The Comics Are for Kids Too! panel was made up of Art Baltazar and Franco from Tiny Titans, Peter David (mostly because of his work on Marvel Adventures Spider-Man), Josh Elder and Russel Lissau from The Batman Strikes, and Owly’s Andy Runton.

The Wizard moderator opened the panel with a question about what comics the panelists read as kids that inform their current work. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising that most of them came to comics from other media. Bugs Bunny cartoons, Adam West’s Batman, Star Wars, and Super Friends were a few examples. David in particular talked about watching the old Adventures of Superman TV show and how excited he got when the announcer mentioned that the characters were based on a Superman magazine he’d never heard of.

In addition to that though, a lot of them were introduced to comics by older relatives. Lissau’s grandparents (on both sides of his family) loved Batman and Superman when he was a kid and used to make up stories for him featuring those characters. Elder learned to read when his mom lost her voice and couldn’t finish a Transformers comic she was reading to him. He figured out the words himself just to complete the story. Similarly, Runton learned to read from his mom’s reading him the Sunday comics pages.

David said that he got into comics at the barber shop, which stocked plenty of Harvey Comics. He fondly remembered not understanding that when Casper was drawn with a dotted line, it meant that he was invisible. Thinking it was supposed to be interactive, David would just connect the dots.

He was exposed to Marvel by a cousin who showed him Fantastic Four Annual #3 with Sue and Reed’s wedding. He praised the issue for allowing him to follow the story without ever having read a Marvel comic in his life. Even with pretty much every character in the Marvel universe appearing, he never felt lost or didn’t understand someone’s power. He specifically mentioned that the Hulk wasn’t in the issue, but that one of the characters said it was a good thing the Hulk wasn’t there. If he had been, it would’ve changed the balance of the fight, but no one could predict in which way. Without knowing what the Hulk looked like or what his powers were, David understood the essence of the character from a single line of dialogue: that he was one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel universe and that no one knew if he was a good guy or a bad guy. David observed that that’s becoming something of a lost art in comics, but he’s trying to apply that kind of storytelling to his comics for younger readers.

Runton also talked about how the comics he read growing up influenced Owly. He went from the Sunday funnies to superheroes via The Electric Company’s Spider-Man and the Adam West Batman. His high school friends got him into the X-Men, but Runton was drawn to characters like Lockheed and other, cute mascots and sidekicks. He wanted to see more of them and always wondered what the back-story was to characters like Hello Kitty. Since no one was making books like that, Runton started creating them himself.

At that point, Franco jumped in and said that it bugs him that kids comics are separated from “mainstream” comics. It used to be that kids would read Casper, but they’d also be reading the Hulk. In mainstream comics, there’s not enough excitement and way too much of what Franco calls “talking with their jeans on” and writing for the trade collections.

David seconded that and added that he doesn’t write Marvel Adventures comics specifically for children. It bugs him when adult fans moan about long, convoluted stories, but won’t read Marvel Adventures because they’re “for kids.”

At that point in the panel, one of the kids in the front row – Russel Lissau’s daughter, it turned out – looked bored, so David began engaging her in conversation. It derailed the rest of the panel from whatever the moderator had planned, but David said he thought it was important that in a panel about comics for kids, they should get some input from the many children who were present. David asked the kids if they had any questions.

One child asked why grown-ups won’t read comics for kids, to which David replied, “Because grown-ups are big doodie-heads.”

David then asked what kinds of comics kids want. Webkinz were mentioned (partly because Lissau’s daughter had told a long, but adorable story about how she knew her Webkinz were reading her comics while she was at school). Other suggestions were cats and dogs fighting and “all out action.”

A mom interjected that she wants to see more girl characters and added, “with their clothes on.”

An art teacher then thanked the panel for introducing young people to art and encouraged them to continue. Runton chimed in there that when he was a kid, he used to draw in the car on long trips, not watch DVDs. He agreed that this generation is fighting a battle with other kinds of media that previous generations didn’t have to fight.

David added that the battle is made more difficult because it’s a lot cheaper now to play video games, surf the net, and watch TV than it is to read comics. Also, parents who haven’t kept up with reading comics get sticker shock when they see a three-dollar comic. That’s why the digests and collections are popular with parents. Another parent then made the point that the digest books hold up better to repeated reading that kids subject them to.

One of the highlights of the panel though – for me anyway – was when a dad asked how he could get his daughter into reading comics. Various titles were mentioned, including Tiny Titans and Owly, but I loved Elder’s contribution that you can’t force it. Once you introduce a kid to comics, hopefully by showing her the best there is in her area of interest, you’ve got to let her decide for herself if this is for her or not. It’s encouraging that not only are there a lot of comics available for kids these days – superhero and otherwise – but that there are so many kids – at least at Wizard World Chicago this year – interested in checking them out. It really put to rest for me the myth that the industry is in trouble because kids aren’t interested anymore.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under Comic Books, Conventions, Creators, DC Comics, Marvel, News & Views, Top Shelf. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.