Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases: Would Batman Drive A Ford?

In a story in the business section of Monday’s New York Times, there was a discussion of product placement in self-published (or small publisher-published) e-books.

Naturally, my first thought was, How can this be applied to comics?

First, let me start with a few definitions. There is a difference between product placement, such as having a character on White Collar drive a Ford Taurus and so-called “advertorial content,” or specially produced web content about the Ford Taurus driven on White Collar. One is a lucrative part of the creative process, and the other is, essentially, a licensed deal.

Comics have a long tradition of licensing characters to advertisers. Baby boomers have fond memories of the one-page adventures that showed how something as simple and delicious as a Hostess fruit pie could help solve crime. More recently, DC produced a bunch of ads for Subway showing how the avocados in their sandwiches helped Green Lantern save galaxies.

As far as I know, there have been no explicit acts of product placement in mainstream comics. Perhaps I’m being naive. In any case, if there are, they are not very effective in that I have not noticed them.

Would they make any difference? Would you, average consumer, be more likely to be a Ford Taurus if you saw Batman drive one? At least on White Collar, we see an actual car drive through an actual city, even if it is Toronto. One can observe the product being used by a flesh-and-blood human being, albeit an attractive, well-dressed one.

Not every appearance by a real product in entertainment is the result of product placement. Stephen King will often mention plebeian items like Excedrin or Turtle Wax in his books, and these mentions ground the characters in some semblance of reality. No agency is shelling out money for this. If they did, they would demand approval.

In any case, product placement in mainstream superhero comics would probably be too expensive to be worthwhile. Warner Bros. is not going to let Batman drive the aforesaid Taurus in the comics without first making a hefty profit for letting him drive one in the movies. The same goes for Disney.

That’s not parallel to what the Times story was about. In the story, the author got paid to include mentions of Sweet’n’Low in her book.

I’m not a big fan of artificial sweeteners, but I know a lot of people who are. They often have strong feelings about which brand is their favorite. I could probably read that book without noticing the placements. At the same time, I probably wouldn’t think, “This character has such a rich and satisfying life, one I, too, would like to have. I suppose I should eat more Sweet’n’Low.”

Would product placement be good for independent comics? Maybe. At the very least, it could help some creators make a profit, something I strongly support.

Would it compromise artistic integrity? It probably depends on the product and the creative team, and the way the deal is negotiated. For example, I’m writing a story now, in which my protagonist, a knitter, struggles to find her true calling in a complex world. I wouldn’t accept a deal with the United States Army for her to enlist and find meaning in her life, not for any amount.

But hand-dyed cashmere? In a heartbeat.

Who am I kidding. I would do it just to look at the color guide.

 

Martha Thomases: Funny, You Don’t Look Booish

Boo!

It’s Halloween today, when we laugh at death and taunt ghosts, witches and demons. Traditionally, we dress up in costume as something that scares us, exorcising our fears through make-up and disguise. If this was still a barometer of what we are afraid of, most women (and girls) are terrified of sex. And of nurses, police officers. And of sexy nurses and sexy police officers.

Which brings us to comics. Of course.

There have been a lot of scary comic books over the decades. Some were so scary that Congress felt the need to step in. Some scared me and didn’t scare you, and some scared you and didn’t scare me. That’s why there is room in the comments.

Alan Moore has written the most comics that scared me the most. From all the bugs to vampires that figure out how to be out in the daytime (stay underwater where the sun can’t reach you) to menopausal werewolves in his Swamp Thing, to super-powered conspiracies in Watchmen and assorted creepy Lovecraftian monsters in various one-offs, Moore’s work regularly freaks me out.

Most of us don’t believe in Lovecraftian monsters, werewolves, vampires or other tropes of the horror genre. I’m not even really afraid of bugs or conspiracies – although please keep both out of my kitchen and bathrooms and, actually, my entire apartment, thanks.

Most literary critics consider that classic monsters of horror to be metaphors for the things that are really able to hurt us. Frankenstein is about men who want to create life without a womb. Dracula is about the dangers of desire. Zombies reflect our fear of infectious diseases.

You know what’s scary right now? Sugar and the people who sell it.

And fundamentalists.

And Ebola.

