FULL BLEED: Super-heroes don't suck.
(Neither do romance novels.)
Authored by Michael Patrick Sullivan

Being an inarticulate rant on the importance of super-folk in pervert suits.

It's been said that super-heroes are not going to save comics. They're not going to bring comics into the mainstream on their own. As long as the industry keeps pushing the spandex and capes, the one true American art form isn't going to get any respect.

There's more truth in there than not, but it's not absolutely correct.

Super-heroes might not be the driving force in societies like Japan or France, where the sequential art form is better respected, but this is the United States (apologies to international readers, but this is where I am, I can't knowledgeably speak about where you are). We haven't evolved the same way.

In Great Britain, there's a distinct lack of handguns for the most part, and as I understand it, the deaths-by-handguns rate over yonder is mighty low by comparison to the good ol U.S.A. (Using a Shitload of Automatic weapons... it's true, over here we use guns for everything from breaking & entering and hunting to lighting cigarettes and minor redecoration.)

There are those that hold this up as an example for what we should be doing here. One problem: it's too late for that. They started out that way. We've already got guns everywhere and a wide variety of infrastructure for acquiring them. An out and out ban on them will, in fact, ensure that only criminals have guns (and making many people into criminals simply by having them).

America is already a super-hero country. We have been for sixty years. Too late to change it. Look, we can't even wrap our heads around the metric system, okay? Change is simply not going to happen; you'd have to wipe our collective hard drive and reinstall. Besides, you'd likely get a whole new dominant genre, like cops and robbers. Cops and robbers would then be the new source of derision. Maybe. Maybe not.

Let's be clear, super-heroes are not going to save comics. At least, not alone. We're seeing Grant Morrison's predicted uptick in comics sales and popularity. Comics are seeing an increase in their population on the shelves of mainstream corporate bookmonsters like Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, and... well, Borders does have some too, but they are the stragglers.

A big part of getting them in there are the many non-super-hero books. CrossGen's Mark Alessi says that the lack of spandex in his books is what got it into Waldenbooks. I believe it, but I also believe that many of the books that are in there, got there because of Spider-Man. A movie... featuring a super-hero.

Super-heroes can be a gateway to mainstream acceptance. I was on a plane from Philadelphia to Chicago following WizardWorld East and a woman of about thirty was reading a trade of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN. Being that my comics-sense was heightened, I decided to try and strike up conversation. The short of it was that she did not characterize herself as a comics fan. She saw the volume in a mall bookstore and it looked kind of interesting. She liked Spidey as a child and thanks to that trade, she's got a renewed interest.

Yes, it's nostalgia. The same kind of nostalgia that fuels the seemingly never-ending dreck that is the revival of every eighties property this side of the Snorks and the goddamn Care Bears. The Crapformers and G.I. Schmo have come and gone and come again (you know people, those properties died out the first time for a reason). Undoubtedly, they will die again. Hopefully sooner, rather than later. (Yeah, it's good for he retailer's pockets, but I just see the rack space that could be occupied by new ideas getting sucked up by old, not really good ones).

The difference is Spider-Man never went away. This woman did. She came back.

If it was WHITE-OUT by Greg Rucka, she likely wouldn't have picked it up. And her not picking it up would be followed by not picking up other things. Instead she picked up SPIDER-MAN and maybe she'll realize the depth that comics can carry and perhaps she'll find her way to WHITE-OUT. (Note: I frequently recommend WHITE-OUT as a starter graphic novel to people outside of comics. Especially those with an interest in crime fiction).

Now we have a Spider-Man movie, which, as I said, I think strongly accounts for the appearance of graphic novels in bookstores. We've got Daredevil and Hulk on the way. Further down the road, adaptations of Superman and Batman. Getting one thing clear with regards to super-hero movies, this is a concept not really designed to be represented realistically. Batman never seemed all that ridiculous looking until Adam West was seen wearing those silky trunks. I don't care what anyone says, Superman seems a helluva lot cooler when you block out George Reeves, Christopher Reeve and Dean Cain wearing tight long johns. Give me Ed McGuiness' unreal rendition any day. That is how the whole thing was meant to work.

It's easy to not realize that these people are wearing their underoos on the outside when everything is exaggerated, flat, vibrantly coloured and presented in a generally unrealistic fashion. This makes the cape-folk in film a very tenuous thing. Costumes alone can make or break. One crash and burn film like, say a Schumacher Bat-flick (I liked Clooney, he was just trapped in a train wreck), will derail the whole fucking genre for years. Hopefully if we see an astoundingly bad Daredevil and Hulk flick, a really good Spider-Man two follow-up might pull things out of the crapper.

Getting to a point, Super-heroes are a gateway, regardless of what the comics literati would like to think. They aren't the only one and they're not exactly the preferred one, but they are, in fact, a very effective gateway. Especially to the more adult potential readers out there. (It's also a valid genre in which many stories are told that cannot be accommodated in any other way).

Spider-Man leads to other favorite super-heroes of childhood. Those can lead to the classic "Class of 1986" books like WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. From there, it's just a hope skip and/or jump to SIN CITY, 300, FROM HELL, the works of Gaiman and into the independents. I myself have a wide range of tastes. I like cape books like JSA, HAWKMAN, DAREDEVIL, whatever. I also dig things like QUEEN AND COUNTRY (my favourite), the GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING, and Eddie Campbell's books. (And before anybody decides to write in, yes, I am aware that the the 80's shit could do the same thing. If it does, great. If it doesn't, fucking burn it.)

Recently, on the now-defunct Warren Ellis Forum, Ellis called out all the hypocrites that decry the super-hero as everything that's wrong in comics yet continue to buy them. I seem to recall Ellis employing the regular book industry metaphor regarding shelving in comics shops by company (to the effect that you don't see all the books published by Pocket put in one place, why do it with Marvel and DC). He also used it to point out the ridiculousness of super-heroes being the dominant genre in comics by suggesting that it would be akin to novels about nurses being the driving force behind book publishing. (If I got any of this wrong, my apologies to Mister Ellis and a "bite me" to anyone else, it still gets me where I'm going.)

I think the metaphor isn't that extreme. Comics are like romance novels. A Danielle Steele book is never going to win a National Book Award (and if it did, I believe that would be the breaking of the fifth seal).

They do get their own section of the book store. Usually a fairly large one. Entire publishers thrive on the genre. Numerous teenage girls discover the wonders of novel-reading through teen-romance novels (which have risen in popularity in the last ten years) or they start directly on the bodice-rippers. From there they go to general mainstream novels (but many never completely drop the Fabio-covered garbage). Hopefully they develop a little wider taste than whatever Oprah tells them to read (or whoever is doing it now). Maybe they get into some of the Bushnell-esque chick-lit. Whatever. Doesn't matter. My metaphor is established.

People inherently dig super-heroes. On that same trip, I had some 10-cent Batmans sticking out of my bag. The security folk and some fellow passengers were intrigued and they went off with them... and read them.

You just don't get that with a copy of STRANGERS IN PARADISE as much, if at all.

I wish it did. I really do.

There was a recent thing in Rich Johnston's gossip column, Lying in the Gutters, about some airport personnel being fascinated by some HeroClix toys. I don't see the same thing happening with Mage Knight (same game, but with dragons and monsters). We need to utilize that, not shun it. Ellis made him name (at least in the states) on tights and capes. Everybody likes pancakes. Everybody likes super-heroes. Some of them just hate themselves for it.

 

Michael Patrick Sullivan is doomed only to be successful after his death. However, if it's one of those clinical deaths, where he's only dead for a minute or so and suffers little or no lasting ill effects, he would find that acceptable.


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