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>>>I don't think the problem is that there aren't enough comics out there for kids, it's that kids aren't familiar with the distribution system for comics,<<<
Well, it's a little of column a) and a little of column b)...
>>> and likely aren't near a comic stores, and also, most kids don't have the money for a long term comics habit.<<<
And columns c) and d) too. There's no one thing that can be solely blamed for this. As I say, fucked from the ground up.
Comics should definitely be cheaper. Fuck your fancy computer colouring and glossy paper, which drives the costs up - I just got back from Japan where the majority of comics are black and white and printed on flimsy newsprint, hundreds of pages thick for less than the price of one flimsy-ass Marvel or DC book. And everyone reads them. No one cares that there's no lush Photoshop effects or smooth silky paper.
>>>I think that Ultimate Spider Man is a perfect low continuity example of Spider Man being made interesting to kids<<<
From personal experience, I say not. I've tested this shit, man - I've given kids copies of Ultimate Spider-Man and old Marvel Tales reprints, and they go for the old stuff every time - the stories that don't take 4 entire issues just to get the title character into his costume for the first time, the stories that aren't filled with interminable rambling "realistic" dialogue. Maybe I just know cool kids.
You know who reads Ultimate Spider-Man? Surprise! Adults. I see it in their hands when I'm at the comic shop. "It's really good, it's great for kids." Oh yeah, so why are YOU buying it then?
>>>Reading through this thread, there seems to be the mistaken impression that kids want stuff aimed at kids, and is pure kiddie. I think a kid would be much more interested in reading slightly edgy things, like softcore Ennis (Just a Pilgrim), then reading the Adventures of Bunny in BunnyLand, or some kids comic like that. <<<
There's also a mistaken impression that "for kids" means "condescending pap" like the hypothetical Adventures in Bunnyland. There's a middle ground - I want to see kids reading solid, exciting, well-crafted stories that don't resort to prurience, vulgarity or crudity (and before some incredibly clever person like Flyboy comes along to suggest, with a well-placed link to a Jim Steranko rant, that I'm some puritanical fundamentalist nut who wants all sinful things banished from the world - I'm NOT, there's a place for that stuff, but not in children's fiction). There's an astonishing wealth of talent already in the comics field(we don't need to bring them from the outside, Flux) that could work wonders if they just excercised a little responsibility and thought about the Bigger Picture.
>>>The best way to get kids reading comics, or reading in general, is to have parents who read. In the current situation, reading comics is something strange, and the average parent doesn't sit back and read a comic with their kids, or even read a comic around their kids. Until this happens, kids aren't going to read comics. We have to target adults, and then it will spread. <<<
My parents not only never read comics, but are seemingly physically incapable of doing so - they certainly weren't the ones who introduced me to comics as a kid. I discovered them on my own when I had a bit of pocket money and time to look around a newsagents. Did your parents read comics to you as a kid? Is that the only way you would have become a comics reader?
>>>If we target kids, kids are going to read comics for a few years, then dump then, because they will be percieved as kiddie.<<<
Once more, simply, I'm suggesting that mainstream Marvel and DC make their primary aim to attract kids again by working with creators who are committed to producing material that will appeal to the broadest possible age group - "all-ages" material that is as suitable and interesting for a child as it would be for an adult. It can be done - again I point to Harry Potter, The Iron Giant, etc etc, Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, etc, etc... And - crucially - this must be ENFORCED EDITORIALLY. Make the writers and artists understand that they are HIRED to make stories for KIDS. This isn't "art", it's business. Anyone's got a problem with it, anyone's going to protest that they can't express their personal artistic vision by having Green Lantern fuck and swear - there's the door, go make your art on your own. Good luck to you. But as long as you're working on Batman, you do it so my ten-year-old son can enjoy the hell out of it. (That's only a hypothetical son, by the way, I'm not a father -  )
Vertigo can keep doing the adult books, Clowes and Ware and Tomine can keep doing their thing....but that number one focus by the Big Two has got to be - in THE SHORT TERM, not forever and ever amen - getting those kids in the shops again, instead of hanging around outside waiting for their dads to buy Ultimate X-Men.
In a cranky mood tonight, expecting a can of worms to be opened now...
-C |
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