I’m working on some ideas for what will become either a longer piece or a couple of pieces on being a genre fan and a genre parent. That is, what’s it like when your kids start taking an active interest in your hobby or hobbies? The same films? And so on. How do your prejudices affect the kids, at all, and do you watch material differently now with them versus your original experience?
My kids have been into super-heroes for a while, but I’ve really noticed more facets of this as they started to get into Star Wars. They are crazy about it, especially Connor, my five-year-old. But he embraces all levels of it (the original films, the toys, the video games, kids books, Clone Wars, etc.) equally, and I find myself wondering if things like my prejudices about the later movies will have any impact on their experience. After all, it should be THEIR experience.
I also wonder what the proper age to introduce kids to mainstream comics is anymore. The boys read a few things now again, with the Boom! Disney books, Johnny DC and Marvel Adventures being up top. But man, take a look at titles that I was already reading by Connor’s age, and we all know that there’s some grim business out there. I tell Connor about some stories because he’s interested by the covers, but it’s one thing to break down Siege into “The bad guys invade Thor’s home and the Avengers get back together and kick their ah–er–butts,” and it’s another thing to let them actually read a book where multiple characters get ripped asunder.
So, some soft polling here: what’s it like when your kids come in the door, and what are you sharing with them?
July 7th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
I’m in a more unique situation, where my daughter has Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD. So in our case, we’re just happy to have her read ANYTHING. Reading is simply too tedious for her.
Right now, about the only comics she reads are the Sonic the Hedgehog books. And “reads” is an elastic term – she skims them, looking at the pictures, not really absorbing the plot long enough to relate it back to me. But that she sits still long enough to read anything at all is tremendous progress. She CAN read, and quite well – she’s doing very good in school. But she doesn’t view reading proper books as a leisure time activity, which we see as a shame, but not a crisis. We go to great lengths to keep any of this to become a point of stress, for fear of turning them from simply uninteresting to actively negative experiences for her.
As for other media, she enjoys the same cartoons we do and has expressed an avowed love for Superheroes, tho again, she won’t read any superhero comics. She won’t watch my Sentai shows because they’re subtitled; she’ll watch my un-subbed raw copies, and just enjoy the action. She loves the theme songs and plays them endlessly off my soundtrack CDs.
As is in line with many high-functioning aspies, she’s good at amassing facts about the cartoons and characters she likes, even if she doesn’t have the patience to read the books or even play the games. Case in point – she has all the enemies memorized from the Mega Man X games, but can’t sit through playing the games.
Comic cons are a little too crowded and noisy for her, and her interests are narrow enough that she doesn’t always find enough to entertain her. I’m trying to get her interested in other things by connecting it to her current likes – I want to see if I can get her interested in sketch collecting, for example, if she can realize that she can get people to draw Sonic.
So in our case, we’re sort of working backwards – we’re using our love of genre stuff to inspire her to open up socially and academically. She made honor roll this year, so it’s working pretty well so far. YMMV, of course.
July 7th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
It’s a great topic. It’s easy to fall into cliche here, but “it ain’t like it used to be.” My Marvel collection dates from about 1977-1983 and is, for the most part, age appropriate for kids 10 and under.
I’ve gotten back into comics over the past 5 years, and my kids have taken an interest, both in comics, Star Wars, etc. But I look at comics today and they’re great, but for the most part, I have to hide them away from the kids — too scary, too grim, too bloody.
I feel like the industry has given up on younger readers. You can’t buy comics from places where mom and dad usually shop and you can’t walk to the local convenience store and thumb through the spinner rack. Mainstream titles for kids are marginalized, so they don’t get the sense of ongoing drama and continuity … with Marvel, it’s Marvel Adventures (or whatever they’re changing it to), retro titles like “X-Men First Class” and the occasional gem like Dan Slott’s 8-issue The Thing run from a few years back that have all ages appeal … Otherwise…I wouldn’t let my kids anywhere near most Avengers titles, Siege, Secret Invasion or Civil War…or even Spider-Man — Grim Hunt, indeed.
And conventions? The big cons get a lot of attention, but I’ve gone to few ’round here, and participated in a bigger one, and found them largely joyless affairs, particularly for the under-10 set, or for anyone who isn’t a hardcore nerd. The creators are cool, and mostly nice enough, but as a parent, there were more than a few tables where it was “keep walking, nothing to see here” for the kids once I’d caught a glimpse of nightmare-inducing blood-soaked demons doing awful things to beautiful women in varying states of undress. You’d think that they could find a way to appeal to the sense of fun, creativity and passion: put on a kid’s art class, bring in a Spidey-themed climbing wall…have fun. This year, all we found was the local team of professional cos-players and someone’s homemade replica of the “Back to the Future DeLorean.” (which was actually quite awesome, come to think of it).
I’m sure there’s a segment that says that the cons should be for the hardcore nerds and collectors. I think there’s room for comics to be a bigger tent than that.
Then again, maybe we have rose-colored glasses. I’d read a bunch of wacko Silver Age DC comics before I started collecting Marvel when I was 10 (and stopped collecting before “grim’n'gritty” took off), and my kids are younger than that now. They probably would have been too young to get a lot of what was being put out there back then, too.
