I've been to San Diego once as a boy, way back in 1984. I was visiting my grandparents who were living out there at the time. That was my first solo flight. I was Morgan's age, eleven. However, I was never there during the Mecca of Comicdom--the San Diego Comicon.
This is the industry trade show. Supposedly over one hundred thousand people will walk through those doors. Companies unveil new projects. New movies get announced. This year they are announcing the new superhero postage stamps. I was once at the Chicago Comicon way back in the early 90s, when Image just started and Jim Lee and Marvel put out their X-Men #1 with the five different covers. I remember Hal getting all tongue tied when he spoke to Jim Lee, droolingly saying, "I love your stuff." I don't think I spoke at all. (We also bought a bootleg copy of the 1977 Star Wars Holiday Special, with Bea Arthur singing and everything!) That was a huge event but still pales in comparison to just how big the San Diego Con is.
I wish I was there, walking around and just taking it all in. I would love to shake hands with some of the people whose stuff I've read for years. When it all comes down to it, of all the hobbies and all the things that I have ever done in my life, comics are the one thing that I have never really gotten away from.
I still remember exact instances of buying certain issues. I remember writing a silly little fanzine with Jim Watson back in eighth grade called B&W Comics Corner. (Lasted five issues, if memory serves.) I still love the feelings that these little picture books give me.
I am an English major, still hard at work on my Masters thesis for English. (Ugh, gotta get going on that...) I have analyzed and read a lot of the great works of literature. I still find comics to be one of the most enjoyable reads anywhere. If anything, my degree and pursuit of English and world literature has made me appreciate these little tomes of joy even more.
I honestly see comics as a high form of literature. Sure, some aren't, but there are a lot out there that make those uppity Victorian novels seem juvenile. I actually see comics as more intense, and I think the art has a lot to do with it.
With comics, like in movies as I found out through my masters film classes, there is no real need for description. Novels can go for two pages describing what someone looks like or what is present in a room. Novels have to specifically state things. You have to go through stuff like "He said with a surreptitious glance." Comics have those lovely little word balloons and a tilted character's head to portray this. Description is immediate, see the picture and boom! The story moves along faster. The meat, the plot, gets in depth even more.
And yes, I like a lot of superhero comics. Something about the ideals and the hope in humanity sings to me. I think that there are even more popular superheroes out there in literature that don't where spandex that have been considered bestsellers for...ever. Recent heroes like Tarzan, Lone Ranger, the Shadow, Zorro, started outside of comics. For hundreds of years, people have been thrilling to the adventures of Robin Hood and King Arthur. Beowulf has inspired a thousand years of duplications. So I'm not alone. If comics had been around a thousand years ago, I'm sure Beowulf would be the Action Comics #1. Superman just came at the right time and place.
With the recent proliferation of comic book movies, it also helps me to justify it a little better. Finally, movies have the technology to accurately portray what comics have been trying to do since 1938. These are the big blockbuster movies now. It's like this new oil well opened up for the movie industry, all these new stories and characters and spectacles to bring to the big screen. They make millions from people who have never even heard of these characters before. I feel like these are old friends finally coming to the screen.
Every once in a while, I need to justify to myself my love of the "funny books." I learned to read on these things, to appreciate good storytelling. I also learned a lot of morals and ethics from these things. Adult perceptions and conduct was put upon seemingly juvenile characters. I remember looking up and figuring out what "pyrrhic victory" was from a comic book, something I was never taught in school. My vocabulary increased greatly from comic books, you sycophants. I found that even keeping a comic collection orderly, mainly so my mom would not throw them away, helped me become neat and tidy.
Look it up: besides jazz, comic books are the only uniquely American art form. Everyone else out there, yes manga-fans, copied off of us.
So comics are dogged by being juvenile although there is great stuff out there. Give them a try. Find a graphic novel at a book store that appeals to you--doesn't have to have superheroes. Look at some of your favorite movies in the past ten years and you may find a comic book beginning.
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