The story goes that Dark Knight Returns was born when Frank Miller realized that Bruce Wayne was younger than he was. This character that he’d looked up to, or at least enjoyed, since he was a kid in Vermont was suddenly younger than he was. Miller was getting old, and part of getting old is looking at the things you loved as a child stay young. The aspirational aspect of superheroes, the “Gamble a stamp!” element that makes the genre so fascinating, is a little tougher to swallow when you’re finding wrinkles in new places and Bruce Wayne is still 29 years old.

So, Miller added twenty years to the character and in doing so, plowed fresh ground. Batman became someone Miller could look up to again, with his universe and methods updated accordingly. Superstitious and cowardly criminals were replaced with a threat birthed from societal collapse and the apathy of good men. Batman turned pointedly political, and Miller took on Reagan and pop psychology over the course of DKR. He created Carrie Kelly and made her the new Robin, both updating and critiquing the Robin concept.

Getting older killed the superhero for Miller. He couldn’t relate as he once did, and he took steps to make superheroes cool one last time. Dark Knight Returns is a blaze of glory for the superhero, that last, brilliant blast of light before death. It says that these dusty old characters are still just as vibrant as they once were, but not in the same ways. People grow old and change, and their interests change with them. At the end of DKR, Batman isn’t a soldier in the war against crime like he once was, and like he is now. He was a general, as his severe turtleneck and demeanor suggests. He’s leading the war, not fighting it. He grew up.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen came from Moore wanting to write a superhero story with weight, something like Moby Dick in particular. He wanted to write a superhero for adults, and chose hard-edged pessimism to get the job done. Its rigid structure shows a world that has no use for acrobatics or melodrama. It has no place for many of the staples of cape comics, whether you prefer Jack Kirby-style action or classic stylings of Curt Swan.

Watchmen, then, is an autopsy. By the end of it, all of the secrets of the superhero are laid bare. You see the paunches and watch their muscles sag. You get a front row seat to Nite Owl’s impotence and the way superhero costumes function as fetish objects. Rorshach is revealed as being not that much better than the villains he fights. An old man gets his brains beaten out, the only true superhero is so alien as to be inhuman, and in the end, the villain wins and saves the world. The heroes? They compromised because to actually defeat the villain would have resulted in the destruction of world peace. Rorshach refuses to compromise and is killed for it.

All of your illusions and ideas of the superhero are deconstructed and proved false by Watchmen. They’re normal people, rather than superheroes, and act accordingly. There’s no magic, no aspirational aspects, and nary a wink from Superman. Just hard edges and gritty realism.

DKR is the blaze of glory. It’s a revitalization before death. Watchmen is the autopsy. At the end, there are no secrets. What’s Flex Mentallo? It’s a wake, that time when everyone gets together, gets drunk, and talks about the deceased.

Wally Sage is overdosing on painkillers in Flex, but that’s not all he’s taken. He’s had a bottle of vodka, a couple e pills, a quarter ounce of hash, and he’s tripping on acid, too. As he’s dying, he’s talking about all the amazing comics he read. He’s talking about the good, the bad, and the irrelevant. He’s painting a picture.

The picture he’s painting is of the full spectrum of comics, or at least the full spectrum of the comics he read as a child. He talks about how exciting they were, how sexy, and how scary. He talks about how superheroes couldn’t stop his parents from fighting or save us from the bomb. Flex is about how fiction is real, and the way that the two rub up against each other and interact at certain points.

Flex Mentallo is a hopeful book. At the end, the superheroes return to save us all. They are revealed as us, or at least a significant part of us. Flex saves the day. The magic of reading superheroes as a kid is adapted to the real world. The glow of the lamp that Wally read comics by as a child serves as a blatant metaphor for the brilliance of superheroes. At the end of the book, the light is restored to Wally’s sight.

Flex is a celebration of the superhero. All of it, from good to bad, from perfections to imperfections, is important. The sexualization of superheroes serves a purpose, either as masturbation material or as an outlet for the creator’s desires. The Silver Age zaniness provided a look into other worlds, whether unsettling or fantastic. The escapism provided a look into a better world. The Starlin acid trips, the fear of the superhero, the edginess, the pointlessness, all of it matters. All of it fits together. It’s all part of the same picture. All of it is wonderful, in one way or another. It’s a puzzle with a million parts that still manages to stay in sync.

And in one of the last scenes, the point of Flex is laid bare. “Look at you! A half-naked muscleman in trunks! What’s that supposed to signify? What are you? Do you know what you are?” asks a teenaged Wally Sage. Flex shrugs and says, “Sure. I’m a superhero. Being clever’s a fine thing, but sometimes a boy just needs to get out of the house and meet some girls.”

Implicit in Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Flex Mentallo is a critique of the superhero. DKR teaches that the superhero is broken and it must be made cool again. Watchmen teaches that the superhero is broken, and here is how it is broken. Flex teaches that superheroes are broken, but that brokenness is just as natural as the parts which aren’t broken. Blaze of glory, autopsy, wake.