These are things that can’t be fixed with a stake through the heart or a healing crystal. These are things that can still kill you when the masks are off, and the candy is all gone.

They are also not things that will inspire a single noble hero, or a small group on a quest. Instead, to fight them we will need an educated and engaged citizenry acting together to do the right thing. It means putting down the remote. It means getting off the couch.

That’s the thought that scares me the most. Not the ghouls on the street tonight, but the ones elected next Tuesday.

 

Martha Thomases: Finding The Big Apple

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Except I did it backwards.

Last week, as you no doubt recall, I wrote about New York Comic-Con, one of the biggest pop culture shows in the country. This week, I’d like to write about one of the smallest.

But first, some background and some sociological theory.

New Yorkers are obsessed with real estate, and New York City has only a limited supply. Living in the right neighborhood, working in the right neighborhood, partying in the right neighborhood – for a certain class of people who live in this city, these are vital pieces of their identity.

Nothing stays the right neighborhood forever.

When I moved to New York in the late 1970s, rich people lived on the Upper East Side. Today, you can rent or buy an apartment in some of those buildings for less than it costs to buy the same space in certain parts of Brooklyn. President Bill Clinton bases his foundation in Harlem. Places where my mother wouldn’t let me walk by myself because they were too disgusting are now so expensive I couldn’t afford them.

Over the years, people in the real estate business have tried to figure out what makes a neighborhood happen. To over-simplify, you need artists and gay people. Artists seek out inexpensive space for their studios, and then rich people who buy art want to hang out with artists. Gay people (according to the stereotype) value their homes and invest, bringing with them cute shops and restaurants. In the time since I’ve moved here, I’ve seen this happen in SoHo, the East Village, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Park Slope and the western part of Bleecker Street. At least.

There was a time when Eighth Street was the coolest address in the world. It saw the birth of the Beats, the folk music scene, the hippie flower-power leather sandal set. Because it was so cool, everyone wanted to be there. Landlords jacked up the rents, and the hippies couldn’t afford it anymore. Soon, it was nothing buy tacky shoe stores. There were so many that real estate developers referred to a phenomenon known as the Eight Street Effect, in which once there is a certain saturation of shoe stores, a crash will occur.

Landlords don’t like this.

Sometimes, they take their money and go play in another sandbox, in another part of town. Sometimes, they take the long view and invest in the properties they have.

What does this have to do with comics?

This: The Crazy 8 Cartoon Festival, which was held last Saturday, October 18, on Eighth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue.

Go ahead. Look at the link. You’ll see that stores all across the street were hosting events of interest to pop culture fans, from tattoos (for $8!) to vintage animation to comic book artists.

I got there kind of late, around four, because I had been to a art studio crawl in Gowanus, Brooklyn, earlier that day (see how-to-gentrify, above). There were a bunch of people dressed as zombies on the street, looking less like The Walking Dead than Shaun of the Dead.

In the back of the Marlton Hotel, there were a few comic book creators showing their wares. Among them was Amy Chu, whom I had tried to see at NYCC but wasn’t able to get close enough to her table, and Sean Von Gorman, whose work amuses me greatly. Not only could one actually have a conversation with these fine folks and others, but there was a bar in the hotel, and free snacks and free punch provided by WhistlePig, a whiskey company.

Unlike a normal comic book convention, this one attracted people who knew nothing whatsoever about comic books. Hotel guests would mosey back to see what was going on, and, at least while I was there, often bought something.

I’ve read about other really small shows, in libraries or in college dorms. I don’t know how this compared to them. Like them, I suppose, it was quiet and friendly. No one was harassed about what she was wearing. No one got into a loud argument about anything. It was incredibly friendly and pleasant.

Yeah, I’d pay extra for that.

 

Larry Hama Makes It Up

  • News
  • October 23, 2014

Larry HamaThe new documentary short, Making It Up As I Go Along, profiles Larry Hama.  You may know him best as the writer of Marvel’s GI Joe comics and the character profiles on the back of the GI Joe toy packaging, but he’s ever so much more.  Novelist, screenwriter, artist, editor, rock star, movie actor. Broadway actor —  if you’ve taken a breath over the last 50 years, Larry Hama has influenced your life.

