Identity Crisis
Comic Index
(Issues #1-7, available in trade paperback)
written by Brad Meltzer
art by Rags Morales
published by DC Comics
Identity Crisis was DC Comics 2004's big “event� comic, one that promised to have lasting effects ripple through the entire cast of the heroes of DC comics. [The DC Universe is home to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and the Justice League (*sigh* the Super Friends, if you must).]
Murder mystery scribe, Brad Meltzer, opens the series with the words of Dr. Fate “Life is a mystery.� In this case, it is a murder mystery built around the conceit that someone is going after the significant others in the lives of the community of super-heroes. Tragedy befalls one of the few happy couples in comics. As the Elongated Man, the character who bears the brunt of the tragedy, says: “anyone who puts on a costume paints a bull’s-eye on his family’s chests.� Though extremely dramatic and an absorbing read, there is something about the story that leaves a pall over the work. I think it boils down to the fact that there are lines not worth crossing, taboos not worth breaking, memories not worth tainting; not even for the sake of a riveting read (see The Amazing Spider-Man).
“An era can said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.�
-Arthur Miller (quoted in issue #7 of Identity Crisis)
As comic book afficionados were well aware, event comics are cross-over series with ramifications that spread through the other titles of the comic book company. Whereas once they were harmless marketing ploys–used as excuses to have a majority of the heroes gather together in one place--the big events took increasingly darker turns. These events were punctuated by death, as the medium entered this age of realism. Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Final Night, each brought their share of deaths, sometimes to beloved characters. Granted, this being comic books, it depended on what your definition of “dead� is, but for the most part, (for death to have any meaning) many of the characters have remained dead.
There’s nothing like the reality of death to make one examine their lives, especially their pasts. “Even godless physicists can appreciate the past.� (The Atom). Identity Crisis, in a fit of fanboy mania, re-visits the more innocent age of comics in order to reveal that they weren’t so innocent. Our heroes have their silver age morality is questioned.
You see, part of this era of being real and dark involves the deconstruction of the myth of the iconic hero. We love heroes, but we hate the example they set so we have to prove that they are no better than us. We seem to constantly compare ourselves to one another, as if we are trying to find a kind of redemption by trying to find our self-worth through others. Not wanting to have to live up to too high an ideal, this leads to an obsession with proving that our heroes have feet of clay.
In a nutshell, Identity Crisis is a well-plotted series developed from an oddly gratuitous feeling circumstance. The storyline, with its pot boiler whodunnit trappings, is thick with implications because of the series of escalations: grand fight scenes; one-time silly villains deepened and darkened; friendships betrayed; and a slow unraveling of the tapestry of the vanguard fighting team, the Justice League. It is filled with cool scenes and powerful images, if not a cohesive unifying thread. For such a cornerstone series, it can’t resolve the emotional issues at play. Its rushed resolution ends up feeling like the 30 minute sitcom wrap up of a “very special episode�.
The conclusion, at first pass, proves oddly unsatisfying and anti-climatic. That is, until you realize that at its core, Identity Crisis is a story about relationships and our desperate need for them. Identity Crisis ends up offering a better answer than Dr. Fate’s bit of wisdom. Life is about relationships; the deeply personal nature of, and the ties that bind, relationships. Parent and child. (Ex) wife and (ex) husband. Colleagues. We were created as relational beings. We are defined by relationships and we are vulnerable through them. It sounds weak, codependent in therapy parlance, but we aren’t meant to be alone.
A human being is defined by who loves them. Loved by God, we have our identity; defined by that relationship we find our self-worth. Love is risk, but we’re wired to be a part of a community. In that way we are fulfilled.
One could forgive the flaws to make the meticulously constructed mystery work. The series both highlights and humanizes the heroes of the DC universe while at the same time exposing their flaws in a deeply personal story. However, that doesn’t negate the solution to the heroes’ identity crisis. It could be best summed up with this quote from Doc Childre: "Our true identity is to love without fear or insecurity. Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction. The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity."
Comic Index
(Issues #1-7, available in trade paperback)
written by Brad Meltzer
art by Rags Morales
published by DC Comics
Identity Crisis was DC Comics 2004's big “event� comic, one that promised to have lasting effects ripple through the entire cast of the heroes of DC comics. [The DC Universe is home to Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and the Justice League (*sigh* the Super Friends, if you must).] 