One of my favorite essays on banning books comes from Florence King. She’s a person whose writing I admire but whose politics I almost never agree with. I’m in agreement with her, though, in her opinion about banning books. In an essay called “My Savior, Fannie Hearst,” she wrote the following:

The problem with censorship is that the people who do the censoring are always so shortsighted, especially when it comes to “Our Children.” Instead of taking certain books out of school libraries, we should be putting them in.

She then goes on to describe a book, “Back Street”, by Fannie Hurst, that abandoned the trope of the glamorous mistress and made the whole thing sound like such an awful enterprise that “sex was never quite the same afterwards.”

Libraries and schools are supposed to be places that open up our worlds, and let us think about new possibilities. For many, they are also places where the joy of certain things are crushed out ruthlessly with reading lists, long discussions, and tedious essays. People who like math, usually, don’t like it quite so much when it’s presented five times a week using a structure that they’re not fond of. People become used to, and then become irritated by, things they usually like.
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I feel that in the never-ending war between Marvel and DC, DC has always trumped Marvel in the animation department. Pound for pound, DC has always been better when it comes to getting their shit together. Even Superfriends past the Wendy and Marvin season was watchable in a goofy sense while I can never enjoy the panel-based cartoons with zero animation that Marvel released back in the 60’s. The only DC cartoon I can ever remember as being outright awful was that Superman one from the 80’s that insisted on giving us a segment about Clark growing up and getting into wacky situations for his mother to deal with. As a child, all I could think was, “Why are they showing me this? I want to see Superman doing super things and fighting Lex Luthor!”

Maybe he was so competent that he’d save the day a little too early and they had to use that as backup filler.

Marvel’s had a lot of missteps. Australian Wolverine goes without saying. The first seasons of Iron Man and Fantastic Four in the 90’s were hard to watch, which was a shame, since the second seasons were way better. The latter went from having Thing deal with a nagging landlady to having Ghost Rider (with his sexy, sexy voice) show up unannounced in order to punk out Galactus.

They had Avengers: United They Stand, which failed on several levels. Spider-Man really wasn’t all that great once you take off the rose-colored glasses and don’t get me started on Spider-Man Unlimited. X-Men and Silver Surfer weren’t bad, but they were nothing compared to what DC was churning out with their Batman and Superman cartoons.

Marvel has been starting to get things moving with their animated movies, like with Planet Hulk and Hulk vs. Wolverine, but the many, many missteps before that can’t be discounted (I will never forgive Invincible Iron Man). Even then, DC’s been cranking out the quality on that end.

I’ve heard great things about Spectacular Spider-Man and Wolverine and the X-Men, but I haven’t gotten around to watching them. I think part of it comes from lack of interest in retreading old ground. It was the same when it came with The Batman. I’m sure there’s quality in there, but I’m not up for retracing old steps. I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve seen that story where Ben Grimm becomes human but has to become the Thing again because damn it, the team needs him. I’ve seen that story where a new girl joins the X-Men and meets the established team as a way to get us acquainted. I need something new. Based on something old, sure, but something new for this medium. At least Batman: The Brave and the Bold was in such a different direction that it came off as a breath of fresh air.

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes starts tonight on Disney XD and I’ve already gotten to see the pilot at New York Comic Con. I’ve also sat through the 20 micro-episodes, which are each 5-6 minutes a piece, making it longer than any of Marvel’s animated films yet. I can tell you right now that this cartoon is exactly what Marvel’s been needing for a while. This is their Justice League Unlimited.

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To the internet.

Fuck Yeah Comics Relationships is a tumblr account that I can go to only rarely, because it would never do to build up a tolerance.  But, for when times are tough and continuity makes you want to bang your head against the pointy parts of your desk, it’s a must.

I don’t, as the kids say, ‘ship these people.

Or these people:

Or these people:

(I guess it’s Draw People Standing In Ankle High Water Day.)  But the point is, it’s a tumblr that always brightens up my day.

I read over David’s Gamble a Stamp 2 a while ago, and came across a sentence that brought me up short.  Re-reading it today, I have the same problem with the same sentence.  That sentence?

At the heart of almost every hero is that directive: “save us.”

There are a lot of different kinds of superhero comics, especially now, when everyone is looking for a fresh take on the same concept.  A lot of comics focus on a lot of things.  Reading them, however, the impression I get from the books has never been, “save us.”  That’s backwards.  The directive at the heart of every comic is this: “I can save you.”  It’s not altruism, it’s egotism.

I remember seeing a documentary about comics in which Siegel and Shuster talked about the inspiration for creating Superman.  They talked about the adventures or the heroism, but mostly they talked about how they daydreamed about how some guy who was a total loser in life turned out to secretly be the most fantastic guy ever.  The insults of everyday life didn’t matter, because they were all part of a game he was playing as one identity.  As the other, he didn’t just kick around thugs, he went after evil businessmen, crooked senators, and Hitler.  And he defeated them all.  Easily.  Superman’s entire selling point was this; “Give me enough power and put me in charge, and I will fix everything.”  Haven’t we all felt that way?

