It is
completely without shame that I confess I loved comic books as a boy. (And have been known to read some of them in
my adulthood with satisfaction.) In the
1970s, I regularly read such comics (or black-and-white comic magazines, which
were my preference) as The Shadow, Doc Savage, Planet of the Apes, Tomb of
Dracula, House of Mystery, Sherlock Holmes (sadly, never lasting
more than an issue or two), and even The
Hulk. And, to this day, I have a
deep and abiding affection for Superman. Even as a boy, I thought Superman was the
great American success story. An
immigrant raised in America’s heartland, he took our national myth to heart and
made himself into the embodiment of all that is good about us. (I was also beglamoured by visions of his
lost planet Krypton, which was often portrayed as a 1930s art deco-inspired
wonderland. If heaven exists and mirrors
our expectations, for me it would resemble Krytpon to no little degree.)
Clearly,
the argument that reading comics in one’s youth “ruins” one for adult
literature doesn’t seem to be airtight.
I distinctly remember reading the Planet of the Apes comics and Balzac at the same time … in fact, I
would heartily endorse anything that
encourages young people to read at all.
When I
was a boy, comic books were available in every corner newsstand, in drug and
convenience stores, and sometimes in five-and-dime stores, such as
Woolworth’s. Comics were ubiquitous –
read in school lunchrooms, in the park, and often found crumpled at the bottom
of book bags or rolled in back pockets.
Then,
something strange and terrible happened to the comics industry. (WHAM!)
A new form of sales – comics direct marketing – changed the way comic
books were bought and sold. Instead of being
available everywhere, comics were now sold primarily through comic book
specialty stores. (And today, it’s
nearly impossible to find comics anywhere else.) Where comics were once the common currency of
kids everywhere, they became a specialized commodity of interest to only those
in-the-know.
The
effect of this decision was two-fold.
First, it saved comics when they probably would have disappeared
completely in competition against laptops, video games, and other youthful time
drains. However, what it also meant is
that the audience changed primarily from all children to a devoted (fanatical!)
band of devotees. And – more
significantly – this audience has aged, taking comics with them. By and large, comics are not for children
anymore.
To my
mind, saving comics also killed them.
Whereas comics reading amongst children once numbered in the many
millions, it now numbers in the many thousands among adults. In addition, it has perverted perfectly
delightful adolescent fantasies – such as Batman
or Superman – in the misguided struggle to make them “adult,” an aesthetic miscalculation
and intellectual dead end. If you treat
much of this material in an “adult” manner, it often becomes even more risible. What are the recent Batman films, really,
other than Lethal Weapon in a
shroud?
These
thoughts came to mind as I stepped, on a whim, into a comic book store while
visiting friends in Long Island. There
were very few young people on hand – though, I must confess, most were younger
than I. (Not all that difficult a proposition
these days.)
The
thing that struck me the most is that many (many, many, many!) things on the
shelves were recreations of things I saw or had as a boy. Aurora monster model kits; Sean Connery/James Bond model kits; hardcover collections of Superman from the
1970s; figures from the movie Mad Monster
Party? (1967) at nearly $25 a figurine; action figures of characters from
the sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966);
bendable toys of Huckleberry Hound
(1958); a Flintstones (1960-1966)
watch …. I could go on, but you get the idea. No one under 50 would have any
point of reference for most of the wares on parade. And it dawned on me … comic book stores
really don’t even sell comic books anymore --- they sell tired Baby Boomers the
youth they so desperately miss.
If ever
there was a recipe for extinction, it would be this. While comic books still operate to a degree
as the research and development arm for bloated, senseless “event movies,” the
idea that they are a thriving and viable medium is, sadly, no longer
correct. It’s often amusing and even
instructive to revisit the passions of one’s youth, but it’s an awful plan for
building an ongoing artistic legacy.
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