Why do you still read comics if you hate them most of the time?

That's a very good question. I don't have a very good answer.

I recently had a very negative experience with a comic book weblog I used to write for. Frankly, there was a very unpleasant human being writing there and he made it impossible for me to continue to write for them, which was a shame for me as I enjoyed having a place to post these musings. However, since it's not terribly onerous to start a new website, here I am. Eventually I hope to post weird essays here again, as it was my first love in blogging, but in the meantime here I sit, wondering why I still read comic books.

I guess it comes down to me still enjoying the idea of comics, both superheroic and non. I enjoy the combination of words and images, a strange admixture of art and dialogue that brings to mind cinema or theatre. I like the idea more than the reality most days, which makes me kind of sad. To be honest, I enjoy the unlimited ability of comics to show you something truly vast and sweeping without fear of a budget issue: comics are the natural home for stories with tens or hundreds of thousands of boats crashing ashore to sack Troy, or space lit with the exhaust of hundreds of fighters locked in combat, or a essentially noble and good-hearted alien pushing a planet. Comics are where crime orphaned avengers can do backflips off of rooftops and kick five men in the jaw in three seconds. The image is monarch of comics, be it a quiet study of a woman's recovery from cancer or a small planet of microscopic monster-movie rejects in a crazed geneticists basement.

I suppose I keep looking for that magic. I don't enjoy painfully nitpicking over every published appearance of a character and rejecting certain ones because they don't fit whatever some editorial board has declared the one, true version of said character this year and which we'll reject in turn soon enough. It's tedious. But I enjoy wonder and epic scope. I enjoy a story where a man in a metal suit can end up fighting the Frankenstein Monster, a giant silver robot, a man who turns things to gold with a touch, and a scarred knight on a mutant horse more than I enjoy the same man in a metal suit running a government agency seemingly dedicated to arresting people for stopping a robbery at a convenience store. I like it better when the guy in the cape and cowl fights human-animal hybrids in an art museum to when he gets a teenage girl killed. I even like it better when I read a psychological and moral explication of the Trojan War to when a bunch of people stand around a table bickering with each other.

I guess I'm weird that way.

Comments

[Andrew Hickey]

Just want to say I agree with every word...

[badartdog]

hear hear - guess I'm weird too.

just arrived here from Andrew H's blog - good stuff.