Should The Comic Book Industry Explore New Genres?

This puts me in mind of something the editors of Mad frequently joke about, how many letters they get complaining that Mad "just isn't as funny as it used to be." They once did a mock timeline about the history of the magazine, and for Mad # 2 that had "received first fan letter complaining that Mad "ain't what it used to be." The upshot of this is, Mad, and Super Hero comics for that matter, haven't changed much, but the individual readers' tastes do. If you feel you've gotten all you can out of Super Hero comics, and they're no longer suiting your tastes, perhaps you should move on to something else. That's not an indictment of Super-Hero comics, just an evolution of taste. Right now, there is a lot else out there, if not from the Big 2, then from other publishers, and online as well.

Unlikely. It has more to do with not actually ending your series at any point ever, unless you're canceled unexpectedly.

That said, I think war comics would be an interesting genre that could work well with the medium.

Oh, they did that too. DC had Our Fighting Forces, Our Army at War, Star Spangled War Stories, Sergeant Rock, Unknown Soldier, The Haunted Tank, Weird War Tales, etc. Marvel had Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos. Charlton had a whole bunch. (Quality started the Blackhawks, DC bought them up in the early 1950's.) The genre fizzled out in the mid-1980's.

@C0mraid: Commando is still printing new issues. I've read a couple; they're not bad.

I just now thought of a comment Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) made in an interview in CLiNT a couple of issues ago. Paraphrasing, he said that one often hears about people giving up on comics. Not superhero comics, or scifi comics, or DC comics, but comics.

Now, imagine if somebody made that comment about another medium. If someone said they were quitting books, or were done with movies, we'd think they were nuts. Sure, one might give up on crime novels or action movies, but cutting books or movies in general out of your life would just be bizarre.

Yet when people cut comics out of their lives completely, nobody reacts with any sort of alarm as to the sanity of the speaker, and that's not a good sign for the medium.

NOTE: I AM ASSUMING THAT kIRKMAN WAS NOT TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WHO STOP READING COMICS DUE TO ECONOMIC FACTORS. (Sorry about the caps lock, but I find that people tend to ignore it when I add a clarification like that to my posts, so I had to shout to ensure I was understood.)

Yeah, didn't Sgt.Rock and GI Combat only end in 1985, after Crisis on Infinite Earths?

You obviously haven't listened to enough cranky people.

Movies are quite common in fact, at least by some people. TV might be a better example. My main issue with comics is distribution. It would not surprise me if webcomics dominated print comics with the simple expedient of being purely ad supported.

Yeah. I know people who haven't seen a new movie in a theater or on DVD unless someone asks them to do so. Even with television, I've personally said "I don't watch TV. There's nothing good on" off and on, time and time again.

As was already said, the reason someone can more easily "give up" comics is because there are only a few specific ways you can find them, and the nature of the medium means that you keep coming back. Most movies aren't franchises, and even those that are might have a new installment every 2 - 4 years. Books are about the same, even the long-running series tend to take substantially longer to produce than comics.

I've more or less given up TV. When I do watch a series these days, I get the DVDs.

Heh. What Meta Four said.

As far as comics go... in North America, at least, there's a severe perception problem. 'When are you going to read a real book, one that doesn't have pictures?' seems to be the gist of it. And the Dark Age attempts to get out of that with a steady R-rating has led those who don't think comics are for little kids to think that they're some kind of weird gorn.

Those that think about comics at all, that is. Most people aren't even peripherally aware of them, aside from some vague notion that they exist, and maybe that they're kind of "questionable".

Bluntly, if the industry is going to even be able to explore new genres, they need to break that perception problem. Some of the recent movies (Iron Man, Thor, and the Nolan Batfilms, for instance) have been a step in the right direction, but I'm already starting to worry that the studio execs think that they can pull the usual Comic-Book Time stupidity on a larger audience, and that people will keep on paying money to see the same storyline over and over and over and over and over and over and over (like the new Spidey movie. A new origin story? Really? WHY?).

There's some great stuff out there if you're willing to poke around- Sergio Aragones' Groo The Wanderer, Jeff Smith's Bone, Usagi Yojimbo...

With as many remakes as continually get made (not just now, but historically) I don't really think movie audiences seem to mind seeing the same stories over and over again. And really, is any Bond film significantly different from any other Bond film? And they also seem to understand the idea of the "reboot," and that with it will generally come an at least somewhat new interpretation of the character.

Comic books as a media have a special strength: special effects. For films and TV, they are either complicated or expensive, but for comic books, a drawing of two people talking and a drawing of several superheros fighting consume the same resources. The same may be said about animation, but comic books are cheaper. Consider for instance the recent Crisis crossover "Fear itself", and now consider making a film of it, EXACTLY as it was in the comics. I suspect that even the national budget of some countries would not be enough. But for comics, it's everyday stuff.