Murder mystery scribe, Brad Meltzer, opens the series with the words of Dr. Fate “Life is a mystery.� In this case, it is a murder mystery built around the conceit that someone is going after the significant others in the lives of the community of super-heroes. Tragedy befalls one of the few happy couples in comics. As the Elongated Man, the character who bears the brunt of the tragedy, says: “anyone who puts on a costume paints a bull’s-eye on his family’s chests.� Though extremely dramatic and an absorbing read, there is something about the story that leaves a pall over the work. I think it boils down to the fact that there are lines not worth crossing, taboos not worth breaking, memories not worth tainting; not even for the sake of a riveting read (see The Amazing Spider-Man). “An era can said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.�
-Arthur Miller (quoted in issue #7 of Identity Crisis)
As comic book afficionados were well aware, event comics are cross-over series with ramifications that spread through the other titles of the comic book company. Whereas once they were harmless marketing ploys–used as excuses to have a majority of the heroes gather together in one place--the big events took increasingly darker turns. These events were punctuated by death, as the medium entered this age of realism. Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Final Night, each brought their share of deaths, sometimes to beloved characters. Granted, this being comic books, it depended on what your definition of “dead� is, but for the most part, (for death to have any meaning) many of the characters have remained dead.
There’s nothing like the reality of death to make one examine their lives, especially their pasts. “Even godless physicists can appreciate the past.� (The Atom). Identity Crisis, in a fit of fanboy mania, re-visits the more innocent age of comics in order to reveal that they weren’t so innocent. Our heroes have their silver age morality is questioned. 
You see, part of this era of being real and dark involves the deconstruction of the myth of the iconic hero. We love heroes, but we hate the example they set so we have to prove that they are no better than us. We seem to constantly compare ourselves to one another, as if we are trying to find a kind of redemption by trying to find our self-worth through others. Not wanting to have to live up to too high an ideal, this leads to an obsession with proving that our heroes have feet of clay.
In a nutshell, Identity Crisis is a well-plotted series developed from an oddly gratuitous feeling circumstance. The storyline, with its pot boiler whodunnit trappings, is thick with implications because of the series of escalations: grand fight scenes; one-time silly villains deepened and darkened; friendships betrayed; and a slow unraveling of the tapestry of the vanguard fighting team, the Justice League. It is filled with cool scenes and powerful images, if not a cohesive unifying thread. For such a cornerstone series, it can’t resolve the emotional issues at play. Its rushed resolution ends up feeling like the 30 minute sitcom wrap up of a “very special episode�. 
The conclusion, at first pass, proves oddly unsatisfying and anti-climatic. That is, until you realize that at its core, Identity Crisis is a story about relationships and our desperate need for them. Identity Crisis ends up offering a better answer than Dr. Fate’s bit of wisdom. Life is about relationships; the deeply personal nature of, and the ties that bind, relationships. Parent and child. (Ex) wife and (ex) husband. Colleagues. We were created as relational beings. We are defined by relationships and we are vulnerable through them. It sounds weak, codependent in therapy parlance, but we aren’t meant to be alone. A human being is defined by who loves them. Loved by God, we have our identity; defined by that relationship we find our self-worth. Love is risk, but we’re wired to be a part of a community. In that way we are fulfilled.
One could forgive the flaws to make the meticulously constructed mystery work. The series both highlights and humanizes the heroes of the DC universe while at the same time exposing their flaws in a deeply personal story. However, that doesn’t negate the solution to the heroes’ identity crisis. It could be best summed up with this quote from Doc Childre: "Our true identity is to love without fear or insecurity. Our higher potential finds us when we set our course in that direction. The power of love and compassion transforms insecurity."Comic Index
9 Comments:
Comment #1
There are issues of misogyny and violence that could be discussed with this book, the roles of women relegated to being chiefly victims or insane. However, I think the primary thrust of the book would be lost in such a discussion. One of the major sub-plots of the mini-series revolves around the things that we do to keep our secrets, even as we believe we are doing the right things.
The death that set all of the other events into motion and the secret that the heroes protected
(***possible spoiler alert***)
were unrelated. A significant red herring that left no consequences for the secret keepers. [Though, in an example of Marketing 101, the true consequences are being played out in this year’s eventual event: Countdown to Infinite Crisis (Infinite Crisis being the long unasked for sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t end up being another Secret Wars II).]
Maurice commenting on his own review! Oh well, I suppose it was a bit of a P.S.!
