So, I cut one of my local comic book stores loose today. The separation was a long time coming, and while I’d like to say to Former Comic Book Store “It’s not you, it’s me,” really, it’s more like “It’s you, plus a general evolution in my comics-buying habits.”
When we moved here a few years ago, Old Store was the only game in town.* Since then, two more stores have opened up, including one a lot closer to my house—one a lot larger, better stocked, with more reasonable prices on its back issues, and featuring a comparatively broad range of indie and alternative comics—but I’ve maintained a pull list at the first store, partly out of habit and partly because I wasn’t sure how long either of the new stores would stay in business. Even once I started a list at the newer, closer, more indie-friendly store, I only included comics that weren’t already on my other list. I figured it was better to spread the wealth (wait, that can’t be the right term…) among as many local retailers as possible.
But man, has it become a hassle to get out to the other store—not just because of its distant location but because it’s situated in a strip mall with little parking and on one of the busiest streets in town, streets that have become even busier in our post-Katrina population boom. Plus, it’s the store where I engaged in this conversation, though the principal offender no longer works there, so I guess I shouldn’t hold that against them anymore. But the main thing is, many of the comics on my list at the old store have either been canceled (Firestorm), are on the verge of wrapping up (Y: The Last Man), or, more commonly, are titles in which I’ve simply lost interest, either due to shifts in creative direction or shifts in my own tastes. Many of these, too, are casualties of bang-for-buck calculus: titles that I maintain a mild interest in but that just don’t earn their three bucks every month.
This clean break affords me the unusual (and, for most of you, painfully tedious) opportunity to consider the casualties of a fairly major purge from my regular monthly comics buying. So, farewell to you——Ultimate Fantastic Four. I put it on the pull list when Warren Ellis took over full time. Enjoyed his stories, stuck around for Millar’s—I thought the zombie stuff was fun, and actually made good use of Greg Land’s airbrush style—and have been faithfully paging through Mike Carey’s perpetually promising but never quite excellent run with diminishing hopes. I know I’m going to miss having a monthly FF fix once McDuffie leaves the flagship title and Loeb and Hitch take the reins, but UFF hasn’t really been hitting the spot anyway.
—Ultimate Spider-Man. This title has felt like it’s spinning its wheels for a long while now. Or maybe I’ve just hit my saturation point for Peter-in-high-school stories. I really liked what Bendis did with the Peter/MJ/Kitty Pryde triangle, and I’m curious to see how (or if) he’ll use Kitty as a supporting player in the book now, but even that curiousity, combined with my admiration for Stuart Immomen, is just not enough to keep me reading through another Spider-Man vs. Green Goblin punch-and-quip fest spread out over six issues.
—Ultimates. You may have noticed a pattern here. The whole Ultimate universe has lost its appeal to me. The anything-can-happen vibe that made its early stories so compelling is no longer in evidence. Instead I get more of a post-reboot Superman vibe. You know, those stories in which writers tried to shoe-horn some bit of the old pre-Crisis continuity into the new tales, usually losing whatever made that character or setting interesting along the way. Given my general distaste for Millar’s lazy, cynical take on the Avengers, I’m surprised I stuck with this series as long as I did—I suspect it was because it came out so infrequently that I kept forgetting to drop it. I think I kept reading for a whole year on the strength of that one Bryan Hitch drawing of Captain America plummeting into Times Square, backlit by the Coca-Cola sign. It was the sort of image that made you think Ultimates was a much smarter series than it really was.
—Runaways. I’ll keep picking this up month-to-month until the end of Whedon’s run, and then I’m done. No real reason desire to read Terry Moore’s take on the characters, though if I hear raves I can always pick it up in trade.
—Daredevil. The thing is, status quo Daredevil stories—where he’s a blind lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen fighting crime—just don’t do it for me. Daredevil works best when he’s fashioning a cudgel from the smoldering ruins of his life. Of course, you need a status quo life to soak in gas in the first place. So Brubaker’s in a tough spot here, I realize. The best part of his run for me was the early Murdock-in-prison stories—not accidentally, the ones that followed most directly from the end of Bendis’s run. Since then, the stories have been well crafted but lacking spark.
