I'm not suggesting the superhero comic is dead, though it's certainly on life support and the best the doctors can do with modern technology is periodically pump some juice into it to keep its heart beating a few more minutes. When form becomes content, style is all that matters. They've become a latter day American version of NÜ drama, once vital but now followed only by a specialized, dwindling audience that measures quality by how closely the product adheres to a rigid stylization evolved over time. Whether it's because that's what the ever-dwindling number of readers buy, or they buy it because that's all that gets published because that's what editors insist the readers want, or because those creating comics grew up with that value and automatically accept it as absolute, not a value but a given, the fact remains: superheroes are the content of superhero comics. Kurt continued the theme briefly in ASTRO CITY, but seems since to have given in, still casting "normals" in bit parts but focusing ever more strongly on his super people.īecause the superhero story is about using super powers, and everything else is set design. Kurt Busiek commented on this rather cleverly in the MARVELS series, which began with a description of pure human awe at the arrival of a very few superbeings and slowly all but eliminated the human element from the proceedings where it exists in the last issue, it's represented wistfully, as if comic book humanity recognized its number was up. Now, aside from the odd romantic interest, they're either frowned upon as taking space away from the superhero or they are themselves superheroes in waiting, either hiding their own miraculous abilities or on the verge of gaining them. I remember when you occasionally used to find a normal human in a comic book.
But that's a discussion for the "drawbacks of the endless serial" column.) But if their abilities are that miraculous, what can possibly threaten them enough to get a story out of it? Other people with superpowers! (An accessory formula transforms this into an endless spiral: the villain has to be more powerful than the hero to be a credible threat, forcing the hero to somehow escalate his own power level in order to defeat the villain, requiring next month's villain to be more powerful, return to go. How do we know they have super powers? They have to show them. Alone of all genres, the superhero story pivots on a single element: it has to be about people with miraculous abilities. The superhero story, on the other hand, has grown to be about one thing only: superheroes. Some genres, mostly sub-categories of the thriller like the detective story or the police procedural, have more specific rules – the detective has to have a mystery to solve (and even that isn't cut and dried) – but basically remain open to new ideas. Science fiction, westerns, romance, the historical novel, thrillers – these labels are determined by the setting, within which a great variety of stories can be told. There are a couple new bits toward the bottom, so off you go then: And wouldn't you know it! It's just as relevant today as when I wrote it, almost five years ago.
Preacher rerun of dirty littlesecrets professional#
At the time, some people were a little taken aback that I didn't spend some time introducing myself – and certainly virtually every professional who has started up an Internet column since has squandered way too much space talking about themselves that what they're going to be writing in the column instead of just doing it (and I always mutter under my breath, "you idiots," at this point) – but as my grandmother used to say, the best way to teach a baby to drown is to throw it in the water, so I figured what's good enough for her is good enough for me.
Fortunately, no joke is an old joke to someone who hasn't heard it (you've heard that one before, haven't you), so out of mothballs comes the initial column I wrote when Comic Book Resources asked me for one, which was then called MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS. So it's time for the worst possible solution, short of not running a column: a rerun. February being a short month, even in leap year (and don't we all miss LI'L ABNER now), I finally ran out of both time and alternatives, and got so jammed up with work that I don't have time to write a column this week. Steven takes you on a journey to the past, talks a little religion with ya, a look at Stephen Hunter's latest novel, 'Havana,' and more. Share Share Tweet Share Share Share Email
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