Do We 'Grow Out of Comics?' Guest Column for July 12, 1998 by Mark Bousquet [editor's note: Mark's column was originally a response to the following point, raised in a previous discussion:] : One other interesting point was that perhaps comics simply : aren't meant to be read over a very long period of one's life-- : the very static nature of so many series means (perhaps) that one should : encounter the series at an early age, read them for a few years, while : virtuallly everything (even rehashed stuff) is new to YOU, and then leave : before it all starts being rehashed yet again. A very interesting point, : and one that I fear is valid in the case of many comics. Anyone else : have thoughts on this point? Mark responds: I'm in a rush and probably shouldn't be getting into this, but here goes anyways ... I think that's true for many comics, which is one of the reasons comics has such a poor reputation. Superman's been published pretty regularly for SIXTY years. That's amazing, but can you imagine getting 60 years of ANY television show? Can you imagine seeing ANY movie every summer for SIXTY years? There's no real change, everything just has to stay basically the same. These days there's probably 75 (at least) Superman books that come out in a year. It's a HUGE deal when a TV show makes it's 100th episode. I bet Batman does that in a year. How can anything that's been around that long ever change? What you have to hope for is that you get a roller coaster ride you enjoy: you start and end in basically the same place and hope the twists and turns provide you with enough surprises to keep you satisfied. Which, IMO, sucks, but that's the way Marvel and DC comics will probably always be. When there's a book that you *grow out* of, then it's time to move onto other books. (I come back to this at the end.) The troubling part is that once books move forward, the fanatics whine and moan and want everything back the way they were. So most Marvel and DC books don't lend themselves to being read forever because too many of the hardcore fans don't ever want anything to change. They want the *illusion* of change, and they don't mind so much when minor characters change, but if you dare change Superman's costume or break Batman's back than fandom goes up in arms. And you can lay the blame at Marvel and DC's feet for putting out such obviously Event-style comics, but look at the lines of people who line up to buy the stuff and look at how the hardcore fans all come running back after "things have been put right". The problem, IMO, about Event comics isn't that they're Event driven, it's that so illogically put together and usually read like the stories been rushed. Hal Jordan going nuts and turning into Cosmic Magneto is a fine enough idea, it's the haphazard and rushed way DC went about it. If they had decided to build up to that from issue 50 to 75 and introduced Kyle to grow up as Hal grew loony, than we would've got a much better and logical story and there'd be less outcry from fandom. Less, because there's always going to be a section of fandom that is so obsessed with things that they will literally stand for no change to occur. As an aside, I thought one of the more interesting points of the Jones/Jacobs book was the point that most comic shop owners aren't businessmen, they're just fanboys trying to suck some more life of out their childhood hobby. This is, IMO, a critical thing that absolutely must change in the comic industry. I think, more than anything, that's why comics are very cyclical in popularity. It's like James Bond movies. They need to be spaced out to have any real economic impact because nothing is ever going to happen and everyone knows it. The joy is in watching the execution of a Bond adventure (or an Avengers story) and watching things go over the same basic story over and over gets to be too much and people stop caring. Because if something is published every month it's going to get old to you at some point. Doesn't mean you can't come back to it at some point but there's only so many times you can read the same story before it becomes boring. Actually, now that I think about it, it probably has more to do with creators than it does anything with the characters or the business of comics. Which is, IMO, one of the reasons Claremont (and many comic writers) fade into hack writing, they haven't the want or ability to come up with anything new. It's not just the characters that you have to keep fresh, it's your own writing. There's just too many damn writers in comics who've been doing it for too long and have no want or ability to come up with anything even remotely new. They're like trees dripping their sap year after year after year. Sometimes it comes out faster and sometimes it comes out slower, but it's always the same damn thing. They just give us the same hack month after month. Which is one of the reasons I don't hate Lobdell. Yes, he's a horrid writer, but you wouldn't see Claremont writing something like Sunfire and Big Hero Six or The Mighty Heroes. Or if you did, you can bet it reads the same as your old X-MEN copies. That's why you've got to read what you like, no matter who publishes it, because if you don't, then comics are a dead medium. Comic shop owners need to draw kids from their X-MEN's and AVENGERS and hook turn them onto INVISIBLES and SWAMP THINGs. They need to cultivate readers who want good stories, not the same story over and over, because when kids do grow out of X-MEN, they shouldn't think there's nothing left for comics to give them. If you're running a comic shop and you see someone older than a kid buying AVENGERS, you should be telling them about ASTRO CITY. Because I don't care how great AVENGERS is, ASTRO CITY is much more important to the long term health of comics than AVENGERS. (That's one of the reaons why THUNDERBOLTS is probably going to be the most significant title Marvel publishes this decade.) If you want to keep people coming back to your store for twenty, thirty, fifty years than you've got to show them there's more to the medium than characters thirty to sixty years old. -- MBQ