Comic Books

In my recent stream of posts I talked about reading and specifically, my reading habits over the years.

I realized I left out comic books. During my mid-teens and early twenties I read quite a few and kept most of them, a fact anybody who helped me move during those years remembers. Or at least their back does.

People have debated whether comics are worthwhile, harmful, worse than pulp mysteries, literature in disguise, and more. Having read probably thousands of comics I can say the quality varied wildly. I did live through some interesting times, though.

For example, X-Men was Marvel’s biggest comic back in the day. Maybe they still are? Anyway, the stories and characters that would become the basis for the first X-Men movies were published in those days when I read comics. Interestingly enough, future cinema heroes Iron Man and Captain America were B-level characters at best. The Avengers were okay with a cast that seemed to change every month, and they even opened a West Coast team with their own comic book. Seemed like every Marvel character was in the Avengers at some point.

I do remember the pinnacles of comics, at least at the time: Watchmen and The Dark Knight. The first was as close to a literary classic as the comic world ever came. I recall even at the time we were witnessing greatness. The latter changed the world of Batman, one of DC’s mainstays, into a grittier existence and pointing the way for the eventual Nolan-led Batman trilogy.

How did comics inform my writing? Well, I learned no character is ever dead and can come back to life when the story needs a jolt; popular characters would pop up in other titles whenever that title needed a jolt in sales; the traditional morality and storytelling of comics since the 40s and 50s was on its way out; and bringing in a new creative team was an opportunity to reboot an entire run and ignore everything that came before.

Sounds suspiciously like soap operas.