Check it out.  It’s free, and you’ll learn something.

Martha Thomases: Doing The Comic Con-Con

Knitting YarnThere was one point at this year’s New York Comic Con when I almost said, out loud, “Do you know who I am?” That’s because I was having trouble getting my badge.

Here’s why I’m glad I didn’t:

  1. It’s a dick thing to say, the kind of thing that proves a person is self-absorbed to the point of obliviousness.
  2. I might have made a mistake when I registered, so the trouble might have been my fault.
  3. This had happened the day before. I am willing to bet that George Clooney didn’t ask if anyone knew who he was. At all times, I aspire to be at least as well-behaved as George Clooney.

Still, it’s an indication of how much things have changed in the short life of this show that I needed more than my smiling face to get in.

I understand that, with more than 150,000 people expected to attend, that it can be difficult for the staff to keep track of everybody. Unlike their other New York consumer show, Special Edition, NYCC is packed to the rafters.

There was a time when very few people wrote about comics, and I knew all of them. Even now, there aren’t that many people who write about comics every week. The (probably overworked and underpaid) person at press registration treated me like I was some kind of scam-artist trying to put one over on her.

Compare this to the way my pal, David Glanzer, says that San Diego treats press (and they get an even bigger crowd):

“I know press registration is a very difficult area. Heavens knows we’ve had our issues in the past. However we’ve actually received criticism for who we consider for press credentials. The truth is we have always considered independent press and bloggers/podcasters as our mainstream press. They are the ones who write about us throughout the year (not always positively LOL) while the bigger outlets really only tend to write about us once a year or so. The independents reporters have been with us since the start and they really still are the lifeblood for our publicity.”

The Javits Center is simply not designed for this many people. I mean, it’s not that well-designed to start-out with. Unlike, for example, the San Diego convention center, this has rather narrow hallways, and the exhibition floors are not close together. Under the best of circumstances, one must do a lot of walking. In this case, it’s nearly five Manhattan blocks (about a quarter mile) from one end of the building to the other.

When you add 150,000 people, it’s easy to create anxiety.

Still this year’s event seemed to run more smoothly than last year’s, at least according to initial feedback. There were lots of signs saying, “Cosplay does not equal consent,” and, while I don’t know if they make any difference (I’m not in costume), they made me feel more welcome. Perhaps in a related event, there seemed to be just about as many women in attendance as men.

The Mary Sue had a room for Geek Girls, which was a lovely respite in a sea of bodies. The room had signings and press materials, but also comfy chairs and books to read, and a crafts table to make friendship bracelets. I sat for a while with my knitting, talking to strangers about what they wanted to see and do. Truly a delight. I only regret that, by talking about it, I’m probably encouraging it to be more crowded next year.

Here are my suggestions to make this a better show:

  • Find a bigger venue, or additional venues. Not only was the exhibition floor jammed, and Artists Alley jammed, and various panel rooms jammed, but the hallways were always jammed as well. I didn’t go to any panels because there were lines everywhere and I was overwhelmed trying to figure out which mass of people were lines for which rooms.

The Javits Center is not designed to hold so many people. It was designed – poorly – for trade shows, not mass media events. More space would permit some room to breathe.

  • Set up special areas for cosplayers to change and to pose. It’s annoying to stand on line for half an hour to use the ladies room only to find that the stalls have been full of people changing, not peeing. Similarly, a lot of the clog on the show floor is people posing for pictures and expecting traffic to stop.

If there were special rooms set aside for changing, and special areas for pictures, then cosplayers and their admirers would have enough room to enjoy themselves, and traffic would flow more smoothly.

I don’t mean cosplayers should be segregated. I love seeing them randomly in the crowd (and on the subway). They make the event much more fun.

  • Now that fans are getting the message that harassment is not acceptable, can we teach them other aspects of crowd etiquette? For example, if you want to stop and talk to a friend, please step to the side. A bunch of people having a conversation in the middle of the aisle blocks the flow of traffic.

Maybe stop-lights at major intersections? I don’t know. I just want to be able to walk with a normal gait, instead of pivoting at a moment’s notice.

  • In general, we should remember that we are all humans in this together. Pay attention to your peripheral vision, people.

