Goodbye Comics Code Authority, Hello DC Ratings

As I was reading the April solicitations over at The Idol-Head of Diabolu, I noticed that each comic had a rating after it. Whoa. When did this happen?

Well, just recently, it turns out.

Here's DC's new self-rating system:

E – EVERYONE
Appropriate for readers of all ages. May contain cartoon violence and/or some comic mischief.
T – TEEN
Appropriate for readers age 12 and older. May contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes.
T+ - TEEN PLUS
Appropriate for readers age 16 and older. May contain moderate violence, mild profanity, graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes.
M – MATURE
Appropriate for readers age 18 and older. May contain intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes and other content suitable only for older readers.

Overall, I think this is a good move. As one who's always looking to seduce another innocent get children reading more comics, I think the kid-friendly "E" rating will put parents at ease that their kids can read comics without warping their little brains. Current kids' titles, like Super Friends and Batman: The Brave and the Bold have trended into Sesame Street territory.  Compared to the Batman: Animated Series tie-in book from fifteen years ago, which was not only steeped in a bleak tone but featured gambling, drinking, smoking, and scantily-clad women, the current Johnny DC titles make kids' comics of yesteryear look like Watchmen.

But that could be a potential problem. The so-called "kid's" books of yesteryear featured deep themes beneath their cartoony exterior, and could be enjoyed by readers of all ages, 7 to 70. Today's children's comics are decidedly aimed towards kids. I can't see too many adults plunking down the $2.50 to read them. (Okay, I do occationally, but granted I have the mentality of a five-year-old.)  It's too bad there isn't a "T-minus" rating for pre-teens who might enjoy a darker story, albeit without any swearing or graphic violence.

Which leads me to the current mainstream DC superhero books.  Most of them at rated T, such as Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors.  I know I'm a little conservative when it comes to things like this, but just based on the covers alone, 12 years old seems a little young to be reading that book.  And that's not even considering the language.  I wish they could retroactively apply these ratings just so I could see how Blackest Night would rate.  Licking a corpse should get you an automatic "T+".

Automatic T+ granted for bleeding out of your eyes?

So where does this leave DC?  Are they going to tone down the language and violence in their mainstream superhero books so they'll meet the "T" rating?  Or will they use the "T+" rating more often?  (Green Arrow receives the T+ rating for April, for example.)  Or will they just use the "T" rating on most books and assume that twelve-year-olds can handle this kind of material?  Should comics be toned down to appeal to a wider audience?  Should they be fractured into separate categories to appeal to different demographics?

Only time will tell how or if this will have any effect on how comics are created.

As a final note, the nostalgic part of me misses that litte CCA seal as it was a direct tie to the past.  It was entertaining to see it shrink in size as time went on.  I was hoping that one day it would get so small that only Ray Palmer could see it.

The Flip Side of Reversion

For a light week at work I seem to be very short on time.  I blame the black hole that exists under my bed; not only does it plague me with stealing every other right sock, but the errant chronal energy is a real bear to deal with at times.

Last time I was here I was talking about nostalgia, which is a buzzword that seems to come up often when people talk about the comics industry, and we identified it perhaps not as nostalgia per se, but perhaps a "reversion" to stories that worked for various reasons (storytelling, characters, certains writers, etc.) plus readers' desire to discover a certain era that existed before their time.  Everything about this reversion seems pretty good.  Until you look at perhaps a darker side of it.

I'll steer you to Comics Alliance to read Chris Sims's article entitled "The Racial Politics of Regressive Storytelling."  Then I'll come back tomorrow when I'm more lucid and talk more about what Chris Sims has to say.

Until then, I leave you to ponder a still shot of a deleted scene from Star Wars: The Rodent Menace:

It's all fun and games until Darth Cottontail shows up...

Nostalgia: Good or Bad for the Comics Industry?

One thing I'm learning as I read more about comics and read more from comics fans is this issue of nostalgia.  Apparently, once a writer makes it in the industry, he or she will writer stories featuring characters that they grew up with.  Some readers seem to think this is a bad thing, while others still clamor for the "good old days," whatever that may be.  Those fans in the anti-nostalgia camp seem to think it stagnates the art of comics--perhaps they wonder how can something progress when you're looking back?  While the pro-nostalgia comic fans (and I think I fall more towards this line of thinking...even though I don't see how I can legitimately be nostalgic after eighteen months of comic reading) yearn for storytelling throwbacks of an earlier era.

All of this raises all sorts of issues for both camps.  How do you decide which era is the era which deserves an homage?  How can you expect someone to read a story which isn't original without becoming bored of it?  And so on.  I can't really answer those questions, only raise them.

