From a letter by writer Tim O’Neil in today’s Journalista:
QUOTE: “…(sing it with me, people!) Comics Ain’t Just For Kids Anymore, Just The Silly People In Tights!!!…If Marvel tries to pry open the book market for Spider-Man, they will be wasting their time. Now, one way they could circumvent a great many of the problems you discussed in your article is if they just realized that grown men and women do not want to read superheroes and concentrate their efforts on getting Marvel books stacked in the children’s and young adults sections.”
From today’s Gotham edition of Daily Variety:
QUOTE: “The debut of The Hulk marks the seventh consecutive No. 1 box office opening for Marvel, dating back to 1998’s Blade. The $62 million Hulk bow ranks as the third highest of that group after the still-stunning $114.8 million opening for Spider-Man and $85.6 million for X2: X-Men United last month.”
We report. You decide.
Actually, no, you know what? I decide. And I decide that this whole “superheroes are keeping adults from reading comics” theory is well past its expiration date. I know I harp on this a lot, but like characters in the lousy superhero comics that are supposed to be representative of the genre, the damn idea keeps coming back from the dead.
People, the only people who are so adamantly opposed to any stories involving people with extraordinary powers and a flashy fashion sense that they’ll actively shun huge portions of an entire medium to avoid them are people like O’Neil who, for one reason or another, have let their own bad experiences as either a comics creator or a comics fan warp their sense of reality. Out in the real world, almost no one is going to refrain from seeing a movie or reading a book that’s otherwise good simply because a guy in his pajamas uses magic or mutant powers to fight crime. If the writing is good, if the acting is good, if the director is good, if the story is good, people go to see the movie. Why should this be any different for comics?
Of course, it’s bad that superhero stories make up such a disproportionately huge chunk of the entire comics medium, at least in America. It’s quite conceivable that there are people who don’t even know there are comics that aren’t about superheroes, and that isn’t good. As my wife often says, “I know cantaloupe is good, I can understand why people like cantaloupe, but I’m just never in the mood to eat it.” There are probably plenty of people who don’t have anything against superheroes per se, but are unlikely to dive into a medium they’re convinced has nothing to offer other than the spandex crowd. But again, it’s not superheroes in and of themselves that’s the problem–it’s the conception that that’s all comics have to offer. Even if they wouldn’t go into a store, if you handed these people a really good superhero comic, they’d read it, spandex be damned.
In O’Neil’s defense, he does stick to saying “grown-ups don’t read about superheroes”–I guess even die-hard superhero haters can’t deny cold-hard box-office fact anymore, and are forced to keep this zombiesque theory alive simply within the confines of print media. But again, I just don’t see any evidence that superheroes, in and of themselves, are the obstacle.
The idea that comics are for kids? Okay, that’s a good potential culprit, but it’s not just the superhero genre that’d be implicated in such a view: Many folks would be factoring romance comics, horror comics, Mad Magazine, Archie, and the daily strips into that assessment as well.
My guess? There’s something about the pamphlet format most comics are still sold in that suggests cheapness, flimsiness, throw-awayability. That’s just a guess, but it’s better than trotting out the old “no one likes superheroes” bit. I don’t care if you promised it filet mignon and a date with Lassie–that dog simply won’t hunt.