I've read/heard a few famous men saying that they read a lot of comics as kids but stopped when they hit their teens and discovered girls. This is probably a dated concept now. Maybe in the 50s and early 60s reading comics hurt your chances with the opposite sex, but I doubt it's much of a factor now.
After weaving in and out a few times, I did pretty much give up on mainstream comic books. It wasn't because of girls. It was because comic companies by and large weren't producing work that really grabbed me. There are always talented people working in the field, but the companies―and if you need reminding, the two biggest companies are subdivisions of much larger conglomerates―set editorial policy. Since comic stories and big budget movie stories have merged, the emphasis is always on scale rather than doing anything interesting with plot and character. And the art winds up looking rushed and anonymous a lot of the time too.
At some point it's better to imagine from the next room.
2 comments:
What I remember of comic books when I was a kid was trading them since none of the kids where I grew up could afford to buy all the ones we were interested in reading. Naturally enough, they ended up a bit tattered but who ever could have expected Superman #1 to be worth a million dollars one day? Must have been pretty much the same story with baseball trading cards. Eventually I did own a good sized stack of comic books that my mother gave away when I went to England. Things come and go.
I remember head comics becoming popular in the 70s when R. Crumb came up with Zap Comics, Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and Keep on Truckin'. Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers was fun as was Howard the Duck (born in a world he never made).
I remember you and Jer having a mutual interest in Marvel Comics, particularly The X-Men when you were young, but we didn't keep up much after that. I do recall it was around that time that the first big Superman movie was released and it seems likely that began Hollywood's interest in promoting comic book stories. The Chris Nolan Batman movies have been a big favorite around here and I guess I'd agree a few others were okay if I was reminded of them. But for the most part you're right that they've gone to that well a few too many times - after a while all you get is sludge.
The process of trading comics because no one could afford all of them is interesting in that it could create a kind of group memory. Probably in some cases it was like a game of telephone, with stories being distorted and exaggerated. Yeah, I think the idea of comics that had been sold for a nickel reaching the thousands and millions in value would have shocked everyone. Same with baseball cards. In fact the whole idea of collectibles is kind of a modern one. In previous centuries if you had a valuable collection of something it would have been because the materials were valuable.
The underground comics scene was a new wrinkle. I think in all kinds of comics, and most storytelling, reality gets embellished. The way they did it was different, though. Robert Crumb is a genius, and if he's prone to being canceled I'd like to think he's beyond caring. There's actually a Furry Freak Brothers animated show now, which is weird. Like obviously the drugs are still around, but it's still a very different world.
The X-Men comics of the early 80s were very influential, for good and ill. They did explore group dynamics in a new way. But they also started to take themselves seriously in a way that made them less fun. Or maybe I just didn't want to have my teen angst reflected back at me that way. Yeah, good movies have been made about people in ridiculous costumes fighting on rooftops. It might not be good to have them so ubiquitous, though. Of course this goes into media consolidation as well.
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