Hmm, well, all I can say is,that I'm glad I live hundreds of miles away from any large comics shop, and in the past few years haven't had that much money to waste on this type of thing!
Hate pretentious modern Yank comics! Yanks, don't tell us all out here in the other nations how "sensitive" you are, or something like that!! Entertain us! Put up - or shut up!!
Maurice, what did this little ungrammatical sentence of yours, what was it originally intended to mean? "Our heroes have their silver age morality is questioned." Huh?
I don't believe in killoffs in comics. They're never intended to be final - not in an ongoing series - not in one that is SUPPOSED to have a "continuity" in it (ha ha, ha ha HA!)... so what is the point to them?
(Actually, in my bath once ages ago, I thought of the PERFECT way of resolving this! In the medium. Yup, I did! But nobody hires me; they only hire gittish, generally useless blokes in comics: which is why my method has not made its way into general usage.
This is what to do. Modern physics tell us - many scientists, in fact, have NO difficulty in accepting this hypothesis of physics as having been proved in various arcane ways.... Well, of course, it tells us that the universe is in fact a multiverse, with all sorts of alternative universes existing on scales of possibility... That is what STARTED all this speculation about "alternative dimensions" in science fiction in the first place, goodness knows when, in the 1920s or 30s I should think! That is what all this "Infinite Earths" stuff is based on, no??
So, after you kill off a character in such a story, WHY go back and resurrect them? Why not just LEAVE THEM DEAD IN THAT STORY?? And why not SAY - you would have to make it clear in an "afterword" by the writer - that the character died in THAT dimension, all right, but his almost identical counterparts - near-infinite numbers of them - are still alive in the many other dimensions of that particular planet, Earth or wherever??
Then you needn't even BOTHER with all these "continuity" contortions!! If you wanted to write about the character again, you'd just take up his thread in another dimension. Anyway, that's how I'd do it.)
But I don't believe in "kill-offs"; particularly not in the kind that DC indulged in during the late 80s and early 90s; these were purely cynical money-making exercises, designed by a witless editorial board to squeeze the last bit of money out of/whip up interest in dying titles; or titles that at the time it was feared were dying, basically because of all the tiresome shenaningans... All sorts of things were boasted about "the new comics", but the fact IS, my friend, that HUGE slumps in sales took place across the whole medium, from 1990/91 onwards, throughout the Nineties... And comics shops closed and so on.
Well, as the capitalists say, the market doesn't lie! That means that the vast majority of the public did NOT find these concoctions entertaining; and a similar slump in Hollywood viewing figures took place in 1991, incidentally, which as the writer Michael Medved pointed out, was the worst year for movie figures for ages...
This cannot merely be put down to an economic recession, because in previous recessions, people FLOCKED to what the movies and comic book publishing houses had to offer!
People want to be entertained. This stuff doesn't do it.
"Part of this era of being real and dark involves the deconstruction of the myth of the iconic hero"... Mmm. I think it's much more likely that THEY - THEM - whoever you define that shadowy "them" as being, I just call it "the elite", or even "the shadow elite", don't WANT us, ie, the working class (particularly!), the middle classes, or any of the BROAD, TEEMING MASSES out here to have ANY hero, any kind of succour to hold on to at all, and most importantly, ANY ideal to inspire us!! They do this in all sorts of ways: ONE is by perverting previously well-loved heroes, whether factual or fictional.. well of course it's easier to pervert a fictional character to one's purposes, because people can just say: "oh, it's not real"... (isn't it?!), and comic books more than anything, because there is no "original text" in the form of play or novel that can be referred to as "the foundation"... It's a more amorphous medium. To some, anyway!
...And another way they do it, is by killing real-life popular heroes. I believe the FIRST actual instance of this (I may be wrong!) certainly in America, was the deliberate assassination of President JFK by the shadow elite. He may not have been "perfect", but to the masses, he symbolized something, and for that reason, he was got rid of by Them. A more recent example of same would be the mysterious death of Princess Diana, for precisely the same reason.
Yeah, this socialist is a conspiracy theorist, as well! And I notice that these days, so many people are... Even Marxists don't quite turn up their nose at the idea of conspiracy, as I have learnt from my ahem, friends, at wsws.org.
"leads to an obsession with proving that our heroes have feet of clay".. Well, that's ONE explanation of it, Maurice - I'm glad that someone, such as yourself, is at least trying to come up with SOME explanation for this phenomenon!