—New Avengers. Demoted to month-to-month. I’m just not sure it’s worth three dollars a month for a borderline coherent collage of ideas that Bendis thinks are cool when what I want to read is an Avengers comic. I think if Bendis stays on this title for, say, three more years, we’ll pretty much be reading his dream journal. I don’t have objections to the Bendisy line-up, since shaking up the roster is an Avengers tradition dating back at least to #16. But the latest issue—with the justly maligned Tigra assault, the Hood giving the same speech Lex Luthor has given two or three times over at DC the last couple of years, and the general failure to advance the big Skrull plot—is a disaster. And there’s always the fact that Bendis has not proven particularly adept at wrapping up his big stories in satisfying ways. And my sneaking suspicion that he’s rocking this one out Lobdell-style, which is to say, making it up as he goes along.
These phoenixes will rise from the ashes of my old list and find new life at the other store: Captain America, Thunderbolts (at least to the end of Ellis’ run), Astonishing X-Men.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that everything I’m dropping is a Marvel title. I don’t think it has as much to do with the company in general as with my weariness with the Ultimate line and in particular with Bendis’s storytelling style. I do note that I haven’t really added any new Marvel titles to either list in a long while—She-Hulk and X-Factor were probably the last ones, though I’m getting increasingly excited about seeing The Order on the new release list each month. I’d probably be picking up Immortal Iron Fist monthly now if they’d initially released the first collection as a TPB instead of an HC, but I guess I’ll be following it in the trades. Elsewhere in the Big Two, other than Booster Gold—the jury is still deliberating and has ordered fancy bagels—the only DC ongoing I’m following with much interest these days is Checkmate, though I look forward to Gail Simone’s arrival on Wonder Woman and mourn her absence on Birds of Prey.
Sure am ready for that Black Dossier next month.
*Or so I thought: I later learned that there was a dealer working out of the legendary Book Warehouse on Florida Boulevard, but the BW shut down. He’s got his own, nice, shop a little further down Florida now, with an excellent, extensive, alphabetically organized 50-cent section.
Wha—? No comments on the new Alex Ross Captain America uniform? Surely some are forthcoming?
Wait, whoa, what?? JBC, I didn’t know about it until you commented!
Uh . . . he looks like that “Citizen Steel” cover. One of the rare times I don’t like Alex is when he’s doing “shiny.” And—what the heck is up with the “pants”?
I think I can say I don’t like it. Unlike his wonderful, de/reconstructed designs for Kingdom Come characters, this just seems confused.
Okay, I have to agree with most of your choices here, Prof. After two issues of Joe Casey nonsense, I dropped UFF, and haven’t looked back. I’m tired of fragmented, paper-thin, bi-monthly comics that are Greg Land CTRL-V fests.
“I think if Bendis stays on New Avengers for, say, three more years, we’ll pretty much be reading his dream journal” is basically the greatest sentence ever.
Wha? New cap? At least this time he doesn’t have the flat-top. I’m not crazy about the costume, nor the gun. Cap packin a gun? Maybe in a WWII setting. Maybe, just maybe, this Cap is one that is sanctioned by the government and is fully intended to be shiny and bullish and “might makes right” America-style of the recent Bush admin. In that context it makes more sense. Like it’s Bush in a new “better” Captain America costume. Hopefully he will be thwarted at some point by a true blue patriot type Captain America. Like Steve Rogers who is really not dead, but he’s been hiding out and working against the governmental machine, etc. Maybe even using his Earth-prime double or whatever it was in She-Hulk a couple months back to explain the dead guy in the costume.
I think Alex Ross is so reverant of the old heroes and their costumes that he wouldn’t knowingly do something like this, unless it was intended to make a point about the attitude of the guy in the costume. If it were the real Cap, or intended to be a legit replacement, then I think we would’ve seen something much more inline with tradition…and no gun.
