About a year ago I made a rather bold declaration. I was going to give comic books one year to impress me or I would stop buying them completely. If you know me personally, you know that I am a comic fanboy. Although I have never used that term to describe myself before, I suppose that it is appropriate. A fanboy, as I understand it, is a guy who feels passionate about something that many people would consider to be nerdy, though I prefer the word "dorky." My passion is for comic books and superheroes. I have been reading comics for fifteen years. For more than half of my life I have been following Captain America, the X-Men, Peter Parker and Mary Jane, Darkhawk, the New Warriors, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and so many more. I have invested a lot of myself into these characters, plots, writers and artists. So to me to declare that I am going to swear off comic books is a pretty serious statement. The deal was that comic books had to impress me at some point in the past year or I was going to walk away.
When I was ten years old my family would spend several weeks at our place in Tionesta, PA. It was a small cabin-like place with two bedrooms, a living room/kitchen area, a bathroom and a basement. We would go there for two whole weeks out of every summer. There was no cable or television reception available. It was either watched whatever television that was recorded before we came up on the VCR or interact with my family. Neither option seemed particularly enjoyable for any extended amount of time. However, at every general store, grocery store or book store in and around the Tionesta area a rack of comic books could be found. My first was a Marvel Summer special that had short stories from several characters (Iron Man, Speedball, and Tigra are the only characters that I can remember to have been in that issue). It only took one comic and Marvel had me hooked. It took DC killing off Superman before I would buy anything other than Marvel, which is one of the evils that I have come to realize about the industry; anything that will sell then is worth printing.
At first I could only afford one comic a week. My first year I bought Darkhawk, New Warriors, What-If..., and Amazing Spider-Man, but it was the Marvel trading cards that opened up my impressionable young mind to superheroes and their exploits. I studied every trivial fact from Jugernaught's height and weight to the "Did you know?" factoids that were at the bottom of the backside of every card. The following summer brought the Infinity Gauntlet series and its many crossovers. A mega-climatic battle against ultimate evil where every major hero joined together. It seemed like an awesome idea the first time I read it. The following summer the Infinity War sequeled with even more crossovers. Then the Infinity Crusade, which was the third summer Marvel milked the Infinity cow for a series, and I realized that series had peeked but it had made me curious about other comics. I was still loyal to the four comics that I started with . Darkhawk and the New Warriors were teenage characters, which made it easy for me as a pre-teen to relate to them. Amazing Spider-man had Mark Bagley as its artist, who is one of the best artist to ever draw the webhead. What-If offered a cataclysmic universe saving battle in almost every issue. However, I was curious about a lot of Marvel's other characters. My four comics were great, but they offered a very tiny glimpse of a universe that seemed amazing, incredible and fantastic.
Age of Apocalypse was the next super-crossover epic, like the Infinity series and DC's Zero Hour series, it was designed to be an exciting story that would get readers to buy a lot of comic books that they otherwise probably wouldn't spend their money on. I fell for it hard. I bought every X-Men comic for all of the AoA series and for the years that followed. To give an idea of what that means, there were nine different X-Men titles that Marvel printed month to month in the mid-90's and I read/bought every single one. Although, around that time Darkhawk and New Warriors were getting cancelled and dropped Spider-man at the beginning of the Clone Saga, which was a series that ruined Spidey for a lot of readers. In high school I was practically an X-Men only fanboy. Age Apocalypse barely had time to cool down when another Marvel epic was beginning, the Onslaught series. The tease claimed that "No one is safe." The hype said that there was a new villain that was going to rise and that he was going to drastically change the face of the Marvel universe and he delivered exactly that, but it only lasted for about a year. The wake of Onslaught split Marvel into two universes one where the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were given updated 90's style origins and another where the X-Men and Spider-man were Marvel's primary characters. Onslaught was a mess, another over-hyped crossover epic that had no lasting consequences because one year after it ended everything was reset and merged. The X-Men rebuilt their mansion, Peter Parker was web-swinging through New York City, the Avengers assembled, and the Fantastic Four were just as fantastic as they had been through their history.
