the market look bigger. Graphic Novels are the largest growth portion of the market, but seriously how much of that growth are the Marvel Essentials and the DC Showcase Presents? Collections that I consider to be the true grave markers to memorialize the deaths of all the particular icon’s adventures each book collects. Personally I buy them all, looking at it as part nostalgia and part mourning. This month Marvel even collected their first version of their “official handbook” in one nifty Essentials, once again to let us all have a taste for those original heroes, as their soulless zombies trudge on.
To me comics were always about exaggeration, pure and simple, they were never supposed to reflect “real life”. If I want “real life” I could get that by just stepping outside, or turning on a television. Would comics, as an art form, have lasted as long as they have if they were as realistic as they are now? Do we recognize the Masters of our craft, like Eisner, Kirby, Cole, Beck, Fox, and Binder and so many other talented people throughout the last 80 or so years, for their “realism”? If superhero comics have survived all these decades as an entertainment medium because of their ability to exaggerate to the farthest reaches of our imagination, isn’t there something inherently WRONG about the constant striving for realism, or realistic themes in today’s comics, especially in our superhero universes, whose very foundation were the suspension of belief that a person could get extra powers or dress in tights and fight crime without folks laughing at them?
Anymore all the companies printing superheroes remind me of is the dance band on the Titanic, they KNOW they’re going down, but they’re gonna keep playing, no matter how badly, until they can’t play no more, and mostly the same song over and over again. Besides, let’s face it, it’s so much easier to draw from “real life”(photo reference), and be able to re-write a one issue plot into six issues, like the old cliché’ goes; “Dying is easy, comedy is hard” that’s why most of today’s writers are able to write four or five issues a month, because they’re dying (or zombifying), and that’s EASY.
So. What’s the solution? Should all realism be washed out of superhero comics? No, absolutely not. There IS a market for such work, however dwindling. Do we “reinvent” our icons AGAIN? Frankly, it’s too late; those icons were tainted and dead the first time they were “revamped” (Is it me, or is Superman STONED on the cover of the first issue of his latest re-re-reimagineering?). Start fresh, with new characters in the direct market? I’m not convinced that’s the solution either because it might be too late for the direct market also (which is probably another rant all together). Besides the “big two” seem to be unable to create new, popular icons in today’s market, which explains the last few issues of Marvel Team-Up being populated with some of the most recent attempts at icons in a team called “The League Of Losers” or something like that. Can comics EVER be as entertaining and as widely read as they once were? You CAN’T be so naive as to blame ALL of comics dwindling readership on outside forces can you? You really have to look INSIDE the art form for reasons we haven’t stayed entertaining with the masses in modern times.
I don’t have a magic solution to the problem, though I have a few theories. Maybe it’s time we all start seriously discussing some solutions before the art form dries up completely. Maybe it’s time to fight back against the zombie horde that seems to chase away more readers now than it attracts. My wife for example, used to read EVERY superhero book out. Now she only reads a handful of the more realistic ones, mostly out of any known “universe” because like me all her heroes died a LONG time ago as well. She still LOVES comics, like I do, but stopped reading so many when they stopped being so entertaining and became more “realistic”. I KNOW we’re not alone in this.
Does anyone out there care, or are you all walking dead as well?
Thanks for being here
WAKE UP!
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