Comics WERE for losers

Comics WERE for losers, originally uploaded by macslost.

Last weekend, my parents decided it was time to haul all of my belongings up and shove them into MY garage instead of them holding on to it forever. GI Joes, Star Wars, my Choose Your Own Adventure books and comics. Lots and lots of comics.

While I was going through them, I ran across the Death of Superman trade paperback and thought to myself "Whoa, I haven't read that in ages! I think I'll read it now!"

In hindsight, I shouldn't have. I should have kept that hazy memory of that final summer in Santa Barbara in 1993 when the whole world knew about the comic event of the century and there, for a brief second, comics were cool and I was in the middle of it (since I worked at the biggest comic shop in the whole city. Like, celebrities came into our store 'n' stuff).

No, instead, I picked this thing up and 4 pages in, I regretted it. Really, really regretted it. And right there, I could see why they had to kill Superman. It's because he SUCKED. His books SUCKED, HE SUCKED. All of the characters and subplots and art, it all SUCKED. Every single panel had a thought bubble explaining the action on the page, every spoken word had an exclamation point! after! every! word! Every character was their own narrator and the beginning of each chapter had to explain WHO everyone was. Again and again and again.

THIS REMEDIAL GARBAGE was why comics were for losers. I mean DAMN. Of course, this is also the era where it all began to change. Villains and anti-heroes like The Punisher, Venom and Sabretooth were becoming more popular, writers got fed up with the character limitations of Marvel & DC and started their own companies and basically the industry died from their own hype and overproduction of Collector's Editions and a new #1 every week.

Nowadays, if you go into a shop, there are no more kids. Comics aren't written for kids anymore. They're written for adults and written pretty damn well. Nearly every popular series is optioned to some studio or another for a feature film, DVD project or TV show. When people come in from out of town, I inevitably end up introducing them to a few comic series and take them shopping for some damn fine reading material.

Granted, there's still some baaaaad stuff out there, but it's no longer the rule, but the exception. And thank god for that.