“It’s just a comic book.”
This may be the most ridiculous thing to in the online comics community. Yet it keeps coming up.
Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, but it seems like I’m seeing this dismissal less and less when it comes to arguing continuity and scientific errors and more and more when the review angles on social issues such as racist beauty standards, refrigerator-style plots, disproportionate gender distribution of gay relationships and so on. We’re wasting our time, ruining other people’s enjoyment and if we really cared we’d be marching on Washington or Riyadh or Beijing right now.
Never mind that the person who tells us that this is a waste of time is spending THEIR time reading reviews of comic books rather than changing the world, and commenting on these reviews to boot.
Never mind that discussion of these matters in any forum in a way of spreading awareness, and that indeed in a niche fan community you are more likely to reach people who would have never been exposed to activist opinions and theories before than in a political rally
Never mind that it’s entirely possible that the reviewer spends his or her regular job manning crisis hotlines, collecting donations for charity, ministering to the ill, feeding the homeless, or fighting terrorism and that they are reviewing comics in their leisure time.
Never mind the effect cultural messages have on our own ways of thought.
What kills me is the inherent absurdity in the statement. These are serious matters. “It’s just a comic book” says that comic books are trivial. But if they are so trivial, so utterly unimportant, what’s the harm in making them more enjoyable for a wider audience?
Race, gender, sex, religion, sexuality, ability… These are serious matters. Life and death matters. People are being fired for these matters. People are losing friends. Political campaigns are built around them. People are being killed over their identities. Opinion need to be changed. Laws need to be changed.
But some people don’t even want to allow for something as simple as a comic book to be changed to reflect our society.
“It’s just a comic book.”
Then it should be a lot easier to fix than the rest of society. Why isn’t it?
April 18th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
See in the end it is just a comic book ,it is for escape from this harsh reality and anyone who cannot see that is looking far beyond what a funnybook is for ,yes i agree a book can be used to get across a message ,but to attack typical hero fare with this silliness ruins it for everyone.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
“But if they are so trivial, so utterly unimportant, what’s the harm in making them more enjoyable for a wider audience?”
More enjoyable is not the same as socially responsible.
Is this in reference to any particular conversation?
“Then it should be a lot easier to fix than the rest of society. Why isn’t it?”
Because a great deal of people in this world are morons. People who run banks, slice deli meat, create comics, groom pets… if you’re lucky, one out of 5 gets it.
As above, so below.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Morrollan,
A comic book is a piece of art. It is whatever the artist(s) intends (or whatever the audience percieves) it to be.
Here’s my suggestion to anyone and everyone:
Read comics by people whose art speaks to you.
April 18th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
For me, a lot of the time it’s a question of continuity. I really hate what Miller’s doing in All-Star Batman & Robin and pretty much anything Chaykin has done recently, but as long as it’s a self-contained “Elseworlds”-type story, I can simply not read it and it’s no skin off my nose.
Continuity makes things more difficult. I can enjoy my back issues of Justice League International, but it’s always going to be tainted now by the Sue Dibney rape and to a lesser extent Max Lord secretly being a cold-blooded killer.
I’m not a big fan of retcons in general, but a lot of my current disenchantment started with Hal Jordan becoming a mass murderer, so I couldn’t be happier about some of the wind being taken out of that story’s sails after the fact.
So I dunno, I preferred it when the people punching through heads or horribly eviscerating poeple were semi-parodies like the Authority in adult-oriented titles rather than Superboy and Black Adam in mainstream comics, but I don’t mind people telling whatever kind of story strikes their fancy. It’s when that story becomes THE story that they should be especially mindful.
If you’re going to, say, make it forever part of Sue Storm’s backstory that she lived on the streets for a while as a teenage crack whore, you’d better have a pretty good reason for that. And even then you’re probably making a mistake. Tell the story if you must, but for chrissakes make up a character of your own to do it with.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
“…but for chrissakes make up a character of your own to do it with.”
And THAT is the point.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:25 am
but comic books do reflect our society in that comics are also sometimes decadent, worthless and disgustng
April 20th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I’ve seen readers and reviewers employ the “It’s only comics” reasoning many times, when one of them can’t defend his reaction to a poor story against criticism. The reader might be trying to avoid embarrassment; the reviewer is more likely to consider the story’s plot and much of the characterization, as such, junk and will concentrate on the social issues, attempts at satire or allegories, or other aspects of the story that he thinks have more merit than the plot and characterization.
The only people I’ve seen take all aspects of a superhero comic seriously are those who have considerable experience reading and/or writing SF and fantasy and can do “comparison and contrast” easily. The conceptual differences between superhero fiction and SF/fantasy are actually small, since practically any power that isn’t deliberately weird can be duplicated with technology. Readers who are consciously slumming when they read comics exaggerate the differences.
Unfortunately, the Marvel Editorial personnel resort to the “It’s only comics” defense as readily as anyone else, saying that their concern is with a character’s long-term viability, his licensing and merchandising potential, etc. The last thing they seem to be concerned with is the quality of any one storyline.
SRS