But I don't think it's the working class that doesn't want no heroes! (Supposing there WERE to be, for example, a modern day Robin Hood, let's say - someone on their side like that in real life - wouldn't they all FLOCK to him? Wouldn't it start a revolution? Even a good piece of fiction about a character like that in a contemporary setting could make a lot of WAVES!!)
It's the ruling class that doesn't want us to have any. It doesn't even want there to be "aristocratic" heroes - not in the OLD, generous, "he's a toff and a 'alf" form: King Arthur, Batman... (FDR for that matter!) NO - WHY?
BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE THEM LOOK BAD!!!!
And this comment being one of the ones of mine you don't want to answer, Maurice!
sigh.
so anyway, dc explored your very idea a while back in their sequel to "kingdom come". they named their concept "hypertime".
i don't think you'd even have to do that contortion. if i wanted to write a character who was dead, i'd simply set the story during their lifetime.
there are many reasons for the comic crash of the nineties. one was the exploitation of the collector's market (companies taking advantage of them and the speculators realizing that comics weren't a good longterm investment). two, the move to comic specialty shops has decreased their market. three, involves some distribution issues that i won't bore you with, but those issues also hinder the independent comics finding their way to the stores. four, the stories themselves, insofar as the comic "event stories" too often left the reader/fan feeling jerked around.
Jerked around? You bet!
You can "bore" me with every distribution issue and technical/marketing argument you can find, Maurice. I shall never get bored!
Arguments and statistics are my meat and drink... THAT was one reason I lapped up the critique of movies: "Hollywood v. America", which was actually by a Jewish conservative!! (Medved - he's gone too far over to the Dobson side, though - a problematic alliance!)
Yes, I don't believe in JUST having comics specialty shops, as a main distribution outlet... That HAS to be all screwed!
You HAVE to have as wide a distribution spread as possible! THAT is what Michael Moore sought for his first movie, "Roger and Me", he went for the deal that placed it in the most movie theatres, not the deal with the biggest payout.
THAT is what Stephen Hawking sought for his "A Brief History of Time" - he got it placed in Walmart and K-Mart - and made it the biggest science bestseller of all time, so far as I know! (Well, the biggest physics one, anyway.)
THESE guys have an idea!
Comics companies have none!
AND WHAT ABOUT... seeking the female market??
What do they think makes things like Buffy, both "cult" and so successful??
Spotty male geeks?
No! It was the force of the female audience.
Yes, and I KNOW there was a brief blether on "how about getting some more women comics creators involved" in the medium, sometime during the earlier 90s - but WHAT came of it!!!
Sweet F.A., is what?
NAME ME SOME FEMALE COMICS CREATORS!!!! Especially ones who have created a whole "thing", or strip - like Frank Miller, like the male pairings of old.
Name me any female comics artists - NOT colourists - (and I know the historical reasons why there are quite a few of THOSE - because it was a lesser-paid, labour-intensive job - THEREFORE women were exploited for it, as they were at animation studios!)
I know my way around, sunshine!
I bet you can't even think of very many female comics scripters. Off the top of my head, I can think of two well-known ones: Nancy Collins, and the late Patricia Highsmith, who went on to write her brilliant novels, of course, including the ones about Ripley...
NAME ME A BUNCH OF FEMALE COMICS CREATORS!! (And I especially want action/adventure ones, NOT people who write, like, political strips for newspapers - and I bet there aren't even many of those!! (I know a couple of British ones: Claire Bretecher, whose work I haven't seen for ages, and some other lass I can't right now remember...)
I bet the American ones (and THINK of the size of your nation!) of any "significance" can be COUNTED ON THE FINGERS OF ONE HAND.
I bet you can think of less women comics writers and artists than you could of black ones.
AND WHY?? Because it's a sexist industry, sold in sexist, male-oriented, women-unfriendly outlets, like the comics shops you mention, which have proprietors EXACTLY like that one on the Simpsons, or the seedy "druggie" looking guy - and no, I don't mean he was a "lefty" - he had not one "hippy" element to him, who used to operate a fleapit of a comics store near my university!!!
The DREGS of society!
Absolute lumpenproletariat; the only worse thing I can think of are comics shops run by overt racists, ie BNP or KKK. (But I think there are some of those, catering to their specialist clientele!!)
Women don't like seedy settings in general; so the whole set up is CALCULATED to keep teenage girls and women OUT! PURPOSELY!!