Because some characters have been around for over a half a century, and so many hundreds of stories have been written about them, there's so much to pick from when it comes to finding the "ideal" era to re-create.  And because we all have different tastes, who is to say what's best for a particular character?  The industry can go by numbers, I guess, and see what sold well and what was popular, which is I think are part of the motivation behind Justice League: Generation Lost.  (Or, at least, I suspect it is.)  I'm all about doing things for the love of it and not the money, so all of this revisiting-the-past seems a bit like cashing in.

That is, until I read Booster Gold #33.  Now Booster Gold (both the character and the book) is someone (and something) I like for a variety of reasons, and reading this this made me very, very happy:

I honestly don't know which made me happier: J'onn showing up or the exclamation point speech bubble.  (I love exclamation point speech bubbles.)

So, I think, in small doses (and when done right), a little nostalgia is a good thing.  What I find really weird, though, is that my generation--the current generation of young adults--has suddenly become so nostalgic.  That's something I'll have to look at in a future post.

Oh, and here's more, because stuff like this never gets old in my eyes:

Now you know the real reason why Booster ditched the collar.

After the Blackest Night....?

Well, I've been a really bad comics blogger lately.  I haven't felt much like writing about comics, nor do I know exactly what to write about comics.  I sit here and scratch my head and try to think of something to write about but nothing's coming to mind.  I'm going to consider this recent lassitude to be all Geoff Johns's fault and call it Post-Blackest Night Ennui.


The end of Blackest Night was, in my opinion, a huge letdown, and killed a lot of my comics enthusiasm.  Add reading Watchmen into the mix, which showed me that yes, comics can be written in a literary way, and I'm finding the current offerings lacking something.  What that something is, I don't know what.

I had very high hopes for Blackest Night.  Thinking back a year ago when it first launched, I was all over it.  I wanted to know how it ended, and I had an idea in my mind of how it was going to end.  Considering all those meta-textual comments the creators kept throwing out ("We're looking at the revolving door of death in comics," etc.), I thought this was going to be a world-changing reboot of the entire DC Universe.  Well, I was wrong, and that's why I'm annoyed.

Much like the ending of Lost (don't get me started), the ending of Blackest Night sucked all the joy-inducing helium out of my Comics Make Me Happy balloon.  Let me tell you something about how I read books, and watch TV shows and movies: I believe certain stories should end a certain way, and if they don't, I consider it breaking a law of storytelling, and I get really pissed.  Mysteries end with answers.  Action movies end with the bad guys getting defeated.  Tragedies end with, well, tragedy.  This is why Lost pissed me off royally, because it didn't answer anything, and when you promote a show as a mystery and promote its final season as the season when "all questions will be answered," then, dammit, you better deliver.  Likewise, if you set out to write a comics crossover which will metatextually examine the revolving door of death in the comics world, then, dammit, you better do just that.  Or I will get angry, and you won't like me when I'm angry.

Blackest Night, I'm discovering, wasn't a metatextual examination of death in comics, nor was it the shiny let's-go-back-to-the-good-ol'-days-everyone's-back-to-being-alive reboot I was hoping for.  I would've been happy with one or the other, but instead I got neither.  Now, I didn't care too much about plot holes or the (some would say) silly rainbow emotion corps like some people do.  That didn't bother me.  It was the promise that wasn't delivered that bothered me.  I expected everyone to come back to life and the DC Universe to be rebooted with some new rules on how death is handled in comics, and I expected a brighter, DC Universe filled with fun, engaging stories.  Instead I got two year-long maxiseries which feature mis-characterization of fan favorites and random soccer moms bashing in their children's heads with Rockband toy guitars.  I have no problem with dark plots or disturbing elements, but just don't put those kinds of things in a comic named Brighest Day!  Find somewhere else for them to go (like the Batman titles where they belong), or, better yet, learn how to tell a mainstream superhero story without shock value mindscrews.  And let's not even mention the fallout on Green Arrow and Arsenal and all that.  Brightest Day?  Yeah, right.  It only taught me that in comics, like in life, promises are rarely delivered on.  I don't know about you, but I read comics to get away from real life.

And even if the premise of Blackest Night couldn't be delivered on, couldn't we at least get a break from year-long crossovers and have some shorter story arcs for a change?  A year is an awful long time to wait for find out how something ends (I devoted six years to Lost so that disappointment was off the charts.)  I'm feeling a bit fatigued looking ahead at the coming year of comics, and that's not how I want to feel when reading a comic book.  I'd rather be happy.

I'm going to go read a Johnny DC title now and pretend that unicorns are real.