As times changed, and problems became more difficult, Superman was joined by Spider-Man.  Things weren’t as easy for him.  While Superman’s rotten civilian life was part of a game, Spider-Man’s personal defeats were real.  He suffered.  But he suffered because he chose to use his power to put things in order.  Spider-Man comics acknowledged a personal cost, but it was a personal cost which lead to victories.

The defeat of evil isn’t really a goal in superhero comics.  It’s a means to an end.  This guy is kicking and punching people.  This kid is off having adventures instead of going to school.  This woman is ditching her boyfriend to run off into the night and prowl.  Oh, they don’t want to.  Who would want to do such a thing?  They have to.  Because they must fight evil.

There are few comic books that don’t follow this principle.  Even the ‘darker’ books, which make fun of the supposed ‘supers,’ and have amoral characters, have those characters fight unsympathetic people.  Sometimes they’re anonymous annoyances, sometimes they’re evil characters with respectable faces, but almost always they have forced, *forced*, the heroes out of the peaceful life they once had and made them go on these perilous adventures.

In this way, the sexuality of comics – also discussed in the that entry – makes sense.  Oh no!  I have to go through an orgy!  Oh no!  The costume of the Pink Lanterns (come on.  they’re pink.) forces my girlfriend (or me) to show of her (or my) absolutely perfect body!  Why, oh why, is this happening?

I’m not saying this is a terrible thing.  A little ego boost, a little identification, is pretty fun.  And these concepts do allow creators to tell wonderful stories that often have intelligent points and emotional depth. 

But no one reading them needs to be saved.  If you have the time to follow the plot of these stories, the access to them, and the money to buy them, you are already saved compared to a huge chunk of the rest of the world.  You are one of the most saved people on earth.  You don’t read them to be saved.  You read them because  you want to be the saviour.

I’d intended to have a Pretty Girls ready for today, but NYCC caught up to me last night and I passed out pretty much as soon as I got home from work. But whatever, there’s no shortage of good art online, so I can flip the script this week and present you with this: Babes With Big Bazookas, written by Robbie Morrison, drawn by Frank Quitely, and posted by Joe Bloke at Grantbridge Street.

It’s from Judge Dredd Megazine vol 3 #26, and if anybody reading this knows word one about British comics, leave a comment or email me with some info on where I can buy a collected edition because I need this.

Any readers feel like schooling me on British comics? I know a little, but not enough, and I want to know more.

NSFW images after the jump. Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me.
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Because it definitely does for me.  I can’t help but wonder if the fact that something like five Batman: The Road Home books are coming out on Wednesday has something to do with the timing.  Batman’s a draw, sure, but dropping a twenty on tie-ins that are coming out before the end of the series that they’re supposedly sequels of doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that even die hard fans would do.

I buy that DC and Marvel are both scaling back because readers have done the same.  Hell, when I started buying comics they were $2.50 each, and I haven’t been collecting long.  Raising prices by sixty percent over less than half a decade is asking a lot of consumers, especially since all those ‘extras’ and ‘second features’ dried up pretty fast.  I wonder, though, if the damage has been done.  Once people get in the habit of dropping things, once they realize they can and it doesn’t make that much of a difference, it could be hard to get them out of it.

Especially since books may be getting scaled back by two pages an issue.  Paper costs money, of course, and I don’t think that anyone is planning a get-rich-quick scheme by milking the oh-so-lucrative comic book market, but I can’t help but remember paying five dollars for a comic book that had a First Wave preview.  A few months later, almost every book being published that week had that same preview added on for free. 

Still, I think that scaling back the price will do what Marvel and DC hope it will do; encourage people who are on the fence about an issue to throw it on their stack with a, “What the hell.  It’s only three dollars.”  That will give more marginal books a chance to thrive, and I think it would be a real boon to everyone. 

Are there any issues that you’re planning on picking up due to the price rollback?

As I talked about in my article about NYCC ’10, I decided to make use of Artist Alley after three years of passing it by. The question was, what did I want out of it? Asking for a sketch of just a comic character wasn’t enticing enough for me. I needed something just a little extra.

Therefore, I came up with the Venom Plus Prop Challenge, based on fulfilling my own typecast. Each artist would be tasked with drawing Venom along with another object. Any object. What will the prop be? That’s up to the artist his/herself. I had a lot of fun with this and got a good pile of sketches out of it.

Let the showcase begin.

Venom with Lobster Bib
by Todd Nauck

Venom with Handlebar Mustache
by Jacob Chabot

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My fourth New York Comic Con came to an end last weekend, so naturally, I’m compelled to tell you about it. While the earlier years were more based on seeing a million panels, scouring the trade floor and hanging around the Marvel and DC booths to get signed comics from whoever was nearby, I mostly went in a different direction this year.

I’ve been wanting to take this picture for quite a while. Would have been better with Esther there and maybe a fourth person with a question mark pasted over their face. If fighting games has taught me anything, always give the extra spot to the random select button.

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