(And CAN you think of anything SEEDIER, in comics or movies, than Miller's concept, "Sin City"? (Yeah, I know there are a few, but without going into overt porn, I mean...)
I mean, WHICH woman would say that she liked THAT movie?? None would, none who was being honest! I have seen one or two positive reviews by female reviewers - there aren't enough of the latter, either - but those seemed to me more like "Camille Paglia" style "I can be macho with the boys" posturing.)
Dame Gaia, Lady Life, who I have finally sworn to serve, she wants comics which epitomise life. And when those are there, she will cast her blessing on them and their sales...
(That's something that no Marxist will ever tell you! "The markets" are, also, part of nature! Please Nature - and she will please YOU!
Why do you think Joanne Rowling's done so well then? Witchery, I should cocoa, and of the correct kind! Not involving smells and potions! Just - thought.)
And THEN the comics companies complain when they find they have little or no female market... and THEN they complain when they lose money... And THEN they try to exploit collectors to make up... Yes yes yes... ALL examples of clueless crumbling capitalism.
the female readership is foolishly overlooked. the industry is still largely a boys club and comics is still perceived as a boys medium.
that being said, one of the reason that neil gaiman has sold so well is because of his HUGE female fanbase.
some people think that "girls" quit reading comics when the romance comics died. the fact of the matter is that these days women have gravitated to manga. i wish i was better versed in manga to discuss that at any length.
i will say that wendy pini is a legend in the comics field for her comic "elfquest". amanda conner is an important artist. and amber benson (tara from "buffy the vampire slayer") is a rising writing star. besides writing some of the buffy and angel comics, she does some collaborations with a friend of mine, christopher golden.
That is REALLY INTERESTING, Maurice. I didn't notice that comment for ages! Shows that I've got to keep checking back on each and every blog I've ever scribbled anything on!
Ah, I did not KNOW Neil Gaiman had a huge female fanbase... I think I will like the "Sandman" graphic novels, when I finally get around to them... though I've read other stuff by him, and I wasn't heavily impressed so far.. ie, I wouldn't put him in my "Top 10 of Fantasy Writers"!! Yet!
So women these days have gravitated to manga, is that so... THAT'S where they've gone, I see... Maurice knows these things!
Yes, I suppose that would make sense... because manga have more female characters and heroines, FAR more genres and subgenres, "like sand at the seaside", as they say in German... And they have a bit of "cutesiness" in the medium, don't they, not all this overwhelming "machoness"... though the men can always have porn rape comics if they wish... isn't Japan a CONTRADICTORY society?
Are there any American female manga writers, then? If so many manga writers ARE read by Western women, I would have thought Japanese publishers would have thought to themselves: "ah, let's cater to Western tastes..."
Yes, I wish I was better versed in manga!
Thank you for your other examples of female writers. Yes, I have seen on the internet that "women writing elf/fairy comic strips" is a genre which has some following... though the examples I've seen so far were all web-published and not very professional.. though they COULD be, if the author wanted to, I thought more than once! But there are some authors that do this professionally.. I see... well, I wouldn't know without someone to tell me, I don't have a comics store next door, all I have at my fingertips is the Internet and Amazon... and of course it's much easire to find something there if you know precisely what you're looking for... which is the disadvantage between Amazon and a REAL bookstore! If they had a "Browse different topics" section.. you know, I think they might make even more money!!
Amanda Conner, don't know her yet... And I had no IDEA Amber Benson/Tara from Buffy wrote comics! How great! Did Whedon give her her first start, then, on the "Buffy" series?
Isn't writing for comics all a matter of "breaking in" to the medium, though?
Like WHY, for example, do most or all of DC's graphic novels - eg: "Child of Dreams" NOW contain a small-print notice somewhere in the front cover, saying "We don't accept unsolicited submissions"??
Isn't this just - as well as being anti-democratic - playing AGAINST the idea of the medium gaining any new input??
I don't like the tyranny of DC and its editors anyway; they're all idiots. They shouldn't even be editing, in my opinion, the work of a Japanese... as this guy writing the above was, I never remember the Japanese names! Well, anyway, if they LET him have the comic for a while, they should just let him have it - and not interfere!! Seeing as he was writing primarily for a Japanese market anyway - what would they know?
Anyway, I hate them and most sincerely wish that their company breaks up... as it will, in the coming cataclysm of the death-throes of capitalism!!
But you know me, I'm a right little anarcho-socialist!
