Comic Appeal

Recently, a fool that shall go unnamed has stated that comics are retarded and that he or she does not understand why it’s such a big deal. He or she even dared to say that comics are – and I quote – “lame as magazines”, saying that the limited appeal is the same. And the most amusing remark I’ve heard quite a few people use to put down comic books is that it’s just a dumb form of entertainment. How very wrong you all are. What IS a comic book really? And why the crap has it had such a bad rep for such a long time? Also, why are there so many freakin movies based on comic books recently? These are the questions I will try my best to answer and hope that my fellow comic enthusiasts from the Cornwell household can leave some feedback covering anything I might and will probably miss.

Comics, comics, comics. What is there to say about them? They’re awesome. That’s basically all there is to it. But seriously. What is a comic book? It’s pretty simple actually. A comic book is simply a medium used to tell a story. Same as novels, movies, songs, plays, and poems. That’s all they are. When a writer of any kind comes up with a story idea, the first thing that must be done is to decide what medium will take full advantage of the story. It just so happens that comic books and graphic novels are the best ones for stories that need to express a lot of imagery, symbolism, or graphical contrasts; which is what all of these stories are loaded with. And all of these mediums are entertainment, which is why that lame insult mentioned above is pointless. And what is entertainment? Nothing more than an escape from our reality into someone else’s, with hopes that you’ll come out of it having learned something new.

So why is it that comic books have had this stupid reputation of being just for kids and geeks and nerds? I honestly don’t know. Only reason I can think of is because people assume that comics only have to do with superheroes, and superheroes are just for kids. It’s pretty dumb actually. If you actually take the time, you’ll quickly find that stories in comics and graphic novels are as good, if not better than a lot of the novels that are on the bestseller list. There have actually been several of these comics that have been turned into full length prose novels. Batman’s No Man’s Land and Wolverine’s Weapon X are just 2 such stories. But then it makes me wonder. If the story of Harry Potter was kept EXACTLY the same, but released in the form of comics, would it have been as successful? Probably not, cause for some reason it’s seen as some lower art form. It would just be seen as some other comic book story Hollywood is trying to make money out of. But times they are a-changing, and the recent Hollywood explosion of comics has increased their readership, which is never a bad thing.

So why is it that there have been so many movies based on comic books as of late? And surprisingly a lot of them are very well done. Well there’s the obvious fact that it’s almost a guaranteed money-maker. And the fact that special effects are so accessible today really makes them a lot easier to make nowadays. But what I like to think is the biggest reason for this explosion is that the people who are making these movies today are the same people who actually grew up reading these comics. Which leads to these movies being made with the respect they deserve. Case in point: Sam Raimi, director of Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. For his 6^th birthday, his parents got this artist to come into his arm and paint a picture of Spider-Man over his bed. He grew up, became a director, and eventually got to make Spider-Man, a character and universe he knew inside and out from having read all the comics as a kid. True, there’s been a couple of movies here and there that don’t quite live up to expectations, but even then, to me, it was just great to see them on the big screen.

...i'll tell you in another life, when we are both cats