By Scott J Grunewald.
The irreplaceable Andrew Wheeler once answered the above question by calling Popimage "the journal of comic-book culture." Sounds pretty cheesy, yeah, but it works, and it is what I was trying to put into words when I started recruiting people for the site, but I fumbled over it repeatedly. Comics do have their own unique culture, and its a culture as varied and divergent as any other.
The one thing that it doesnt have is a strong sense of examination. Having been told for so long that comics are for children, there are very few people who think comics deserve to be treated as a legitimate art form. Sure, we have a few publications that take some comics seriously, but the key word here is some.
Comic publications tend to be rather cliquish in nature, owing allegiances to a certain genre, a certain creator, or in a few cases, specific publisher. Each of them believes itself to be the only one who should speak for comics.
Its no wonder we cant be taken seriously. Outsiders look at our journalistic publications and see snobbery and discord. They look at our crude attempts to examine our industry and they see personal bias where there should be journalistic integrity. They see a drooling fanboy asking questions of their personal heroes, and not a reporter trying to paint a picture of his subject.
I know I'm being pretty harsh here - not all comics journalists belong among packs of snobbish fanboys - but most of them are rather short sighted in their examination of our culture.
Whether it's due to a personal inability to see beyond their own references or editorial mandate that keeps them in chains, most comics journalists remain blind to the greater culture.
So we turn to the Internet, that grand palace of free speech and the uncensored written word. Lord, its even worse here. The true fanboys populate cyberspace in ungodly numbers, spewing venom and bile on the creators who produce the comics we read. The net is full of amateur web sites bent on promoting a specific point of view within our culture.
You cruise from site to site, and all of them, with the very strong exceptions of SNAP JUDGEMENTS and SEQUENTIAL TART, fail to provide the unrestricted, in-depth approach to comics which you are searching for. Instead we find bitch fests where the X-Men are trashed, and the dead horse that is the Kyle Rayner/Hal Jordan debate is whipped into a fine pony puree. Really, is the world going to end because they used Kyle in the new Superman cartoon instead of Hal?
So we return to the original question: What is PopImage? The answer is simple.
PopImage is a unified voice for comics.
PopImage is a magazine with no allegiance to a specific clique.
PopImage will be a place where you can read about your favorite super heroes right along side your favorite serial killers.
PopImage will be a place where everyone is given a voice and a chance to explain why they like what they like.
PopImage will be a place where the people who create our favorite characters are given a chance to let us inside their heads.
PopImage will be a place where the next generation of creators is given a chance to show us their evolution as artists.
And finally, PopImage will be a place that is unafraid to let all of the many voices of our culture speak to each other and the scary world beyond comics.
We will be to comics what SPIN is to music or PREMIERE to film. We will force the world to stop thinking of comics as childrens fare, and start looking at it as a viable art form deserving of respect, or they will die painful, bloody deaths.
Okay, well just get really pissed off and yell a lot, but it should have the same effect.
And after saying all of this, its occurs to me that Andrew wasnt quite right after all. We dont want to be the journal of comics. We want to do more then simply record what we see. PopImage is going to be far more proactive then that. We intend to be something more then a simple journal.
We need to give a voice to our culture. We need to give a voice to all the people who get passed over in the mill of company-induced hype and Top Ten lists. We wont speak just for one set of people, we will speak for everyone. PopImage will be the voice of comics and their culture.
And we will be a loud voice.
 |
 |
 |
|
Pop Preview - Grendel: Past Prime Talkback:
|
||
 |
|
 |
