So what if someone’s comic buying experience is "limited" to Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Jimmy Corrigan, Maus and Barefoot Gen?
At least they’re reading comics, right? Or does it not count unless you know the panel of the page of the issue in which Jean Grey farted out Dark Phoenix and destroyed Altair IV?
These "trendies" may well be very impressed by top of the range stuff like this, but wouldn’t dream of picking up New X-Men 116, despite the fact that there’s an impossibly gorgeous woman on the cover wearing a totally implausible and impractical outfit.
I’ve often heard people try to justify long-running series’ like X-Men with words to the effect "it’s just like a soap opera! Really!"
Well, whoop-de-fucking-do. Soap operas are even more disposable than comics, and people care a damn sight less about the characters. A huge percentage of the population watches soap operas, but only the real weirdos would dream of contributing to a web-based community discussing the relative merits of Eddie Yates’ motivation to empty bins.
With 25 years of comic reading experience behind me, I’m neither influenced by the media or worried about being seen in comic shops because it won’t impress the ladies, but I am being honest with myself that no matter how much I try to like stuff, it really is largely pap, with a handful of exceptions. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop buying comics, because I like my pap as much as the next geek, but I do accept that although I prefer the novels I read and the movies I watch to be original, "grown up" and a little bit serious, the comics I read are largely the four-colour equivalent of a Chuck Norris bullets-n’mullets fest. |