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 5

Last summer, after reading the first few collected paperbacks of Justice League International, I discovered that one of JLI members, Booster Gold, had their own, fairly new ongoing series.  So I decided to pick up the first three trade paperbacks and then start subscribing to catch up with what was going on currently with the character.  I really enjoyed the series for several reasons: it was well-written, the art was lovely, and because I picked up the storyline at about 20 issues in, it was easy for me to catch up and actually have read a complete run of a series.  That last part felt pretty good for a new comics fan.

But there was also something else I enjoyed about the series: it was highly accessible to the new reader.  Each issue (or "chapter," as I was reading it in its collected form) always started out the same way: Booster Gold introduced himself and what he was all about.  Sometimes he'd even introduce secondary characters like Rip Hunter.  And more often than not his little "voiceover" bubbles would also catch the reader up on what happened in the previous issue.  While it bordered on the annoying to hear Booster Gold tell his origin story for the twentieth time, it wasn't hard for me to skim over it and ignore if I wanted, and here's where the writers had hit upon a story device that was very newbie-friendly without being too in-your-face.  I had no trouble jumping right into the story.  I felt like I knew the characters, even if I had never read a story about Michelle, Booster's twin sister, I knew who she was.  I had no trouble remembering what happened last month because I always had the luxury of a recap at the beginning of every issue.  And if you're telling an on-going story, with no idea of when a new reader might jump into a series, you've got to at least have the latter to have any hope of winning over a new fan.

Taking a page from the Joe DiMaggio playbook and writing each story as if it were someone's first comic might be a good maxim for comic writers to take to heart.  It might need to be as involved as Booster Gold's constant introductions, but at least recap what happened last month.  I read too many comics to remember what happened in the previous issue, let alone what happened last week.  And a little exposition isn't going to kill the story--the veterans can just glance over it and get on to the new material.

So, in short: catch us up a little, comic writers!  Give us a short recap.  Let the characters talk about themselves and explain who they are once in a while.  Sure, it might work better for an egotistical character like Booster Gold to constantly be talking about himself, but I'm sure there's a way to make it work for any character.  I know some series do some recaps already, but I can't think of any series which has its protagonist introduce himself and other characters as often as Booster Gold does.  It would be more helpful if recaps and character histories were more obvious and direct...hearing a character introduce himself on a monthly basis certainly helped win me over to the Booster Gold Fan Club.

If only I had the guts to wear this in public!

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day

Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day.

Am I going?  Maybe.  While I do have another commitment on Saturday (it's studio photos at the dance studio), none of this year's Free Comic Book Day offerings are really exciting me that much.  War of the Supermen?  Eh.  Not to mention, the local comic shop is, to me, a place dripping in awkwardness, and since nothing could add more to the awkwardness than me showing up in stage makeup right out of a photo shoot, I think I'm going to skip it.  Though if I did go, I'd probably be the only person on Earth who went right from wearing a tutu in a ballet studio to browsing through a comic shop.  I might just have to do it to break some sort of Guinness World Record or something.

Now, Free Comic Book day is, in my opinion, another missed opportunity by the comics industry to promote the medium.  Nobody knows about FCBD, at least where I live.  Though I had unwittingly participated in FCBD in 2002, I didn't know at the time what it was.  The first Spiderman movie premiered in May of 2002, and right after the movie was over, there were a few guys standing in the hallway handing out Spiderman comics saying, "Here, have a free comic!" (who, in retrospect, must've been from the local comic shop.  At the time I thought they worked for the theater or something.)  I honestly had no idea what was going on, but I gladly took a copy, and then when we got in the car, took all the copies my family members were handed out, too.

After I read my free Spiderman comic, I had no idea what to do with it or where to go from there.  I had no idea who had given me a comic, nor why it was free, nor how to get another one.  No label with the store's name, a brochure, nothing.  Handing out free comics right after a comic book-based movie could be a potential goldmine for drawing in new readers, but this local comic shop didn't capitalize on it at all.  Neither do the comics publishers.  Are there any ads on TV promoting FCBD?  Ads on the web?  Ads in the newspaper?  Not that I have seen.  Come on, guys!  Promote this!  Treat every recipient of a free comic as if it were their first.  Tell us how to get comics!  Explain the difference between single issues and trades.  Let us know which characters belong to which company (honestly--the average person doesn't know who owns Spiderman or who owns Batman.)  Put a little info--a post card, a sticker, a coupon--in with the comic so we know where it came from so we can return the favor and buy more.  And get the kids involved, too!