Yeah.. Reminded me of The Shield, that Pop/Wizard patriot hero predecesor of Cap’s. And, metallic and shiny make me think Iron Man. I soooo hope Tony Stark isn’t the new Cap…
My guess: It’s Undead Cyborg Bucky, trying to honor Cap’s memory, BUT! he’s secretly under the control of Dr. Faustus and the Red Skull.
“Undead Cyborg Bucky” huh? After 7 hours on the road yesterday when a simple trip to the aquarium at New Orleans turned into a traffic and detour fiasco, that’s what I feel like today!
I’m not entirely sure about the new Cap with a gun, myself, particularly with Punisher running around in the costume—honestly, I was originally really keen on the idea, but it’s just so poorly executed.
Bucky’s alive, though. Kind of. I mean, he’s a super spy when we see him in Civil War, although granted he could just be a clone of the original like Hatemonger is of Hitler. Who knows? Bucky just doesn’t ever stay dead.
Prof, have you been to School of Comics out on Jefferson? They have some odd stuff, though the selection’s a little lacking on indie titles. I end up there a lot because it’s right by my gaming store.
Oh, also, hi. I’m Vigil.
Yeah, Vig, I’m partial to the School of Comics—the best overall operation in town as far as I can tell. Have you been reading those Matt Fraction Punisher stories? I’ve been skipping them on the basis of my not really caring about the Punisher, but I’m slowly being converted to the Cult of Fraction and thinking about giving them a shot.
There’s nothing more american gunwise than a USGI 1911, which is what that handgun appears to be. Apart from the fact that the firearm in the illustration appears to have no sights. Guess he’s not planning on actually hitting anything.
I know that realism isn’t supposed to feature in comics, but when I got into shooting I realised that 99% of the fear situations in entertainment could be solved by the application of high-velocity lead poisoning. This applies to comics as well.
Castle’s the only character with the right idea, and even then the writers and artists keep illustrating him with arsenals consisting largely of weapons that would have a real operator laughing his head off. All I want is one good comic that addresses firearms use knowledgably and respectfully.
Oh, come on, Leitmotif! Are you forgetting the amazing Punisher Armory comic, which was chock-full of gun porn? If you’ve never seen them, Eliot R. Brown will certainly fill your need for realistic mechanized mayhem.
Gun porn. That’s the problem. Show me one character that’s a shooter. Particularly a normal, everyday character, because that’s what we are – supporting cast, walking past you in the street with guns on our hips, in our bags or under our shoulders, and going about our business just the same as anyone else.
Gun porn doesn’t interest me. One or two good firearms is fine. I want to see firearms use not as the tool of borderline insane tortured psychopaths, criminals and state organs. I want to see people doing some good.
Well, the character you describe is not a protagonist—she’s a bystander, a background figure, reactive instead of proactive. Of course your weapon-centered protagonist is not going to reflect the normalcy of a person who legally arms their self, because there ain’t no story there. That’s why you see the two or three gun-centered characters, like the Punisher, Vigilante, or to a much lesser-extent, Hitman, being portrayed as nutjobs or fringe characters. If you want a decent portrayal of it, I can only think of one writer to look to: Max Allan Collins.
In his magnificent Ms. Tree pulp series, illustrated perfectly by Terry Beatty, Max often grapples with the use of guns, pervasive gun violence, and the repercussions of being an armed person in a world of violence. It has its ups and downs, but over the years has become one of my favorite series.
To a lesser extent, his Wild Dog series involved many of the same problems and issues and is well worth picking up.
Yet as a premise, you must understand that any quasi-realistic portrayal of users of ballistic weaponry contains implicit reference to lethal force. For many comic book characters, this is off the table before the story starts.
Bringing us full circle, one of the only interesting things that the Ultimates did was show us a Captain America who was an offensive soldier, armed with weaponry, shield, and canteen to boot. John Byrne’s short lived but enjoyable Torch of Liberty homage was similarly prepared.