I get very short-tempered in crowds, but then I’ll see someone I know and be happy again. Klaus Janson talked with me about the blueberries at the Green Market. I brought the world’s most delicious matzo to fellow ComicMixer Marc Fishman and the Unshaven boys. I saw all kinds of creative new ideas for comics and illustration.

And then …

Some oblivious person with a backpack swiped against me hard enough to rip my sweater. My beautiful, one-of-a-kind hand-knit sweater.

Didn’t he know who I am?

 

Martha Thomases: The Comic Book Fan as Retailer

The New York Comic-Con is this week, which is hardly about comics at all anymore. It attracts more than a hundred thousand people to the unbearable Javits Center, all of them drawn to a celebration of pop culture, fantasy, and science fiction.

With all these people clearly interested in the genre, why do so few of them buy comics?

There isn’t one single answer, of course, but today I’m going to discuss the way the comic book publishers market their wares. Specifically, I’m going to talk about how they sell their books to retailers.

Comic books used to be distributed to the marketplace like other periodicals. The publishers would print and ship many more copies than they thought they could sell, ship them to newsstands and other outlets, and accept returns on the unsold copies. Because most comics and graphic novels are now distributed through the direct market, retailers order (and pay for) only the quantity they think they can sell.

Therefore, the primary customer for the publishers is the retailer and not the reader. The publisher does not care, in the short terms, if the retailer sells all the copies ordered. The publisher still gets paid. Of course, a thoughtful publisher will realize that selling the retailer too many copies will eventually cause the retailer to go bankrupt.

Too many publishers are not thoughtful. And too many retailers get into the business only because they love comics, not because they understand marketing. Or business.

If you read the (brilliant, I think) post in the link, you’ll see what information retailers are given to make their ordering decisions. He cites the example of Superman Unchained as a tragic lost opportunity. The book began at the same time the Man of Steel movie was released. It had Scott Snyder on script and Jim Lee on art. It should have been a huge hit.

Instead, it’s dribbling to a close.

The writer of the original post gives a lot of good reasons why he thinks this happened (bad title, unreliable scheduling). I think, if we step back, there are even more reasons.

The biggest problem is that the publisher thinks every possible customer is just like the retailer.

I love Scott Snyder as a writer, and I think Jim Lee’s art is dynamic and appealing. That said, I don’t think very many of the people who went to the movie know who either man is. Therefore, any new series designed to take advantage of the buzz about the movie needs to stress the character and the story more than the creative team.

The same is true for this summer’s bit Superman event, the Geoff Johns/John Romita, Jr. team. To comics fans this is great, but to the average person, a complete enigma. This is especially sad because I think Johns does a great job when he focuses on the most human and engaging aspects of the characters. His Superman is open and appealing to everyone, not just people who have been reading comics for decades.

And those people won’t ever know it, if the only way the title is promoted is to hype the creative team.

One of the biggest changes to happen to comics in my lifetime is that we now celebrate the talent. Fans know their favorite writers and artists, and will sample many different kinds of books because their favorites are involved. This is a terrific development. It shows the marketplace has matured, and allows creators to leverage their popularity into actual money.

The downside is when publishers think hiring great talent is all they need to do. Writers and artists can do fantastic work, but if the publishers don’t market these creations so that customers know what they are buying, it won’t matter.

Retailers have a responsibility as well. A well-promoted and designed store will invite in new customers and display merchandise in a way that is both fun and informative.

Consider other entertainment options that you purchase. When you decide to go to a movie, for example, you might consider the cast and, if you’re more involved, the director and the screenwriter. But first you want to know if it will make you laugh or cry, shiver with terror or clap your hands with delight. You want to know what kind of experience is being offered.

Comic book stores and comic book publishers who rely only on customers who are already customers will fail. We, as an industry, need to create new customers every day.

Or at least every Wednesday.

 

Martha Thomases: Common Sense Comics Decisions

SupergirlAs a young fangirl, I never dreamed I would live in an age when the characters I loved were available in so many media. There’s a television show based on a comic book just about every night of the week. The highest grossing movies have super-heroes in them. There are comic books in libraries.