And above all, venture out into the general community and give away comics at malls, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc.  No one knows where the local comic shop is except the regulars.  (Or even that such a thing as a store devoted solely to comics exists.)  So take a little chance and go hunt for some newbies.  It just might turn out that they like comics afterall.

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 4A

I'm really not justified in making this a completely different topic, since it's pretty much along the lines of #4.  Hence, I numbered it "4A."  What compelled me to add a 4A to the list was that I actually saw my advice put into practice and therefore was able to judge my suggestion via a real example and not just as conjecture.

Here's #4A: Make characters and conflicts relatable.

Okay, now this, I think, is a fine line to walk, especially for DC.  I've read hardly any Marvel comics, but I get the impression that many conflicts residing in the Marvel Universe are of the "mundane" or "everyday" variety.  Which is why I think Marvel heroes have been stereotyped as being angsty/whiny/emo, I guess.

Anyway, one of the basic rules of storytelling is to make the main characters relatable, a.k.a. identifiable, a.k.a. empathetic.  Meaning, there's something about them that "rings true" to real life: they've undergone tragedy, they want the same things we want (justice), their personality type is similar to us or someone we know, they desire something despite great odds, they're in a situation we've been in before, they've made the same mistakes we have, etc.  The same rules of audience identification hold true for villains, as well, and in fact, a great villain needs to be relatable to be a great character.  If we understand his or her motivations, even if whatever he or she does is completely horrible, then we're invested in that character, no matter how evil they are.

One key, I think, to helping readers identify with characters is to keep motivations and situations small.  It was Josef Stalin who said, "one death is a tragedy.  A millions deaths is just a statistic."  The vast majority of us don't have experience (thank goodness) dealing with millions of people dying on an everyday basis.  And even if we were living in some region embroiled in a holocaust resulting in the deaths of millions, we couldn't process that many tragedies in our minds; what we probably would remember are the specific people affected.  Great storytellers know the power of the particular, which is why anyone who's seen Schindler's List can never forget the little girl in the red coat.

So, seguing awkwardly to the comics world: lots of people die in comics, probably on a weekly basis.  Insanely large groups of people also die, too, like the entire planet of Xanshi, which got obliterated in Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey.  I read Cosmic Odyssey last summer, and remember feeling more frustration than sadness when the planet was destroyed.  (Much like Alderaan getting blown up.  Not feeling much there, either.)  The greatest comic book tragedy in a long time however, I mean, the kind of tragedy that literally made me say outloud, "Oh no!  I can't believe they did that!" (yes, I really do talk to myself when I read) was this panel, from last week's Booster Gold #31:

...where Booster, when recklessly pursuing a villain, accidentally killed a little girl's dog.  Yep.  I was pretty upset.  Few of us have seen a planet explode, but I'm sure many of you have experiences with the passing of a family pet.  See?  Instantly relatable.  Oh, and remember the end of I Am Legend or Old Yeller?  By finding the everyday and putting it in context of the fantastic, the writers have established an emotional tether to the reader.

Now, because this is an instant touchstone to reader reaction, it can be misused.  It wasn't misused in Booster Gold, becuase it served the purpose of the story.  The fact that it was accidental added even more to the pathos, and our hero learned a lesson from it.  However, you can't kill off innocents gratuitously like was done in Cry for Justice, or the only affect you will have on the reader will be to anger them.

I'm not saying that every comics writer should go out there and put a small animal in peril to engender audience sympathy.  I'm just using the example of a pet in danger because it's something most of us can relate to.  There's plenty of other things that writers can come up with to connect with readers.  And that's also not saying comics should be mundane, either.  "Small" conflicts--universal situations that we can all identify with--can be used in spectacular, epic stories as well, and in fact should be used, or else there's no soul.  That's why the original Star Wars worked and the prequels sucked.

Just a "little" food for thought for all you aspiring comic writers out there.

You know, for a guy who screws up all the time, you're awfully popular, Booster.  Hey...maybe that's part of the reason why we like you...

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 4

Here's something I wasn't expecting when I recently started reading comics: there is no "everyday" in comics anymore.

Looking at any Previews catalog and the descriptions of comics always take the form of "can so-and-so save the universe?"  Words and phrases like "shocking" and "devastation," and "new era," and "threatens the existence of everything!" seem to get thrown around a lot, and that's just looking at the description of a few books.

Before I started reading comics I thought Batman ran around and collared Arkham escapees, and Superman saved Lois Lane and cats stuck in trees.  Little did I know comics were laden with so many universe-threatening events on a constant basis.  This isn't to say those big crossover events are bad because they're big, I'm just saying there needs to be a few average days in Gotham or Metropolis to balance things out.  Why?

