I really don’t think Marvel and DC are helping things by having gritty, R-rated versions of their superheroes in their main comics – what they sell as the “real” versions – while simultaneously selling those exact same characters in kids’ comics and plastering them all over lunchboxes and animated cartoons… Casual readership by kids, or by parents for their kids, is effectively impossible the way things are currently structured. And I think the waters are muddied too far now to claw that ground back. I think it’s insane that DC have spent 70 years making Superman as big as Mickey Mouse, and branding him to be understood by parents as being pretty much as kid-friendly as Mickey Mouse, only to piss that brand away in a decade. Nothing wrong with doing mature content in comics – in fact, it should be encouraged as often as possible – but doing it with characters who are on your kids’ lunchboxes is kind of moronic. Take a lesson from Watchmen and come up with new characters for that stuff. And then go back to Superman and Batman and put the same kind of love and effort and craft and intelligence you’ve been putting into all those rape scenes and body mutilations into something kids can read, and adults can also be proud to read because of all the love and effort and craft and intelligence you’ve put into it, and make those the “real” versions.
—Roger Langridge, writer of the kid-friendly Thor: Mighty Avenger, which recently fell victim to just the attitude he is decrying. While he is perhaps best known for his work on BOOM! Studios’ Muppet Show comics, Langridge does plenty of more mature comics, too, but he always keeps his brands separate. The whole interview is well worth a read, as it covers Langridge’s career from his early days in New Zealand through his current work, from Knuckles, the Malevolent Nun to a new kid-friendly title for BOOM!
And it got me to thinking. Here are those thoughts...obviously:I agree that something should be done to propagate a new generation of comic fans. Although frankly I want to say that the bigger issue is really that the direct market spinner racks have gone away. I mean when I started really reading comics as a kid in the late 80's/early 90's I could go get a copy of Punisher or X-Men at 7-11 on the way home from school. (I'm not counting my Star Comics and the old DC books that I'd read/draw on when I was 5. On a side note even as a young child I knew Vibe was terrible somehow.) Both of which actually featured a fair amount of on and off panel rape and mutilation if I'm not mistaken (mutilation typically on and rape typically off). And then when I was in 6th grade Image Comics started up and kids are getting their fingers cut off and glued to pieces of wood and literally every kid that read comics was picking them up and they had the action figures and the Venom figure wanted to eat my brains and nobody really seemed to care (except for the Venom figure. People did make a stink about that one.)
This was fine though. Because for the record the guilty couldn't escape the air kisses his machine gun fired.
But even before that there was one other questionable ass book that I read and that I had stuffed animals of yet still had a fair amount of mutilation and ogling and Cerebus: old school Eastman & Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean the Shredder straight up murdered and raped people on panel and got crushed in a fucking trash compactor to wrap things up (like in the movie but gorier). And nobody at the store (the long since gone Geppi's Security or Catonsville maybe location) bated an eye or gave a shit. When I was 8 or 9 I remember going to the store with Grandmother in my Batman T-shirt and my Batman Chuck Taylor's and getting me a Batman comic...where the Joker ruthlessly and repeatedly beats Robin with a crowbar and then proceeds to blow up Robin and his mother. And do you know what happened in the next issue? Death by explosion that's what. And nobody cared.
Tappa-Tappa-Tappa
And do you want to know why? Because nobody wants to take any responsibility for their lax fucking parenting in this country any more. I mean seriously my parents let me watch HBO since I could turn a dial. My mother took me to go see Robocop 2 in theaters. I was 10 and it was awesome. They let me get all of the Mortal Kombat games when I was in middle school. And I had the best sleepover parties as a kid partly because they'd let us rent R-Rated movies. Or we could just watch the HBO. And here's the shocking part of it: I'm not a murderous sociopath. Do you know why? They took the time to instill the simplest of life lessons: you probably shouldn't rape and kill people or cut them up.
Christ I remember going over to a friend's house and listening to Appetite for Destruction on a Fisher Price tape player (we were literally 8) and we all turned out relatively fine all things considered.
And this was on the inside of the tape sleeve. Although in the 80's you couldn't turn around without seeing a woman who had been street raped by tagger robots.
It just seems that everyone wants to blame pop culture run amok for this unruly generation of micro bastards and baby prostitutes. And yes it certainly glamorizes it but at some point you've got to just say "No at my age we french kissed a boy that we liked. I mean we knew what rim jobs were in theory but nobody was brazen enough to be doling out the butt tongue. Certainly not at a 7th grade mixer if they were. I know that much Becky." So that's pretty much point A: comic books have been messed up for a while as far as content that is easily accessible to children. It's just that nobody cared because people took the five minutes to be like "Now Billy you know that you can't actually murder your way out of your problems right? "
"Yeah Dad. Good night."