But back to the topic... HOW do any new comics writers get a start, AT ALL now... when comics companies such as DC say: "We refuse to consider unsolicited work"??
HOW do they operate? Do they SERIOUSLY expect beginner comics writers to have LITERARY AGENTS - is THAT what they are requiring, these days??
Do comics companies ask for AGENTS' approaches?
Where do they GET all these clowns they hire, then?
I've heard some garbled accounts of the beginning of the career of Frank Miller... apparently he was a near-down-and-out, until Marvel took him on to write Spiderman comics! Hmm. I daresay that would have been in the Seventies.
How they got hold of Gaiman I have no idea.
Alan Moore appears to have been haunting all the pulp media for many decades; I suppose after years of writing just plain standard tosh, he took his chance to write POMPOUS tosh with both hands, then!
No - I have absolutely NO respect for these people! Coming into contact with 90s comics organisations cured me of that! I shall never hate a group of people worse in my LIFE!! Other than outright Nazis.
Anyway, most of these (male) people currently dominating the medium are clowns and useless, with the intellect of a flea, (actually I'm sure Sam Ewing would agree!) and I think that there should be a more DEMOCRATIC means of recruiting writers and people who influence pop culture!
I mean, I don't see why one should have to know Joss Whedon, for example, to get a start!
Anyway, all I know is that the Sixties and Seventies were very socially mobile, this is a historical fact, and back then, if you were talented, it didn't matter what class you were from or who you knew... you might have had to move to the metropolises and going to the right parties certainly helped, but in those days all kinds of people could just build a (huge) career for themselves. David Bailey. Michael Caine. Name their equivalents today, they don't exist, apart from in the fields of pop music and sport. Which ARE fields with a certain amount of equality... because these ALWAYS need "new blood", you see, new artists, to keep the machine rolling, or it wouldn't roll any more and the people on top wouldn't have anything to exploit!
And now this mobility and opportunity is no longer the case. (I think because "the ones with the money", the bosses, who can put the wheels in motion when it comes to deciding what goes on, DON'T WANT TO LISTEN... whereas they DID in the post-war era, because society was naturally more egalitarian back then... statistical salary differences between ranks prove it!)
"McJobs" abound; and it is very hard to see how companies, even the Internet kind, are taking on anybody who can actually THINK and CREATE things and concepts... well, now, otherwise they would have had had that "browser section" on Amazon that I mentioned above, by now! And they don't, ergo, they and the people they employ are rather dense!
Anyway, we know that pop and sport both NEED to sponsor new artists all the time, however they make their selections, that is the case.
I'd like to know HOW many "new artists", new writers, does the American comic book industry take on each year. I bet it isnt' as much as the music industry, even allowing for size of the market.
Well - WHY am I always seeing the same old FACES all the time.. on graphic novel sites and things?? On reviews?
If the music industry operated like that, it'd grind to a halt next year, as would the REAL book publishing industry.
Your comments welcome, Maurice, as ever. I'd like to know some of your own experiences in this field, as you seem to have had work published within it - I'm just going to have to check out your work sometime!
Any statistics on any aspect of comics welcome. Also - DO you know, IS there a site I can go to to get comics industry sales figures? For movie statistics all I need to do is go to IMDb.com... where are the statistics on current comics and graphic novel sales? I have been wondering this for years! Occasional articles, like in Wired, tackle this issue... but never on a running basis!
No, I don't think that comics should be or ARE primarly a "boys" medium... that's out of date thinking... Like would you say, for example, that most HORROR novel readers are men? I think that's a misconception too.. they aren't, and actually two of the biggest horror novel fans I knew way back in sixth form college, were girls! Three if you count my friend who had already left school, Gillian! (I never admired her taste, though - she was always reading novels like "Slugs"... and "Crabs"... sigh.)
Jaws was great though. And she loved all the George Lucas stuff.
No. If you just go by the SHARE of the publishing market which the female "dollar" - or pound - dominates; I'd say that it was easily in the majority!
There are far more illiterate and semi-illiterate men around than women, and that is a fact. Many men have their brains wired wrong, which affects their reading ability; this reaches right to the top of our society, eg. Dubya! Everyone says he's dyslexic.
Maybe that's why more men read comics! That can be the only reason; because their dyslexic brains can't cope with large screeds of text.
I'm being blunt, as usual!