Well, let's digress with a True Story From My Childhood.

When I was twelve I read Jurassic Park when it first came out, and then saw it in the theater shortly thereafter.  Now, from the time I was seven and wanted to be a paleantologist, I loved dinosaurs, and I loved the movie.  Even more than the movie I loved John Williams's score to Jurassic Park, and if you don't know who John Williams is, if you know the themes to Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, Jaws, and E.T., then you've heard his work.  Shortly after seeing the movie, I convinced my piano teacher to order the sheet music for Jurassic Park for me, even though it was above my level, and commenced to burn through that score like there was no tomorrow.  Except for the quiet intro, I played that thing at full tilt, loud all the way through, because it was a blast to play and it sounded good really loud.

One day my teacher stopped me when I was about to get to the crescendo and said, "Hold on.  You've got to play it more quietly there."

"But it's marked forte," I argued.  Forte means loud!  Loud loud loud!  And it was fun to play LOUD!

"Yes," she said, "but you've got to quiet down just a little bit, otherwise you can't get loudER.  There's nothing to build towards."

"Oh."  Well, a dim bulb brightened.  What's the point of the loud sections if you can't contrast it with semi-loud, or less-loud, or not-quite-loud?

So, when it comes to comics, if all the heroes constantly deal with is world-ending crises, or traumatic events that shake a character to his core and bring him in a "shocking new direction," well, it gets monotonous.  If there aren't some "smaller" stories out there to contrast the big ones, well, the big ones lose their punch, becuase if multiple Earths keep crashing into each other on a daily basis it doesn't become a crisis anymore, just Tuesday.

Not to mention the old writing maxim "don't write a story about Man.  Write a story about a man."  Giant, mind-blowing huge ensemble stories lack some punch because they are so epic, and therefore general, in scale.  There's never a chance to get to really know anyone or follow a single character arc.  (Though Blackest Night is and exception and did a pretty good job in its characterization.)  Stories which are smaller in scope have the benefit of allowing us to see how a character thinks, works, and who he or she truly is.  Smaller stories, counterintuitively, allow for more latitude in character choice than the big ones do.  Obviously if the world is ending or millions of zombies are coming back to life, there is no choice BUT to choose to save the world.  If you choose not to save the world, you're a jerk, and probably not a hero.  But a smaller story has the luxury of allowing the characters to seek different options and different directions while arriving at the endpoint of justice.  Should Barbara Gordon help Stephanie Brown become the next Batgirl or not?  Will Helena Bertinelli choose justice or revenge?  And so on.  A character's choices reveal the true essence of a character, and these choices are what the reader identifies with.

This is why so many characters are needlessly killed off during world-ending "crisis" stories.  Since the only moral choice in a world-ending crisis story is "to save the world," there is no room for smaller, character-illuminating choices or character centric story arcs.  Therefore, the only way to engender audience empathy is to kill off a character.  It's an easy route to audience sympathy in lieu of other means of characterization.  Yes, there may be choices involved in saving the world (do we contact the Indigo Tribe?, etc.), but they often have little to do with characterization and merely serve to move the plot forward.

I love how stretchy the cat's tail is.

In the right hands, even the smallest of stories can be entertaining, amusing, or dramatic.  One of my favorite Justice League International stories is JLI #37, in which the entire plot pretty much hinges on a feral cat wandering into the JLI Embassy and causing all sorts of trouble.  It's an issue I love to read and re-read, not only becuase it's hilarious, but because each character is so well-defined that you can easily figure out who's talking, even through lengthy off-panel conversations.  It's a small story, yes, but that only makes it that much better.

Let's have a few more nice, quiet stories to give us a breather in between all the world-saving, shall we?  With a little more quiet "normalcy," those big crossovers will be true crescendos.

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 3

Following along in my little "Comics Newbie Looks At Why Comics Aren't More Popular" series, I of course have to mention the obvious: price.

I once left out an invoice from my weekly comics shipment sitting on the kitchen table and got the reaction from someone of "You pay twenty dollars a week for that...?!"  To which my weak reply was, "Well, it's not twenty dollars EVERY week...."  I don't even want to do the math on what that equals per year (and don't any of you do the math for me and post it in the comments section), but it's a good chunk of dough.  And let's not even talk about the dozens upon dozens of trades and Showcase Presents that are overcrowding my bookshelf...

Anyway, the first crossover that happened when I was reading actual comics was Blackest Night.  Wanting not to miss anything I scooped up every tie-in series (except one issue).  Even though I had no idea who anyone was in Suicide Squad or Weird Western Tales, I bought those, too, becauase, well, they were on the checklist, and if I missed an issue, then I wouldn't understand what was going on, and I couldn't have that.  (I still don't completely understand it, anyway....)