All of these developments came about because of and depend upon women and girls. Nothing – not even sports – gets and stays on the television if it doesn’t appeal to women.

This would seem to be Common Sense Capitalism 101. Mass media isn’t really “mass” if it goes out of its way to exclude fifty-one percent of a potential audience.

That’s why, when a major American comic book publisher (in this case, DC) does something stupid, it makes me want to throttle someone. And I’m a pacifist.

DC has licensed two t-shirts that are incredibly insulting to their potential female audience. One shows Superman embracing Wonder Woman and says, “Score! Superman Does It Again,” as if Diana is a thing to be done. The other, aimed at women, says, “In training to be Batman’s wife.” Because obviously, it’s a more appropriate ambition for a girl to be someone’s wife than it is to be the star of her own adventures.

I’m exhausted from being outraged at this. In a lot of ways, it’s a minor misstep. No one is forcing anyone to buy the shirts. They aren’t the only shirts that offend me, nor am I the Tsarina of determining what shirts are acceptable. If you want that shirt, you should go out and buy it.

Except …

If you buy and wear either of those shirts, you tell me a lot about yourself. You tell me you don’t think women are as capable as men, nor are they even fully human. They are trophies for the alpha males. And I don’t really believe in alpha males (at least not as they appear in popular fiction. This is not a biology paper).

DC has issued an apology of sorts. This is what they said.

“DC Comics is home to many of the greatest male and female Super Heroes in the world. All our fans are incredibly important to us, and we understand that the messages on certain t-shirts are offensive. We agree. Our company is committed to empowering boys and girls, men and women, through our characters and stories. Accordingly, we are taking a look at our licensing and product design process to ensure that all our consumer products reflect our core values and philosophy.”

This is a terrible response. I don’t know who approved the t-shirt license, whether it was at the comic book company or at Warner Entertainment. It doesn’t tell us how the shirts got made in the first place. It doesn’t admit to any responsibility at all. You know you’re in trouble from a branding perspective when the NFL shows more sensitivity to women’s feelings than Hollywood liberals.

It’s not difficult to admit you made a mistake. They already have this fine example from one of their other licensees.

And speaking of apologizing, I screwed up last week. Since this is the time Jews are supposed to atone, I’d like to do that now. In my column, I said I wasn’t offering a “stereotypical PC rant.” It has been pointed out to me that this can be read as dismissive of those who write about comics from a political perspective. That was not my intention, and it means I expressed myself poorly. I meant to say that my remarks should be considered more as literary criticism, as something that relates to how well-developed a character is, and not solely in a socio-political context.

I wondered why I used those words, if I was somehow expressing some kind of internalized misogyny. It’s hard to tease out those particular strands, especially from a subconscious that is as filled with various kinds of self-loathing as my own. After all this time, all the marches and the arguments and debates, am I still worried that men might find me threatening and not like me? Do I need to build myself down by putting down other women?

Maybe. Maybe I was just being sloppy in my choice of words, a sloppiness that gives hints as to my inner drama. In any case, it would be my honor to be considered someone who spouts off with PC rants. Really. Just ask me about gluten.

And be careful of the t-shirts you choose to wear around me.

 

Martha Thomases: It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s A TV Show!

SupergirlSupergirl is one of my favorite characters, so I was delighted to read that there is a Supergirl television show in development.

Supergirl is one of my favorite characters, so I was terrified to read that there is a Supergirl television show in development.

There are several reasons for my conflicted feelings. When I was a girl, Kara Zor-El was my ideal. Not only was she blonde and cute (two adjectives not customarily applied to me), but she had powers, she was unsure of herself, and she was always trying to prove herself, not only to her cousin Superman, but to prospective parents who shopped at her orphanage. I wanted to have a robot double in a tree. I wanted to have a flying horse and a super-powered cat. Sometimes I wanted different parents.

I don’t think there is anything innately “feminine” about wanting super-powers, robots or flying pets. I still want them (and ain’t I a woman?). The difference between the me who liked these things in the first place and the me who likes them now is that I’ve gone through puberty.

And feminism.

This isn’t going to be one of those stereotypical PC rants (which I’ve never actually read, but then, I don’t seek them out) about how women are misrepresented in comics. They are, but I’m not arguing that in terms of politics, but in terms of realistic character development.