Yeah; those comic book companies really NEED the female dollar! Publishing as a WHOLE couldn't survive without us women; we're more contemplative than men, who prefer - because of their urges - to go out and play sport, ride mountain bikes, do dangerous activities and so on... Whereas many women will just read about them!
So - without women, entertainments companies, you perish!
And the only way to win us over... is to cease and desist publishing all these really STUPID publications by Frank Miller... I don't know a SINGLE woman who likes him! And to publish things that contain more that women like, IE: less macho posturing, more humour, more characterisation, personality... more point to the stories, in effect! AND a bit of romance wouldn't go amiss... as a bit of raunchiness wouldn't, if comics were catering more to women!
(Do you know, back in the Eighties, I, as a schoolgirl still, had this fantasy about comics. I thought: "They're good so far, they've got lots of funny and exciting ideas... but it's as if they "stopped halfway"... because the stories were too short and fragmented to DEVELOP most of their ideas, their characterisation, character development, plot development, continuity, etc.
That's why I thought they weren't on a par with "grownup" fiction yet. (And I also thought they could do with more sex!)
Only not just sex, because obviously, that would be a porn comic.
And so I thought I KNEW what they might do, to develop it all. (I was reading fantasy novelists like Steven Donaldson at the time, and watching the usual "lemonade" on television!)
I THOUGHT that they probably would concentrate on the "superhero" comics (because they always had drama, and adult, not child, for the most part, characters, and there WAS an inherent "sexiness" to them...)
And I thought that they might take things like "Batman" and "Superman", and make them more "soapy"... which they did in the end, but in the WRONG ways, like the "let's kill off the hero" fixations of over ten years ago, and this current fixation with "crisis event comics"!
NO but what I thought they would do with them back THEN.... (before the advent of the Miller disaster, as I can only view it)
I thought they'd at the same time make them more "adult" and more "populist".... like DALLAS and DYNASTY, are the examples I really had in mind! Perhaps with the fantasy input of something approaching Donaldson or Julian May.
LIKE.... this is REALLY hard to explain, seeing as I KNOW IT'S HAPPENED... in a different parallel dimension of the Universe that is, but nobody here has seen it! Perhaps I should try to make an entry on my blog about it, ah well. But what I thought they might do, is say make Gotham City a more populist allegory and "send-up" of the world as we know it, introduce politics (there were "local politics" themes in the 80s Batman comics... everything was already THERE but in EMBRYO, it needed someone to develop it, that was the most frustrating thing... only they picked the wrong someone!)
Introduce politics, "intrigue", melodrama of the "who shot JR" equivalent variety, a bit of satire, a bit of (adult) sexuality... ie, the Batman would go out more with girlfriends, we would finally see him getting somewhere with the Catwoman (I think it's actually been explicitly said that he had sex with her in ONE comic, to date, that is all!)... the VILLAINS too would have SOMETHING approaching realistic sex lives... you know. These would be hinted at if not shown in Technicolor glory...(though actually I wanted to see them! Being always curious.)
But ALL the above never happened, and instead DC gave us the drearfests of Frank Miller and Alan Moore.
WHY? THAT'S not entertainment!
Anyway, I am CERTAIN that my "populist" conception of "Dallasty Batman" would have made them a LOT more money... And the only reasons they didn't adopt any of that, which was the most LOGICAL approach to adult comics, was
a) Stupidity
b) They wanted to promote all this "dark" stuff, for propaganda purposes... ie, turning more male comics readers into "no futurists" who would either join the Michigan Militia or equivalent, or commit suicide!
SERIOUSLY! I think that the Miller type of comic was invented specifically for the purposes of channelling away the energies of impressionable young men from social revolution.
AH... and if I'm wrong... HOW do you explain all these senseless outbursts of violence among working class and middle-class young white men of late... racist shootings, school shootings??
It's the culture. And graphic novels are part of what is to blame. They neither promote hope, nor do they entertain, nor instruct.
But that's enough of that theme for now! It would take a BOOK my friend.... I just might write the ****ing thing and publish it via something like lulu.com... then you can buy it via the internet!
Didn't know you were a friend of a friend of a Buffy star though, Maurice!
How nice that must be!
(For as you know, Joss Whedon is one of the SMALL number of people who have my respect and admiration, for their work.)
He had the CORRECT approach, ie, a populist though very intelligent one - appealing to high school students on upwards.
.
"I", i know the feeling.
liz, shoot me an e-mail off blog and i'll give you some contact info about getting a start in comics.
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