Wheat Germ's Medicine Bag

Comics seem to be based mostly on sensationalism and death these days. And really hamfisted political allegory. Whatever happened to old-school comic books? What about the fantasy world of flight and heat vision?

You know, in order for a comic to be more grown-up, it doesn't have to center around death, rape, hamfisted political allegory, and other such things. It can still be fun and amusing without being for babies. Sure, your characters can get injured or face mortal peril--but why does it seem like every comic book you flip through these days involves the death and torture and rape of some major character or another? This is to say nothing of the Women in Refrigerators list, which is a rant for a few paragraphs from now. A comic book can still be suspenseful and interesting, or fun and amusing, without revolving around the graphic disembowelment of Super-someone-or-another or the retconned history of Doctor Light.

I'm tired of all of this focus on darkness and grittiness in comic books. Some of it can provide interesting background and dilemma, sure, but why does it seem that it's always at the center rather than an interesting side-story? Comics seem to commonly introduce some new character, often dumping them in without any background, then killing them off immediately in the most gruesome ways possible. Seriously--read the New Mutants and the 198 and all of those other X-men books on the stands. DEATH DEATH DEATH TORTURE-GO-ROUND DEATH DEATH RAPE RAPE DEATH RAPE TORTURE DEPOWERMENT MENTAL ILLNESS DEATH DEPOWERMENT MENTAL ILLNESS MISCARRIAGE AND REALLY HAMFISTED POLITICAL ALLEGORY! That's how comic books go these days. There's no real pause for a cute, silly slice-of-life or good ol' Silver Age-style crack or anything.

It seems to happen to the chicks in comic books more often than the guys. It still HAPPENS to guys, but still, check out the Women in Refrigerators list sometime. (The name itself was taken from an incident a few years back in... Green Lantern, I think. Some enemy of the current Lantern killed his girlfriend and stuffed her in the fridge.) It's a really long list. Gives you something to think about.

And whatever happened to having happy characters? A lot of characters seem to have gone emo lately. Wonder Woman, Batman (...well, he was kind of emo in the first place), Superboy--I hear even Captain frickin' Marvel is going to get "introspective" (read: angsty) soon. And Captain Marvel is like, the happiest character in comics, too. Or used to be.

I don't really see the point in focusing on dark-and-grim all the time in comics. Let the damn characters have some fun sometimes--the readers will enjoy it and, hey, maybe sales will go up.



I just noticed--none of the Phantom Saints die. They do get beaten up on a regular basis (except Sophie, because she's invulnerable), but they don't die, Sophie never gets tentacle-raped by a psychotic Doctor M, Jake doesn't wangst over his reality-bending powers, nothing like that. They argue, they have their flaws, they get their asses handed to them on occasion... but they usually come out on top with a lot of work and luck.

Come to think, nobody in P.S. dies. Not them, not their enemies.

Kind of hope that it's really made into a comic someday. I think it'd be a bit of a breath of fresh air.