So you had a question…what do I share? Besides what I mentioned, not much… the first Invincible trade was quite good for the kids…after that, fergit it. I might show them The Incredible Hercules sometime. This week, I’ve been reading an old Donald Duck / Uncle Scrooge compilation, which is far more fantastic than I’d ever thought it would be…which leads me to conclude that if you look around a little harder and keep your kids in mind, you might discover more than you ever would have expected.
July 7th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
My son is under three. I have not specifically exposed him to any comics, but he does “like” the FCBD Nancy by John Stanley from a few years back, and he likes flipping through one of my Don Martin MAD paperbacks. I wouldn’t even show him “kids” superhero comics from the 70s because of all the punching. He has had zero exposure to any violence so far, but somehow through osmosis, he has learned the words “Spider-Man” “Superman” and “superhero.” That said, he did get his middle name from Captain Kirk’s so who knows how he will turn out in a few years.
KS
July 7th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
I was reading early Image titles when I was around the age of ten or so and my brother was seven, so yeah I saw half-melted women and people on fire in Shadowhawk, and Savage Dragon fall down and land in a spiked pit in his title. But my parents were able to teach me the difference between real and fake violence. R-rated movies were more off-limits thanks to the sexuality in them up until I was 14 or 15 or so. So I’d probably treat my kids the same.
July 8th, 2010 at 6:22 am
Great topic. I’ve tried to be open and provide material to them and encourage whatever they’re into. I have two boys (13 and 10). My oldest has dabbled in comics, but his passion has always been video games. My youngest went through a phase of loving Star Wars. He didn’t like the original movies only the new trilogy and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Phantom Menace (the horror).
All in all, I’ve tried to keep myself out of their likes, I’m sure I haven’t been perfect in that regard, but I”ve tried
July 8th, 2010 at 8:36 am
My kid loves the Marvel digests. He’s had a harder time getting into my Essentials. And I THOUGHT for a recent long car ride over the 4th, he was ready for Essential Marvel Saga and it’d be a great time to spring it on him since he would be bored, but nope. That didn’t go well.
July 8th, 2010 at 10:13 am
I don’t have a simple answer to this. It’s sort of a best of times, worst of times kind of thing. I’m big time into both comics and Star Wars. On the one hand, just because I have a lot of the stuff around the house, I would guess that my kids have more access to it than the average kid so that can’t help but be an influence. But, I’ve never tried to get them into it or anything. They just gravitated to it on their own. I’m also into sports but they don’t seem to gravitate to that in the same way.
My oldest daughter is really into superheroes and Star Wars but I honestly think she would still be into them even if I never was. Yeah, I’ve given her comics and taken her to shops but it’s really TV that sealed the deal. We are in a golden age of TV cartoons. I know some people that remember the glory of the Saturday Morning cartoon would roll their eyes at that notion but we really are. Kids have never had more access to quality cartoons and a lot of them are either about super heroes or super hero based. My eight year old has grown up with Teen Titans, JLA, Batman Brave and the Bold, Kim Possible, Ben 10, Power Puff Girls etc. So, I really did not have to do anything to hook her on super heroes. Now as far as comics goes, FCBD was a probably a big gateway to that. Specifically the books that featured characters from the previously mentioned shows. DC has done a really good job with that and it has carried over into my daughter wanting books from the Johnny DC line. (Damn shame the main DCU books are not fit for kids.) My daughter also loves going through the old discount boxes at shops and cons looking for cheap comics from the 80′s that have girl characters in them. Teen Titans, Batman and the Outsiders, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, Dazzler and X-Men are favorites. (She likes X-Men pretty much exclusively for Kitty Pryde.) This is super cool because it is cheap and those comics in the 80′s were actually okay for kids and were not terrible.
As far as Star Wars goes, it’s a similar deal. I had the stuff around but it really was not until the Clone Wars cartoon came out that she got really into it and wanted the toys, video games etc.
So, back to my original “best of times worst of times” theme. I really see this generation having it’s own connection to these properties. It’s not me trying to hand down my obsessions. It’s really a new ting. And in a lot of ways it’s better. Or at least the cartoons, toys and video games are better. But on the downside, with the exception of Johnny DC and the Archie comics, the comics industry is really missing the boat and leaving a lot of money on the table by totally ignoring a whole generation. My daughter has her own super hero toys, clothes, back packs, video games etc. etc. but when it comes to comics, she mainly has to dig through the back issue boxes just like her dad.
July 8th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I’ve been sharing comics w/my now 5-year-old daughter for a few years now: Boom’s offerings always catch her eye (Muppets, Pixar, euro-mickey/donald), Tiny Titans are favorites since she likes to list all the characters; dark horse’s massive Casper reprint was one of the 1st I got her and she still hits it. The recent Alice in Wonderland was good since it was so faithful, but kind of dark and “weird” (her word for it). She likes all the girl superheroes even if she doesn’t read them (she knows most of the books I buy are “for grown-ups”): supergirl, batgirl, wonderwoman & wondergirls, mary marvel (less the marvel heroes, no suprise). she also grabs archie books when she can sneak them into my pile. I expect her to go nuts for the phineas and ferb book that came out recently.
But if and when they ever print the “Princess Batgirl” book, that will be her all-time favorite (she made that one up, but it’s a winner).