(I wanted to title this “Learning to Love Comics in Spite of Themselves,” but that’s not exactly a punchy title.)
At my day job, which happens to be a brick-and-mortar comic shop, we have a running inside joke:
“You don’t love comics until you hate comics.”
In the wake of two non-marriages from Marvel and DC, relaunches of varying quality, and multiple series being canceled before they had begun, this sentiment rang truer than ever for me. This year I often found myself lamenting the comics industry and threatening to “stop reading comics all together”- a rather empty threat, really.
“That’s why you should only read Image,” said one of my well-meaning coworkers after one of my many ranting sessions. But, the world of independent comics didn’t really offer me much more. I would read a new debut issue and shrug my shoulders with malaise. Often, the premise would be fine, good even, but overall craftsmanship of the book felt lacking to me. Had modern comics writers forgotten how to pace a story or write decent dialogue? And what is this art? Why is everyone drawing like they chewed a bunch of Adderall before they picked up their pencil? I hated the idea of becoming one of those “comics aren’t good anymore” people, so time again I would try and each time I felt let down. Was it me? Do I just not like comics anymore?
Of course not. I love comics. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t. Speaking for myself, it’s very easy to get dragged into bleakness regardless of how well-lit the area around me is. For every book I felt let down by (re: “Exiles”) there was a surprise favorite waiting around the corner for me (re: “Venom”). For every bad Tom King “Batman” arc, there was a good Tom King “Batman” arc… or at least a good issue. Point is, there was still good stuff to be read. So what could I do?
Well first, I need to embrace the fleeting nature of comics- particularly corporate superhero comics. Maybe this is too akin to “metagaming,” but when I finally embraced the fact that all runs come to end- or all deaths eventually are retconned- I found a strange different kind of appreciation for those stories. Almost like watching a professional improv group craft story from scratch and pass it off to one another- it’s interesting, to me, to mark the differences in character and story that each creative brings to a title that has a fairly strict set-up or origin.
This next point may seem counter-intuitive (or maybe the most obvious thing ever), but next I had to learn to mitigate my expectations. It’s silly to expect a big corporation to not act like a big corporation: only interested in the bottom dollar. Events like “Spider-Geddon” or even “Doomsday Clock” are fairly obvious cash-grabs. Ok, fine. So they’re cash grabs. Are they good? If not, just leave ‘em be. “Just because it’s on the shelf and it has a character you like doesn’t mean you have to buy it” I say to myself in the mirror. And for smaller independent books, maybe if I don’t recognize the creatives, it’s because they’re new to the game and still figuring it out. I probably shouldn’t hold Writer X and Artist Y to the same standard I hold for Jeff Lemire or Geoff Darrow.
Finally (this is where I get sappy), what exactly am I complaining about? Comics are incredible. Comics are, by far, my favorite medium of storytelling. And that’s probably where I get so caught up; I love these stories, therefore they must be what I think they should be. That type of toxic thinking and sense of ownership leads to all kinds of deplorable behavior- as evidenced anywhere on Twitter. Comics aren’t just for me, they’re for everyone.
I’ll end on this: as the great Billy Bragg once said, “Cynicism is our greatest enemy.” That’s not to say we should all just shrug our shoulders at the disappointing and bad, but if I, as a comic retail worker and a contributor for a comic book website, give into my cynicism and start constantly railing against all the negative shit, I could unintentionally hinder someone else from getting into comics. And let me tell you, after working a few FCBD events, and watching children and their parents get legitimately excited, there are few things better than watching someone fall in love with comics.
Happy Holidays! And long live comic books!