Now, as overwhelming as it was to piece all of that together, especially for someone with a rough knowledge of DCU history, even more overwhelming was the price of all those comics, not to mention having to make room for them in my Tupperware O' Comics container.  In comparison to the multi-issue tie-in Blackest Night, there was this other "special event" during the Summer of '09 called Wednesday Comics.

Wednesday Comics was like getting a box of chocolate truffles in the mail every week: they looked good, I had no idea what was inside them, and when I found out, I was not disappointed.  At times, I was more psyched for the various stories in Wednesday Comics than I was the next issue of Green Lantern.

Looking at the description of Wednesday Comics in the catalog, I had no idea what I was in for, but I saw the words "Adam Strange" in the description, and I do like me some rocket packs, so I subscribed.  When it came in the mail, I unwrapped it and said, "Huh.  It's a little newspaper  Cute."  Then I opened it up and realized you had to unfold it.  "Wow.  It's a really big newspaper.  Full of comics.  Interesting."  And then I went out on the porch and read it and was very happy.  Almost as happy as I am when I eat a box of chocolate truffles.

Some guy, who is not me, reading Wednesday Comics.  But you get the idea.  He's on a porch.

I think Wednesday Comics was one of the biggest opportunities to introduce newbies to comics and DC completely missed out on captializing on it.  The format was different and yet familiar: it was like reading the funny pages in your Sunday paper, only with superheroes, so it piqued curiosity.  If you were reading it, there was no way anyone passing by could miss the gigantic word "COMICS" on the cover, and I was almost tempted to go read it in public to see if anyone would ask me what I was reading.  It was nostalgic, like an old daily newspaper Dick Tracy comic strip.  It was accessible: you didn't have to know who any of these characters were, becuase no assumptions of continuity were made upon the reader.  And it was far from overwhelming: a single page of each story was printed each week, and this left you wanting more.  Not only that, but any fan, newbie or otherwise, seeing the various art and writing styles side-by-side could have a little fun at armchair comics critiquing by comparing the different artists.  Because each style was so different, it was like a little kaliedascope peephole lens into the larger world of comics and it let the newbie understand that different art and writing styles exist in comics.

I would've liked to have seen Wednesday Comics in newsstands, bookstores, grocery stores, drug stores, gas stations, etc., and picked up and enjoyed by young and old, newbies and veterans, but unfortunately this was not to be.  The only non-newbie-friendly aspect of the whole thing was why it was called "Wednesday" Comics, because for a while there I didn't know comics were released on Wednesdays.  (But I figured it out.)  The price could've been a little lower; I would've liked to have seen it be $3 instead of $4.  But still, it's about the price of an average magazine, and I'm sure lots of people would've taken a chance on it, especially considering that parts were reprinted in USA Today.  Some might say the fact that it was printed in a newspaper is enough to initiate the non-initiated into the comics world, but that's not so: you're not really reading comics unless actively seek out an actual comic, not a newspaper.  It's a start, though.  (Unless you were out there buying USA Today for the comics, in which case, I'll give you some credit.)

Okay, so DC missed that opportunity to have an accessible weekly newsprint comics series in the hands of the general non-comics public.  Well, the trade is coming out soon.  Let's capitalize on that and introduce newbies to the medium!  Who-hoo!

So how much does DC charge for the Wednesday Comics trade?

Fifty bucks.

Yep.  FIFTY DOLLARS, plus tax, where applicable.  Now what non-comics reader is going to plunk down $50 for something called Wednesday Comics, even if Superman is on the cover?  (And I'm sure, like most expensive books, it's sealed in plastic, so one can't even flip through it.)  I'M not even going to buy it.  Hey, DC!  Wake up!  Stop catering to the collectors and start courting the noobs!  (Or better yet: make everyone happy: release a glossy expensive collector's edition, and also print a cheap newsprint trade for the newly-initiated.)

Opportunity missed.

So would comics sell if they were cheaper?  Heck yeah.  Did you hear what happened at Amazon about a month ago?  Comics trades were selling like crazy because of a pricing glitch.  No one knows how it happened, though there is semi-serious speculation that it was a hack has been raised.  Now, I know comics are expensive to produce.  You've got to pay the talent, plus all that paper adds up, and anyone who owns an inkjet printer knows ink is more expensive than Type O Negative blood.  But still...maybe there's a way to cheaply produce some "beginner-level" comics that aren't meant to be pretty, glossy collector's items.  You know, comics that are made to be read and enjoyed and borrowed and loaned and talked over with friends rather than be bagged and boarded.  You know, kinda like Showcase Presents, only current.

