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.

Short Reviews That Are Over A Week Old

In lieu of an actual blog post, and since I didn't get any comics this week, I thought I'd post "reviews" on last's weeks reading.  Really, just a list of what I liked and didn't like, just to keep it brief.

Blackest Night #8


Liked:

• All the rings on the cover.
• As soon as everyone started clutching their heads, I knew it was Black Lantern J'onn coming.
• Larfleeze's little blob pet.
• Hal's brother and family makes an appearnce.  Good to see that actual citizens DO exist in this whole Blackest Night thing.
• Sensory overload splash pages work for the Green Lantern Corps, but no one else.
• And on that note: foldout splash pages = even more fun.
• Even though I'm not really a fan, seeing Aquaman sans beard/hook hand/long hair is a thing of beauty.
• While all the resurrected heroes get to make out with their significant others, J'onn J'onzz is stuck with Superman.
• Maxwell Lord gets a nosebleed.  Heh.
• Deadman?  Alive?  Most emotional resurrection, but I'm not sure this will work for the character.
• Black Hand's fate.

Disliked:

• An open-mouthed Sinestro on the cover.  Reminds me of the Joker.
• Osiris.
• Where are the Dibnys?
• Not sure I like Jade coming back.  I don't know enough about her to really judge, though.
• Where the hell is Ted Kord?!

Huh?

• What exactly did Larfleeze do for Luthor?
• Is Black Hand an Indigo Lantern now because of the Indigo symbol in his eyes?
• Where'd the White Lantern Battery come from?  Where is it now?
• Why does Deadman have a White Lantern ring?  (I wouldn't have noticed this is someone else pointed it out first.)
• What exactly did Larfleeze and Luthor do, if anything?

Green Hornet #2

Liked:

• "Dragon Lady's" weaponized dress.
• Monthly "lunch with son" consists of just French Fries.
• Very clever uses of high heels during fight scenes.

Disliked:

• Bad coloring that makes everyone's face look greasy.
• EDTIORS WHO DON'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "IT'S" AND "ITS"!  @#$#)$(*&!
• Stereotyped Asian "family shame."  C'mon, Mr. Smith, you can do better than that.  I think.
• Britt Reid, Jr. = Bruce Wayne.  Again, can't you do better, Mr. Smith?
• Good-looking rich boy with daddy and relationship problems.  Hollywood, much?

Huh?

• Britt Reid's son is named Britt Reid, too?  Okay, now I need to re-read the first issue because I don't know who which Britt Reid it was about.
• What's all this back room dealing with the mayorial candidate and should I care?

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...

Happy Easter, Comics Style

Okay, I was sitting around watching the yearly broadcast of The Ten Commandments while dyeing Easter eggs, which is the closest thing I've got to an Easter family tradition.  (The egg-dyeing part is all me, however.)

So, I measure out three tablespoons of white vinegar and pour it into a set of thirty-year old free promotional coffee mugs that came from the A & P.  (Or was it Woolworth's?)  Watching the little dye tablets fizz (my favorite part, actually), I'm planning out my egg-dyeing strategy.  I always go with a purple egg first, and it never comes out looking good, ever, because the purple dye tablet is not actually purple but some weird red/blue hybrid, and I always wind up with a splotchy magenta-spotted-blue mess of an egg.  (Back in the day, you always had to use extra vinegar on the purple tablet.  I never knew why.)

Okay, the rubber band egg next.  My old standard, but still fun.  Then I start playing with the little invisible crayon I had hanging around from a previous kit.  (The good folks at Paas didn't provide one in the kit I just bought...they're getting cheap.)

Then it dawns on me.  Of course!  I'll do a comic-themed egg.

And what comic book character looks most like an egg?

Yep.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Egg-o, the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps, and little brother to big planet Green Lantern Mogo:

My family isn't going to know what the heck that thing is when they open up the egg carton.  And I'm going to feel bad eating it, too.