In the case of Supergirl, too often, she is written and drawn by men who don’t know anything about what it feels like to be a young adult woman – either teenaged or in her early twenties, as she will be portrayed in the show. If they do any research at all, it reads as if the watched Clueless and Mean Girls and decided that was enough.

Too many Supergirl stories (and movies, like this one) have her worrying whether boys will like her because she’s so powerful, or what is she going to do with all her power, or how does she fit into a world she never made with all this power. It’s all about being a Female With Power, not about being Kara Zor-El… or, in my fond memories, Linda Lee Danvers.

Her origin story has varied over the years. I believe in the New 52, she used to be a baby-sitter to her cousin Kal (now Superman) but, when Krypton exploded, she was sent into space in suspended animation. She crashes into Earth, not knowing the language and suddenly having super powers.

And since then, mostly, she’s been smashing things. No one understands her and she’s angry about it. So angry that, for a while, she was a Red Lantern.

Isn’t she the least bit curious about Earth? And her cousin? Doesn’t she want to know why she ended up here? I mean, if the baby I used to care for suddenly turned up and he was at least ten years older than me, I would want to know what his life was like.

And wham, she has super powers! Kal-El grew into his, but Kara gets hers all at once. Is that confusing? Is it wonderful? Is it awkward? Is it all of these things and more?

If anything gives me any hope at all for the possible television show, it’s that Greg Berlanti, the producer, has an okay track record in the way he deals with female characters on his shows. I really enjoyed Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Burstyn in Political Animals and Emily Bett Rickards plays a well-rounded, believable Felicity Smoak on Arrow. I’m not sure his shows pass the Bechdel test, but I believe it’s possible that they could, that these female characters have conversations about their jobs and their hobbies and their voting patterns when they are off-camera.

It would be worth everyone’s time and effort to involve more fully realized women characters, not just to be Supergirl, but in general. And I mean this in the most crass, materialistic way. Buffy the Vampire Slayer made a lot of money with a lead character who didn’t worry about whether or not boys would like her. She didn’t fret that being powerful would turn them off. At most, she worried it would kill them.

And she’s not the only one.

 

Martha Thomases: Defending Peter Pan

Over the weekend, film critic A. O. Scott wrote a long essay in The New York Times Magazine that irked me, and I wanted to use my column to unpack some of my feelings about it. If you have opinions about the state of modern pop culture, you might want to join me.

(I’m now going to paraphrase and reduce his arguments to the bones. By all means, read the entire piece for more nuance.)

Scott seems to think that the modern American adult, by his and her refusal to grow up, has had a deleterious effect on the popular arts. He specifically mentions “bromance” movies, like those produced by Judd Apatow, superhero movies, and adults who read young adult (YA) books like the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games. In his opinion, the success of these genres means that we, as grown-ups, are rejecting our responsibilities.

As a tax-paying citizen who serves on jury duty, votes in every election, raised a productive citizen and volunteers in my community, I think I qualify as an adult in attitude as well as age. And I like all the things that Scott decries.

For the purposes of this column, I’m just going to talk about the books Scott talks about. You may assume I have parallel arguments about the other categories, and we can talk about this in the comments, if you like.

First of all, unless we are talking about marketing categories (as determined by publishers, booksellers and librarians), the YA category doesn’t make a lot of sense. When I was in middle school and high school, I read all kinds of books that were not considered to be YA. I read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye and The Old Man and the Sea, books that are often read by people in those age groups. I also read Giles Goat Boy by John Barth. I read James Bond and Ray Bradbury and Philip Roth. We can argue about the varying qualities of these books, but none were racked on the children’s shelves.

Today, my reading includes some of these writers, and Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, J.K. Rowling and others who some may perceive to write for non-adults. I enjoy some genre fiction.

And I enjoy comic books. Lots of comic books.

Scott seems to think that graphic novels are not as intellectually demanding as prose novels. Like many, I think he confuses the medium of graphic storytelling with the genre of superhero comics. There are certainly books appropriate for the average young adult, such as March. And there are books that are not easily understood by those who haven’t had a certain amount of real-world experience, such as V for Vendetta or Promethea, which require at least some knowledge of history, linguistics, and adult relationships.