Hell go read an old time fairy tale (now that I think of it) children have been exposed to murder and rape in fiction for centuries if not millenia with little to no incident.
Now back to specifically why children don't read comics that much these days. As I've already mentioned the spinner rack is now dead and gone which deprives our youth of easy access to funny books which leaves them one alternative: the comic books store.
While you can find them in finer strip malls the comic book store is kind of a mixed proposition for some I'd imagine. How do I put this delicately...a lot of weird mother fuckers hang out at comic book stores in addition to the 99% of the clientele that is perfectly affable. Here are a few of my favorites.
1) The crazy guy who always has rocks in his pockets and writes runes that are either in praise of or in the hopes of warding off Satan. We could never figure that out. He smells kind of funny and I wonder if the sores on his face are from syphilis or the wind. Also he is a real person that exists and not a caricature. Sometimes when he was the only customer and I was working in the old tiny isolated comic book store location (when it was next to the Chinese place) I would keep the axe handle that we used to prop the door open next to me. Simply put I was afraid that this dude was going to murder me; possibly for Satan.
2) The guy who mainly buys larger action figures of women with removable clothes. I have no idea where his many came from. I just knew that he liked to fuck dolls. Somehow. I'm never really figured out the physics of it. Dude liked naked dolls though. And would call about them constantly.
3) Junkies. They've got a bag of late 80's books. The books are loose. The bag has a faint undernote of urine. There is one randomly bagged and boarded book. It's like New Warriors #25. And they're incredulous when you don't hand them all of the cash in the register. Then off they go to go attempt to peddle their wares elsewhere via bus.
4) Casual perverts. Actually the main hentai guy at the shop I used to work at was pretty cool and we talked about the non-rape centered manga that he'd purchase and I think we both read Ultimate Spider-Man or something like that (Although Berserk still features a fair amount of it). The people who get the American porn comics tended to seem ashamed. The people who read Tarot just had bad taste. Haunted vaginas.
This is actually on the tame side for an A.G. cover. Also if you work in a comic book store don't casually flip through everything you find in people's boxes there are things you can't unsee.
I don't mention these individuals to vilify them. It's more so to state that yes they may be scaring off the normals. Although there's one more reason that the kids don't read the comics: They're terrifyingly insular.
Here's a fantastic example: when the first X-Men movie came out one of my friends asked me if I liked it. I said that I did. He then asked me what was technically inaccurate about the movie. This conversation lasted for half an hour. Actually it was a monologue of the most nit picky and inconsequential fun facts about X-men lore. But the thing is that this response is the default response when someone casually asks to have something about comic books explained.
In the comics Jean Grey never seems like Cyclops' sexy auntMore recently a friend of mine asked me to explain what the deal was with Green Lantern rings. The other person in the room openly chided me for saying ridiculous sounding things for five minutes; he had every right to. Pretty much there typically aren't jumping on points for new readers in a lot of the flagship titles unless the status quo is being revamped. THe only issue with that is that half of the time the new status quo is kinda ass and has a 50/50 chance of getting retconned out of existence.
Let's try a modern example: Hold on the Hulk is red and Wonder Woman wears pants and 2 Hulks...3 Hulks? Wait one of them is his bastard son from his dead space girlfriend/ alien queen and Hulk's space bastard aged super quick because of a combo of gamma jizz/space rays. And the Red Hulk is Hulk's dead ex wife's father in law who faked his own death to avoid suspicion even though he was clearly seen being murdered by the Red Hulk which he is who was in turn murdering a robot duplicate. The technology to make this exact robo duplicate of course being discovered on top of the comatose body of I think history's greatest science bastard Sir Isaac Newton...I think. And no I didn't make any of that up. Also don't get me started on the 4th Hulk or the 3 She Hulks. Oh and apparently those shorts made Wonder Woman chafe or something. Look Wonder Woman will always be kinda lame.
(unless she's fighting an egg/Asian stereotype or in bondage)
So pretty much all I'm saying is this: observing sickening amounts of violence at any age is only going to be detrimental if someone doesn't explain the negative consequences to you or you're slow. Comic book stores are kind of terrifying to non-fans (start selling books and apparently baby clothes. People go ape shit for baby clothes even at a comic book store). The real issue facing the casual comic book reader may be the daunting and voluminous and oft contradictory and frequently silly exposition that leads into issue #578 of whatever a new reader is trying to pick up. And they should bring back spinner racks at finer convenience and food stores. That is all.