Just a thought.

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 2

Now, I may be going out on a limb by saying this, but I think comics may be a bit of anacronism.  Let's see if I can back that claim up with some facts...

A few weeks ago, during my lunch break, I was looking up some noir/hardboiled fiction authors since I felt the need to read a good detective story.  That of course wound up into me doing a little research about Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and so forth.  I added The Maltese Falcon to my list of Books to Read Which I Probably Won't Have Time To, and while reading up on it, noticed this:

With the following blurb underneath: "Cover of seminal hardboiled magazine Black Mask, September 1929, featuring part 1 of its serialization of The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. Illustration of private eye Sam Spade by Henry C. Murphy, Jr."

Whoa.  Stop the presses.  Wikipedia, are you telling me that The Maltese Falcon, one of THE most influential hardboiled detective novels ever, was originally published as serialized story in a magazine?

Raise your hand if you've ever read a serialized novel in your lifetime.  No one?  Didn't think so.

Now, I haven't done a lot of reading into the history of comics and pulps, but just from looking at this picture, I'm guessing both pulp magazines and comics where everywhere:

Pulp magazines seemed to be a part of daily life, just like buying milk and bread was.  Which is why you could get both at the same store.  It's a shame that they died out, really, becuase if you look at the list of authors who wrote for pulp magazines, it's staggering.

Now, no one reads serial novels anymore.  Why?  Well, maybe it's because we've all gotten impatient over the years.  Who wants to wait six months to finish reading a book?  I, mean, I'm too impatient to unplug the toaster oven before I start sticking a knife in it, and I have the attention span of an over-caffeinated mosquito.  But despite all that, I think I'd rather read a book in serial form than have to spend two weeks slodging through 400 pages of the same thing.  If anything, a magazine with multiple short exerpts of continuing stories would better fit our cultural ADD even better than our current method of novel reading.

So why no serial fiction?  I really don't know.  Maybe it's too much of a commitment for some folks to wait that long.  Maybe it's because people want the experience of browsing through an actual bookstore and holding one book in their hands instead of twelve magazines.  We seem to have no patience and yet most folks don't mind reading 800-page behemoths like Harry Potter--in fact, they feel like they are getting more for their money the longer the book is.  It just doesn't make sense.  In my mind, there's no reason for a book to be over 350 pages let alone over 500.  And most famous serial novels born in the pulps of the 30's and 40's (heck, even famous "regular" novels from that time period) are short.  Somewhere along the line we mistook depth of material for depth of quality, but that's a debate for a different post.  My point being: if you have the patience to read a gigantic novel (which I don't), then you should be able to handle a serialized novel.  Or maybe waiting a month between chapters really is just too much of a wait.

But think of the upside: a really good story lasts longer.  A novel stretched over months could make a story's timeline seem to unfold in real time.  It's more readable because it's in manageable sections which get their point across, then leave you wanting more, rather than current novels which, at least to me, seem to drag on forever to get to the point and make me want less.  No only that, but short stories could get some visibility in pulps that they can't get today.  And you can read more than one story at a time--how's that for multitasking?  You're always looking forward, wondering what's going to happen next, and because you stay with the story longer, the characters seem to be more alive.  Not to mention, having a month-long pause between chapters gives you a chance to think, and even better, talk about the story with other readers about what will happen next, which characters you liked/didn't like, and so on.  You know, kind of how the comics community operates today.  Wouldn't it be great if we could all talk about what's going to happen in the next chapter of a book?  I think that would be fun.

Why serialized prose isn't as popular as it was is a mystery to me.  Yes, there are a few stragglers like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (which just moved to bimonthly), but really, are those flying off the shelves?  Serial fiction is quite dead.  Yes, there are online markets for genre short stories, but hardly any of them would publish a serialized novel.  Serial stories are just dead or dying in any format: radio, movies, and print.

Except comics.  Though they have diverted from the days when "Detective Comics" actually meant a sizeable magazine of, well, detective comics, comics have hung on, in pretty much the same form as they did in the 1930's.  (Though shorter and without multiple stories, the fun ads for BB guns and seed packets, columns about unsolved mysteries and science "facts," and my personal favorite, Letters to the Editor.)  Why have comics hung on where prose died?  Maybe it's becuase comic book characters themselves never die, so an ongoing medium works well.  But guess what, comics aren't that popular with the general public from what I can see.  Certainly nothing like that old black-and-white photo.  If people today want to read comics they read "graphic novels."  No one besides the Library of Congress considers comics "magazines" anymore, but that's what they were: magazines with stories in them, that happened to be told via illustrations.