Please note: By adult relationships I mean actual relationships between adults, and not just sex. Thinking the word “adult” only refers to sex is actually kind of adolescent.

Now, I don’t really care what Scott thinks about my personal entertainment preferences. While we know some of the same people, I’m not likely to ever meet him, nor would I begin a conversation by attacking this particular essay.

And I don’t think he’s entirely wrong. Baby Boomers in general don’t like growing up, and we have clung to the remnants of our youth with a death-grip. We can be really obnoxious in our attempts to stay relevant, to the detriment of our popular culture.

Still, that is no reason to dismiss examples of popular culture because they come dressed in the costumes of youth and fantasy. After all, for nearly two centuries grown-ups have taught us that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

 

Martha Thomases: Subversive Family Reading

Over the weekend, while all the cool kids were in Baltimore for the Harvey Awards and the convention, I was at a family wedding. As such occasions are wont to do, I ruminated over my life and times.

On Friday night, at the rehearsal dinner, I was talking with a cousin who remembered that visiting our house as a child was fun because we had comic books, which her mother didn’t allow. At that time (late 1950s to early 1960s), comic books were still accused of causing juvenile delinquency, disrespect for authority and Communism.

Certainly, they did that to me.

My cousin’s life is about as different from mine as I can imagine, given our demographic similarities (over 60, female, college educated, Jewish). I live in an apartment in Manhattan; she lives in a rural part of western New York State. Until recently she worked as a carpenter; I expect it to be front-page news when I successfully change a light bulb. I know more about the Democratic candidate for Congress in her district than she does.

We both have fond memories of sitting on the porch, a pile of comics between us.

Another guest, who was not a relative, had never seen a graphic novel. He didn’t know what the term meant, thinking perhaps it was a more polite way to say pornography. We talked about the kinds of books and movies he liked, and I recommended some titles that I thought would fit with his tastes.

Why does this still happen? It’s been more than forty years since Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams were written up in the New York Times Magazine for bringing a grown-up sensibility to comics with story lines “ripped from the headlines” (and much more nuanced than your average episode of Law & Order). Major bookstores at the mall have graphic novel sections. It’s one of the few growth sectors of the publishing business.

But random people still only know comics from their childhood, if at all.

They know about “comic book movies” as a genre, but think it means Batman, Iron Man, The Avengers and, maybe, Guardians of the Galaxy. They don’t know that it includes films as diverse as Scott Pilgrim and Road to Perdition and A History of Violence and Two Guns.

Why should we fix this?

Self-interest, at the least. We enjoy the medium. Some of us support our families by working in it. Because it increases the amount of interaction between the two hemispheres of our brains.

The world is better when there are lots of different kinds of comics, appealing to lots of different kinds of readers. We shouldn’t have to raise money for the people who made the medium more diverse and appealing. We shouldn’t need a movie to justify our enjoyment of the source material. We shouldn’t need to have to keep explaining that comics aren’t just for kids anymore.

How do we fix this?

I think most of the responsibility falls to us, the people who love comics, who write about comics, who create comics. We need to show that we are as varied as the people who love any other popular entertainments. We are old and young, conservative and progressive, queer, straight male, female and other. Some of us like to wear costumes for occasions other than Halloween, and some of us don’t even like to wear them then.

There is no more a typical comic book reader than there is a typical movie-goer.

(Note: I’m aware that there exist statistics that show younger people are more likely to go to the movies, but first, those statistics vary widely, and second, my point still stands. Nyaah nyaah nyaah.)

It’s a big task, and we won’t accomplish it overnight. However, it’s the kind of challenge that is most successful when a lot of people do simple, easy things, rather than a few people dedicating their every waking moment to the cause. For example, I often refer to a graphic novel I’ve read in conversation, as if reading graphic novels is something that educated people do (because it is). When I give out candy and money for UNICEF at Halloween, I include comic books as one of the treats.

Not difficult. Not earth-shattering. Way more effective if we all do it.

The wedding was lovely, by the way. The party afterwards was big fun, too. I only had to sneak away a few times to see if my pal was winning any Harvey Awards.

 

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