Then, comic books are the ideal media for science fiction. In a sense, superheroes may be considered a subgenre of science fiction, perhaps the greatest work of science fiction ever made (think of it: all the classic scifi topics, as time travel, alien invasions, space exploration, robots, human metamorphosis, new physical laws, futuristic techs, etc; all merged into a unique and functional fictional universe). But, beyond that, "classic" science fiction can use very good use of comic books.

That depends how many comic books you feel equal an animated movie. Let's say that it takes someone 12 minutes to read a 22 page comic book. If the average animated movie is a little over an hour and a half long, someone would need to read seven to eight comic books if they wanted to enjoy those for the same length of time. Now suppose it costs $20 to buy that animated movie on DVD, while each of those comic book issues costs $3 a piece. They end up costing close to the same amount.

Yes, comic book readers need to explore as the writers. Forget genre, simply convincing a Marvel fan to try anything is difficult, even when you can make them admit reading Marvel has become a chore. "Why are comics so dumb nowadays?" "Lots of reasons, why not stop reading them?" "But I like Superheroes" "So why not read Darkstorm or that new thing Stan Lee published." "I want to read Spider-man!" "The same one you've been complaining about for the last hour?"

I am one of those people who gave up comics, not indefinitely, I was soon reading comics again but not Marvel comics and not superhero comics. Lio, Boondocks, something about a girl failing suicide and some Japanese wrestler who did not need the push from his farts. There are other things out there comic fans! Try looking for them!

edited 20th May '12 6:27:05 PM by Cider

Tell me more, please.

edited 22nd Mar '12 9:40:14 AM by VampireBuddha

Found it. Kinnikuman, about a Sizeshifter who fights giant monsters and competes in a professional wrestling tournament. If you can't find any copies of it, Google has this.

See, I love superheroes, but still, it seems as if there are some standard approaches to writing superheroes these days:

1. The grim 'n' gritty approach. 2. The deconstruction. 3. The retro apprach.

Can anyone think of any others? I think maybe writers need to imagine new ways to approach superheroes. Which ones, I'm not sure, alas.

edited 22nd Mar '12 12:43:19 PM by PennyDreadful

Astro City tends to be... slice of super-life? I guess? There's a few like that (I think those Mary Jane Loves Spiderman comics were something along those lines, although I'm really not familiar with it), and the second-most-recent Blue Beetle series (Jaime Reyes, pre-reboot) wasn't either of the three things you listed... No idea. Like I said, the stuff is out there. You just need to be willing to dig around a bit and take a chance.

... unlike the publishers.

Or most fans -_-;

I can't recommend Garth Ennis' work in this regard highly enough.

Well I've only read the first volume but Powers is a good example of a modern Superhero book done diffrently.

As for different genres...

Conan The Barbarian comes to mind.

It is pretty weird how most comic books are superhero themed. It would be like turning on the radio to find that there were only a few stations and they only played country.

Actually, there's plenty more variety in European comics. It's pretty rare to see superheroes played straigh over here, possibly because America has such a tight grip on that niche.

True. Most British comics are sci-fi, comedy, horror or war stories.

Superheroes are just so...what's the word? Kitsch? Like '60s Batman.

You'll see Commando, Star Wars or 2000AD in most newsagents but superheroes are a bit more 'specialist'.

edited 1st May '12 1:45:34 PM by InverurieJones

Franco-Belgian Comics have plentiful genres. Science-fiction (Yoko Tsuno, Les Mondes D Aldebaran), adventure (Tintin), western (Les Tuniques Bleues, though it's not very historically accurate), parodic (Asterix and anything else by Goscinny), detective, children's series like The Smurfs. They could do with more international visibility.

What I find odd with them is how much attention the art is given, regardless of what is needed. They are all full-colour with A4 pages, allowing for wonderful visuals, but none of the artists I know of "modulate" the art according to the panel; they do not put less attention into small story panels than into spectacular spreads the way many mangaka do. And most of the non-comedic ones have a realist art style even if some simplification would be appropriate and save effort.

Italy has some very good comic franchises (Diabolik especially) but the Disney comics dominate, and they have some good stories but are mostly rather childish, as well as clichéd and with no continuity. So their comics have a similar but different market lock.

My ideal line of comics would be one with French art quality and variety of genres, Italian writing, Japanese art style and imagination and American continuity and energy, not to mention production values.

edited 22nd May '12 4:34:54 AM by RJSavoy