Thursday, December 27, 2007

In MY day, comics were fun!

Yeh, it's another comic book blog. But I wouldn't be going through all this effort if I didn't feel that there was something to be said here.

What it comes down to, what the big picture is, the whole package, the magilla, the big cahuna, is simply this:

Comics aren't any fun anymore.

There. I've said it.

I'm an old fart. I freely admit that. I began reading comics about 1967 or so when the Silver Age was in full swing. Thanks to my older brothers, I was able to read all those great comics that came out even before that. And I kept reading for most of the next 40 years. I've seen the highs and I've seen the lows. I saw the speculators destroy the business and I saw them go.
I've seen more comic companies start and die than I can count. And I kept reading.

Then, about a year or so ago, I started to realize that something was horribly, terribly wrong. Without my realizing it, comics had changed. Characters were behaving irrationally, heroes were killing people indiscriminately, villains had gotten more violent and cruel. Not only were comics not just for kids anymore, in most cases they were not for kids at all! It hurt me that this fine medium that I had loved for so many years had gotten so twisted and wrong.

Other blogs opened my eyes about themes and issues that I hadn't even realized were there. Rampant misogyny, racial stereotyping and moral corruption (both in the comics and the companies that made them) had been there all the time but I hadn't realized it.

So, in this blog, I am going to talk about comics both old and new. I am going to review new comics (telling you what I think is wrong with them) as well as feature older comics. I'll also be talking a lot about what comics are and how they work and how they're going wrong.

Make no mistake. I am a cranky old comics fan and I don't like a lot of things. However, when I do recommend something (and I will be doing that from time to time as there are still good things to read), you can be sure that it's something worthy of your time.

You've been warned. The crankiness will begin shortly.

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