December 8, 2011
-
Following Comics
Many, many moons ago, when I was but a young lad, I had favorite comicbooks. Superman. Batman. Spider-Man. X-Men. You get the idea. I was, what one might say a fanatic. Meticulously collecting the exploits of my favorite fictional heroes. Things were simple. Something featuring my favorite character came out. I bought it.
Somewhere between then, and roughly fifteen years ago, things took a sharp ninety degree turn.
Part of it was, unfortunately, due to the market being saturated with cross-overs and collectors editions, and specials, until you had Spider-Man somehow having four different adventures at once, and Wolverine appearing in any and every book published by Marvel Comics.
Superman, died for a while. Batman got a bad back, again, for a while.
There were continuity reboots, and universe-changing-events that, after months of hype (and expensive, hard-to-track-down hologram stamped limited edition multiple covers,) fizzled back to status quo. Enough was enough. I wasn’t a fan of the multiple covers and fancy editions.
I figured it was the end of my interest in comicbooks. I mean really, what’s the point of spending money on something with a net return of zero. Then something unexpectedly nice happened.
I stumbled onto the works of writers & artists I really liked.
Sergio Aragonés & Mark Evanier worked, and still works, on a creator owned series called Groo The Wanderer. (Which, at one point, featured a minor character called Lakakalo.) And their non-Groo projects are not too shabby either. (IMHO, they have one of the best takes on Batman’s origin story ever. Ever.)
Frank Miller, back in his prime, was a force to be reckoned with. His work on Daredevil, and Batman set standards folks still try to meet today. (Dark Knight returns, in particular, changed Batman’s family friendly image to a dark & gritty one still prevalent in comics & movies today.)
Alan Moore… is Alan Moore. ’nuff said.
Garth Ennis has an uncanny ability to look at a typical “comicbook superhero”, like the aforementioned Superman, or Batman, or Wolverine, and put them in situations not specifically set to highlight their unique strengths. Superman having do deal with death and the idea that not even Superman can save everyone, having looked into the face of a man he forgot to rescue, as the unfortunate man died in a reactor explosion. Or Wolverine having to to deal with the negative sides of an unbreakable skeleton and super-human regenerative factors. Or Batman being vomited on.
And the works of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby… younger fans of comics are more likely to laugh at the sillier incarnation of their favorite heroes, but those books were unapologetically fun.
It was like a comic-nerd version of leveling up.
An individual series suddenly ceased to be an individual series and became a set of collection, separated by teams of artists & writers that worked on them over time. Some teams are preferable to others, though, admittedly it’s purely a matter of taste. But still.
If a favorite artist or writer inevitably switched comics, it made sense to do so at the comicbook store as well. Plus it beats buying a buttload of mediocre comics for the sake of a complete collection.
** NOTE – Um… yeah… I know I forgot a lot of talented folks. Inevitably, just about the only thing that comes to mind is “that guy that worked on that series… you know the one… no, no… that other one” Feel free to point out anyone you can think of.
**
Comments (14)
Great way to explain the deeper understanding of a thing you get after lots of experiance, aka the ‘leveling up’
It’s like films, I used to watch them just once and be done, but now I admire the direction, the acting, cinematography etc. and thus can re-watch many times.
Sounds like the same thing with comic books, from just enjoying the collection and the stories you’ve gone to seeing the structure behind them.
@BFB1131 - EXACTLY! Come to think of it, you brought up an important point. Studying. It’s one thing to read a comic, it’s something else when you’re studying it, to figure out how the artist/writer/letterer tried to tell a story, or to see how much information was provided, and how much of it was made up in the readers’ minds. Revisiting old books become a whole new experience.
When I was young I was really into some stories but I think I like consistent stories that can create a whole universe for me. So I stick to the stories I enjoy and don’t even look at new stuff O.o I know I’m closing my mind to a lot of great new stories but still I don’t like when my characters do something that in my mind they’d never do. I’m weird. I was more of a Marvel fan than D.C. and well of course I still am.
@xXxlovelylollipop - Understandable. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with following a particular series, but when one team leaves and another team comes in, things can be a little different. What you say about not liking your characters not doing something they’d never do, that’s because different artists treat the same characters differently.
Take Spider-Man. Spider-Man started off as a highschool student with superpowers that lived with his aunt. He became a photographer for the Daily Bugle, moved out, moved back in, moved out (quite a few times), had his girlfriend murdered, picked up an alien symbiote costume, moved out and then back in a few more times, met another woman, may or may not have gotten married, found out he was one of many clones of the “real” Peter Parker who was now living as Ben Reilly, only to find out Ben Reilly was the clone, only to not have the clone thing happened in the first place, learned his dead girlfriend had gone off to Europe for a year or so to have a child fathered by one of his worst enemies back when she was alive, turned into a giant spider, died, only to pop out of the dead spider’s body as a very human-looking Peter Parker with organic web-shooters…
What I’m saying is, some people, like Garth Ennis writes interesting stories. As a fan of Ennis, I more or less know he’ll write regardless of whether he’s working on Superman or The Hulk. In his usual style he’ll bring up some new and interesting ideas, and write an entertaining story around it. As a fan of the writer, I know I’ll get a good story. As a fan of the character, I have to hope the the writer is good.
@Lakakalo - Thank God my favorites are not as famous so they don’t have much versions and stories around them. It’d break my idea or my universe to follow a big one like Superman or Spiderman, to many of them around O.O
I like Gambit and Ghost Rider a lot, but I never see the movie because scares me not to like the story and that could ruin my character for me.
I was a bit off the grid with my faves: Neddy; Turok, Son of Stone; Classics Illustrated.
I haven’t read much Alan Moore but a friend told me I should get From Hell
This was interesting to read. Comics have been such an important part of kids lives for generations. I have fond memories of the comics I read and enjoyed as a kid.
I saw Stan Lee on a TV show the other night.
HUGS!
My brother was a fan of Groo. I called him Lacky forever. I loved those comics. I was a big Archie fan myself LOL
@AdamsWomanFell - The comic industry as a whole moved beyond just catering to kids. Sort of like the videogame industry. Titles like Superman still try to keep things as family friendly as possible. But a series like “Preacher” is created very specifically with a mature audience in mind, and provide IMHO good entertaining stories for adults.
@Ikwa - “Was”…? 0_O Anyways, I’m more of a Jughead fan myself. One of the weirder aspects of Archie Comics, aside from how the digests seem to be more prevalent than the actual comicbooks, is how sometimes they feature stories from different decades. Funnier still, when one major plot element becomes a minor nuisance, or downright non-existant in another.
@godfatherofgreenbay - V for Vendetta, and Watchmen are two of Moore’s more widely known works. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the movie, is bases on a comic written by Moore, but it veers off on it’s own tangent. In a bad way.
@RighteousBruin - Wow. They certainly are off the grid. Just about the only series I’m remotely familiar with was Turok, and that was because of marketing campaigns of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter around the mid 90′s. A google search for Neddy kept turning up Ed, Edd n Eddy. Err… are you familiar with a character called The Phantom?
I’ve several in my list, but you guys are not familiar with them because they’re in Malay language. You see… I never speak in English language til I was 15 years old. By then I was teenager and teenagers suck for romance and lovey-dovey stuff.
@RestlessButterfly - Perfectly understandable. My first comics were combinations of local comics in Bengali, and foreign comics translated to Bengali.
This is a blog that only a true fanatic could write!
@DivaJyoti - Or a leveled-up comic nerd.