The general public gave up on serialized fiction for reasons unknown to me.  Though they are still hanging on, something happened to comics somewhere along the line where the idea of the average Joe casually picking up a copy of Action Comics or Detective Comics went by the wayside, perhaps because there are no "action" comics in Action Comics, just Superman, and no "detective" comics in Detective Comics, just Batman and/or Batwoman.  Maybe that's a key to the whole mystery.  I don't know.  I hate to conclude a lengthy post with "pulps died, I don't know why, and I think it's going to happen to comics somewhere down the line," but lacking any further insights, I'm left with no choice.

To be continued....

Why Comics Are Not More Popular, Part 1

As I look forward past my recent Martian Manhunter-themed posts, I'm trying to figure out where to go from here.  Some comments posted by Tom in the final installment of my Martian Manhunter countdown got me thinking.  Plus, a few things mentioned on DC's forums got me thinking as well.  See, I'm rather new to comics.  (Outside of reading The Long Halloween in 2005), I only started reading trades in the Fall of '08, and started subscribing to actual issues around May '09.  I covered a deal of ground in eighteen months, both reading-wise and research-wise (there is an upside to being obsessive-compulsive, let me tell you), but compared to people who've been reading comics their whole lives, my perspective on things is rather different.

Case in point: there was a conversation on DC's message boards about whether or not Dick Grayson is a househould name outside of comics fandom.  The majority of the fans were saying, "Of COURSE everyone knows who Dick Grayson is.  Duh!", with a small minority saying, "Um, no."  I shook my head and decided not to get involved, but let me tell you, a year and a half ago, I had no idea who the heck Dick Grayson was.  (Obviously I knew who (the original) Robin was, but I didn't know his name.) And no, I didn't know who Nightwing was, either.

Which lead me to the conclusion: at least half of what comic fans think non-comics fans know about comics is completely, utterly wrong.

Pre-Batman Begins, here's a list of all the comics characters I knew existed, in no particular order:

1. Superman
2. Batman
3. Robin (though I didn't know his name)
4. The Joker
5. Catwoman
6. The Penguin
7. Two-Face
8. The Riddler
9. Jor-El
10. General Zod and his two minions
11. Lex Luthor
12. The Hulk
13. Wonder Woman
14. Spiderman
15. Wolverine
16. Green Lantern (though I didn't know his name was Hal Jordan or that there was more than one, or even what he looked like)
17. Bizzarro (only because of that "Seinfeld" episode.)
18. Green Arrow (again, only becuase of "Seinfeld.")
19. The Phantom
20. Dick Tracy
21. The Rocketeer
22. And perhaps a vague notion of "Aquaman."  (I can't really remember for sure.)

The knowledge of all of these characters came from movies, TV, and pop culture.  Harley Quinn doesn't even make the list becuase I only have vague memories of watching the Batman Animated Series when it originally aired, though looking back I do remember her...I just didn't know her character's name.

I'd say up everybody up to number 15 are bona fide Household Names.  If my mother knows who a character is, then I consider him or her a household name.  (Amazingly she knows who Green Lantern is, which leads me to believe my uncle liked him when he was a kid in the 50's.)

As far as teams go, I had never heard of The Justice League, the Justice Society, or the Teen Titans.  Let's not even think of Marvel's teams (besides the X-Men), becuase I still know next-to-nothing about them.

Where am I going with this?  Well, for one, assume that non-comics fans know nothing, becuase it's pretty much the truth.  Even if I did know who Superman was (I grew up with the Christopher Reeve films and watched the old George Reeves show on Nick at Nite), who Superman is on film is different than he is in the comics.  When I cracked open a Superman comic not too long ago and found out he doesn't go around fighting with General Zod in Metropolis and saving cats out of trees all the time and telling Lois how many s's are in "Mississippi," I realized I had some misconceptions.

Now, for the longest time (okay, only a year or so, not that long), I figured that in order to enjoy my comics, I better shape up and start conforming to a certain "comic book reading demographic."  If I wasn't understanding what was going on, or if I didn't like the book I was reading, it was my fault, and I would read synopses or reviews online to "tell" me whether or not I should like a book.  Hey, I figured, if the reviewer at IGN says it's good, and I don't like it, there's something wrong with me.  I'm not a Real Comics Fan if I don't like Hush, because everyone else seems to.  Tom's comments made me think that perhaps I should give my own opinions a little more credit, considering that being an outsider to comics isn't necessarily a bad thing.

To be continued...