In one of his big anti-superhero posts, Tim O’Neil asked why we (the blogosphere, I’m assuming) spend so much time and energy discussing superhero books. I’m sure this question is meant to be rhetorical, seeing as how Tim thinks they’re not worth discussing (and yet–and yet!–his last two Comics Journal review pieces were both of superhero books), but it made me think: Why do we spend so much time discussing superhero books? Obviously most of us have fairly heterodox taste in comics. If I myself were to list my top twenty/twenty-five favorite comics of all time, maybe only three or four would be superhero books. So what gives?

Well, obviously,

99 percent of the discussions are half-baked attempts at justifying a love of junk, [and] it’s all pretty harmless in the larger scheme of things [comics blogs are essentially the Internet equivalent of the first generation of comics zines, mixed with the monomania that the Net inspires].

I mean, duh.

But let’s pretend, for a second, that that’s just a dopey ad-hominem dismissal of an opinion that the speaker disagrees with. (I know, that’s tough to believe, but bear with me.) The answer that comes to mind for the question “Why does the blogosphere spend so much time talking about superhero comics?” is “Well, where else are we gonna go to do it?”

Time and time again bloggers have pointed out that there’s not really a forum for intelligent, textual & aesthetic criticism and analysis of supercomics. The Comics Journal is far and away the best magazine about comics around, but their serious engagement with supercomics is limited at best; most of it is characterized by the type of statement reprinted above. Superhero-centric publications like Wizard aren’t interested in criticism and analysis at all, and superhero-centric publications like Comic Book Artist are predominantly venues for those-were-the-days reminisces more than anything else. Meanwhile, other online discussion fora (message boards, Usenet, listservs, etc.) too easily degenerate into flame wars and in jokes. Blogging, as a publication tool, seems to lend itself well to lengthy discussion between self-policing participants. Meanwhile, in a sort of chicken-and-egg situation, at this point comics bloggers tend to be people who want to talk intelligently about superhero comics and turned to blogging to do so.

As comicsblogging continues to evolve, I wouldn’t be surprised to see blogs develop along other lines; we’ve already seen some blogs that appear to follow the Wizard or CBA pattern, and with Tim and Milo both in business we’re starting to see some that resemble the Journal. The more the merrier, I think.

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