The Thunderbolts were probably the only interesting group of characters that resulted from the series of epics that occurred through Marvel in the 90's. They were a team of villains that pretended to be a new group of heroes but discovered that they liked being good guys more than bad guys. The series was about struggling heroes trying to prove that they could do whatever it took to be decent in the eyes of the world. The Thunderbolts were a representation of anyone who is looked down because of who they are, but knows that they could be just as big a success as the powerful if they were only given the same opportunity. The late 90's brought a return to Marvel's classic universe. The number of X-Men and Spider-Man monthly titles were cut in half. Industry greats Kurt Busiek and George Perez teamed up for Avengers adventures. The Marvel Knights line began. It seemed as though Marvel was focusing on quality over quantity. At the same time I was trying to give DC comics a chance and read Superman, Batman and Green Lantern, but they never resonated with me like Marvel's characters did. DC's characters are more iconic and Marvel's are Shakespearean. Superman labors like Hercules and defends mere mortals from monsters and devils like Darkseid and Lex Luthor. While in the Marvel universe both Captain America and his one of his arch-villains Baron Zemo are haunted by ghosts from their pasts in a similar way that Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his father. It is that Shakespearean twist that still makes Marvel's characters more appealing to me.
After high school I became of fan of Wildstorm's The Authority. They were superior's like the Justice League, a coming together of powerful men and women from different backgrounds, but The Authority seemed to have an edge that no other superior's did. Where the Justice League would throw down against brainwash or Doomsday without questioning it, they never took on real world problems. The Authority were superheroes that were much more violent than their Marvel or DC counter-parts, and they tackled issues like terrorism and had a pair of gay characters. The Authority seemed to be more relevant characters and told better stories, but in the end they were a disappointment in that the storytelling was too drawn out and offered little beyond its ultra-violence. Through college I became less and less interested in comics. The stories seemed completely self-important. The superheroes are constantly saving the world, but nothing ever changes for them. Thanos blinks half of the universe out of existence with the Infinity Gauntlet, but the heroes blink away all or the damage at the end of the story. Onslaught kills Earth's mightiest heroes, but a year later they were restored as if nothing happened. Peter Parker gets replaced by his clone and Mary Jane has a child, but it gets changed to appease the fans when sales dropped. Superman dies and lives again, Batman's broken spine heals itself, and Hal Jordan turns evil, then good, then dies, and is resurrected. What's the point of these stories? Why should I continue to spend my money (comics have more than double in price since when I started) on these plots and characters when after every climax nothing changes for the heroes?
I am not impressed with what Marvel and DC offered in the past year. The House of M series did not resolve anything that Dissassembled began the year before and DC is going through another Crisis with a revamp of its titles set for the near future. The industry is doing what it has always does and that is to appease the fans. I understand that comics are apart of an industry and that we live in a capitalistic society, but I don't have to like what that means for my favorite characters. I accept that Spidey, Wolverine, Captain America and Darkhawk will never rise to great literary levels in my lifetime, but I believe they come out of the same part of our psyche that the Odyssey, many Biblical stories, the Arthurian legends, and Shakespeare find validity through.
Today I read and have always read comics because the idea of a hero gives brings with it hope for a better future. In every corner of the world their exists suffering and the notion that changes can be made, evil can be opposed, good can win the day brings hope for a better future. I started reading comics because they seemed more exciting than my life and in a lot of ways they still seem to be more dramatic, but ultimately that excitement is less thrilling the things I want to get done with my life. The reason that comics have become less appealing to me is because their plots, no matter how dramatic, are lame compared to the things we can achieve with our lives and I don't think that is only true for comic books. Too many of us spend our time trapped in our routines, doing very little to better ourselves. Personally, I feel like I have been waiting forever for a signal that my time has come to begin the great things that I am going to do with my life. Well I am never going to get a signal. There comes a time when you have to decide whether what you want is what you already have or if there is more out there for you to take. If you are not happy then find out what is going to make you happy. Make sure that others are not tricking you into believing that you are pleased with yourself. Find out what it will take to make life whole and take it, its yours to have and you don't have to feel guilty about having it.
I am going to keep reading comics, because even though nothing about them impressed me last year, one or two things about them did entertain me. Comics will serve as a reminder of where I have been, but also that there are deeper seas to explore than the shallow pools that I have already known.
