A Comic Issue

Not too long ago The O lent me all of the Sin City graphic novels, as well as Wanted; I’ve read through the latter and half of the others so far and all they are doing is making me miss reading comic books every week.  I stopped last November because it got to the point where I was buying more than I was reading in any given week.  They would sit in a huge pile, unread, for a few weeks and it got to the point (with help from my lovely wife) where I realized this was exactly what I didn’t want to be doing.  Since then, I view it in many of the same ways I view World of Warcraft – there are too many things I dislike for me to go back to them anytime soon. 

The comics industry as a whole has quite a few problems, all of which you may have heard before, but I feel the largest one is the fact that it just doesn’t make sense to buy weekly comics anymore.  The entire outfit is designed to screw the consumer and profit for the company, with the exception perhaps of smaller companies and Image.  I don’t want to relegate these things to simply DC and Marvel’s problems, but I would definitely venture so far as to say that they are the primary offenders.  A single comic book costs shy of $3 today, for that you get 22 pages of genuine down-home comic intermixed with an average of 9 or 10 pages of pure advertisement.  Since the old days of comics the material itself has gotten smaller in size, thinner in length, more diluted with clutter, and the price has continued to rise.  Most fans know all of this, yet they shrug it off or don’t ever really think about it because it is pretty clear that a lot of things have become more expensive, more people are involved, and more people need to make more money off of selling them.  I would forgive all of this if it weren’t for the stone cold truth that these companies are spending money producing thousands of comics every week that are for most intents and purposes garbage.

There is a sore lack of good stories in comics, not just today but in general.  Go pick up the current issue of Amazing Spider-Man and tell me if it’s not just an issue of Peter teaching, and maybe getting into his costume once to say a line or two?  If you want to find good stories, you almost always have to go to one-shots, limited series, or ask someone who’s filtered through all of the shite and can tell you which 2% of the ongoing series’ issues are actually worth something.  This phenomenon is possibly a result of the thinking that if a write actually comes up with a good story, it should be used in new or separate series, or if sales are particularly low an epic-crossover to remind people that they have the choice between 7 Spider-Man comics, 8 Batman ones, or 357 Superman on goings.  Am I the only person that thinks this not only spreads the content too thin, but also the creative talent, the consumer focus, demand, and most of all the money? 

The money is the ugliest problem.  If a single comic costs me $3, and I really like the X-men, then I’m out at least $30 a month because these f#$ckers keep multiplying, EVEN AFTER ALL BUT 198 OF THEM ARE KILLED.  I exaggerate, but it’s true, the medium is suffocating, strangling, and most terrifying of all bankrupting the fans that are the most passionate!  I assume these companies figure if they can sell you one X-men comic a week, they can surely sell you ten of them in a month.  It’s quite fine in my view to have the X-men, and have X-factor at the same time, but when you create a specific comic to focus on the young students/school aspects of the mythos then you entirely eliminate all need AND desire for those things in the other titles.  Wolverine never learns anything new these days, and for the love of Xavier can Cyclops PLEASE lead the team once in a while?

I’ve heard from quite a few people in the last 6 months who tell me they’re former comic fanatics, or fans, or enthusiasts, and the industry really needs to open its eyes and realize this is what it does to their true fan base.  They’re burning them out, killing off series with good stories because they are buried by the more popular ones which focus on the heroes’ dead girlfriend’s clone-babies come out of hiding to hurt him for no real reason.  Restarting a comic’s run with no provocation, giving every issue two separate numbers just so you can celebrate its 100th issue and then 3 months later its 400th, and absolutely the most heinous offense is doing pre-crossover issues, core-crossover issues, POST-crossover issues, and then nigh three days afterwards announcing the lead into another crossover’s pre-crossover issues!  How the hell are we supposed to take any of it seriously? 

The truth of the matter is, as far as I can tell, we shouldn’t be taking this industry seriously until it starts taking the fans seriously.  For me, I’m going to keep borrowing trade paperbacks from friends.  At least TPBs seem to be worth the cheaper price-per-issue paid for them, for all of their sweet ad-free goodness, but I know if I set one foot in a comic store I’m going to be bombarded by heaps of junk which look good at first glance but are later revealed to be just another money-sucking scheme.

(There are many, many series, standalones, and even a crossover or two that I think are quite excellent and don’t fit into what I discuss here.  It is simply the masses of crap that I experienced week after week that gives me these opinions.  Please feel free to discuss the goods and bads of what you have or are currently reading!)