comicaze

Occupational Suicide via Critical Exegesis

17 notes

mistahphil: Promotional ad for Eclipse Comics, 1985. This ad is awesome, and it would’ve been pretty cool back in ‘85, but in 2013 when you couldn’t, in good conscience, give a kid a copy of Batman to read, it seems kind of sad.Imagine this same ad trumpeting how great these mature new Legos are, or how she thought she was done with Furby, but now there’s this new adult version. Yeah, the original ad was a tongue in cheek take on the “comics aren’t just for kids anymore” attitude that was coming out of the new wave of indies and graphic novels. New, more mature and complex work was coming out and everyone was scrambling to make people respect the medium. But in the interim the medium was mistaken (as it always has been) for the genre, and the idea became to prove that Superhero comics weren’t just for kids. The idea of mature work was replaced with mature themes.Ask anyone working in superheroes what their favorite hero stories were and nine times out of ten I bet they’d say something by Stan and Jack, by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, Roy Thomas, etc. Guys who made great books that were accessible for everyone. Every time I read a modern comic where they creative team has decided that “everything you know is wrong!” about a character, it just reads to me like these guys are sick of their hero and have moved on but don’t know it.The good news is that more complex, mature comics have come out and found a small but passionate audience. The indie scene is better than it’s ever been in terms of the quality of the work, but does that equate with the general public’s respect and interest? There’s a difference between “comics aren’t just for kids” and “Superhero comics aren’t just for kids” which they mostly are and pretty much should be. 

mistahphil:

Promotional ad for Eclipse Comics, 1985.

This ad is awesome, and it would’ve been pretty cool back in ‘85, but in 2013 when you couldn’t, in good conscience, give a kid a copy of Batman to read, it seems kind of sad.

Imagine this same ad trumpeting how great these mature new Legos are, or how she thought she was done with Furby, but now there’s this new adult version. 

Yeah, the original ad was a tongue in cheek take on the “comics aren’t just for kids anymore” attitude that was coming out of the new wave of indies and graphic novels. New, more mature and complex work was coming out and everyone was scrambling to make people respect the medium. 

But in the interim the medium was mistaken (as it always has been) for the genre, and the idea became to prove that Superhero comics weren’t just for kids. The idea of mature work was replaced with mature themes.

Ask anyone working in superheroes what their favorite hero stories were and nine times out of ten I bet they’d say something by Stan and Jack, by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, Roy Thomas, etc. Guys who made great books that were accessible for everyone. 

Every time I read a modern comic where they creative team has decided that “everything you know is wrong!” about a character, it just reads to me like these guys are sick of their hero and have moved on but don’t know it.

The good news is that more complex, mature comics have come out and found a small but passionate audience. The indie scene is better than it’s ever been in terms of the quality of the work, but does that equate with the general public’s respect and interest? 

There’s a difference between “comics aren’t just for kids” and “Superhero comics aren’t just for kids” which they mostly are and pretty much should be. 

4 notes

Possibly my favorite splash page. An incredible piece from Fantastic Four #7 in b&w glory by Jack Kirby. I had something close to a religious experience when I encountered this art on a bizarre dayglo poster that Rand Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum had on display at MoCCA. The extreme angle and architecture pull you in and confuse you at the same time. It’s like visual poetry; it’s hard to tell what’s going on here on your first pass, but you can kind of feel it. After this I devoured every book of Kirby I could get my hands on, and it’s profoundly changed the way I think about the work. 

Possibly my favorite splash page. An incredible piece from Fantastic Four #7 in b&w glory by Jack Kirby. 

I had something close to a religious experience when I encountered this art on a bizarre dayglo poster that Rand Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum had on display at MoCCA. 

The extreme angle and architecture pull you in and confuse you at the same time. It’s like visual poetry; it’s hard to tell what’s going on here on your first pass, but you can kind of feel it. 

After this I devoured every book of Kirby I could get my hands on, and it’s profoundly changed the way I think about the work. 

Filed under Jack Kirby Kirby

0 notes

Two things: One, this is a thing that happened. Two, it was apparently one of the Amazing Adventures of Cavalieri and Lay.

Two things: One, this is a thing that happened. Two, it was apparently one of the Amazing Adventures of Cavalieri and Lay.