Prof, I haven’t really been reading too many of them as I’ve been working a lot lately, but from what I saw in a casual perusal it’s not too bad. Definitely worth a look, although it’s a lot less Frank Castle vs. the criminal world and more Frank Castle vs. supervillains with agendas that loosely fit his new persona in the modified Cap suit. For instance, Hatemonger is apparently somewhere in Texas, instigating racism against Mexicans.
I’m with you on Punisher’s judicious use of bullets where they’re needed, Leit, but cut Frank Castle some slack: he cannot ever be a realistic gun toting citizen. He’s a man who’s dedicated his life to revenge as solidly as Batman, having a literal one man war on crime. And while it is kind of gun porn, Armory features a lot of real hardware, and is a good starting point for an assault weapons Christmas list.
A carried firearm is almost never used, so there wouldn’t be much by way of story there. Yes, the sort of character I’m talking about would be background. I don’t need a main character, just maybe some hunters who aren’t good ol’ boys, target shooters – who incidentally are smarter than the average population, and have higher earning jobs – and most importantly, a couple of side characters who, lacking superpowers, decide that they don’t have to be defenseless.
The only time I’ve seen a friend of a ‘hero’ arm themselves, it was portrayed in the most negative light possible. The episode resulted in the friend handing his gun over to the hero, and the hero doing the whole sitting there with it in his hand, angst on face, lots of shadows thing. It revolted me. A ‘hero’ shouldn’t insist that people be unable to defend themselves.
Comics, like so many other forms of entertainment, seem to have absorbed this idea that self-defense is morally unacceptable. That a character raped and/or beaten, sometimes to death – honestly, how many times have you seen the ‘rape of a friend’ story trotted out? more than once – is morally superior to the same character holding a gun.
I have to go to work. Maybe more discussion later, if my viewpoint isn’t creeping you out yet
No, you raise some really interesting points, some of which have popped up obliquely in Marvels/Kingdom Come, about what a person is supposed to do when confronted when super-thugs . . .
But I think the heavier question you’re asking, vis-a-vis the constant use of victimization in comics (especially of women or, some would argue, of gays)—why aren’t those closest to the hero armed? Let’s go Silver Age: if Superman was all that worried about Lois, wouldn’t he have loaded her up with the most powerful defensive (and possibly offensive) weaponry of a dozen civilizations? Wouldn’t there be 2 Superman robots following her at all time (invisibly)? Wouldn’t she be safer then anyone ever?
The most realistic treatment I’ve ever seen of these issues was in Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man, where a JLA transporter is installed in his house; the Mirror Master attacks him at home; and ultimately, his family is murdered by a Chaneyesque Republican figure in order to stifle his dissent.
The larger societal question you’re inferring, of course, is: What If Sue Dibny had a .32? What if Ellen Baker was armed? A lot of these questions fade into the larger comics narrative—as unpowered, background characters, far too often they’re used simply as cannon fodder to propel the (superpowered) story forward.
I myself am waiting for a more accurate representation of that silent, but ever growing, minority: flail-wielders. Why is it that everyone in comics who uses a flail is a dubiously historicized monosyllabic medieval figure? The only decent contemporary flail-wielding character in comics is that guy Hector from the Pantheon, from Peter David’s run on Hulk, and even that totally played into the tired stereotype of all flail-wielders being gay immortal part-Asgardian secret agents. I’m so over that cliche—been there, done that, Peter David. We expect better of you.
Also, Ellen Baker totally kicked the Mirror Master’s ass. If she’d had a gun, I bet she would have kept it under lock and key safely away from her kids, so the Owl probably would have killed her anyway.
I haven’t read the Punisher in a while, but I always thought Kurt Busiek’s (I think it was Busiek) memorable description of him as a serial killer who kills criminals (a la Dexter, I guess) was pretty accurate.
Is this the right time to get into my rant about how the conclusion of A Time to Kill is total bullshit because Samuel Jackson’s character should totally have gone to jail for killing those guys?
All that aside, I suppose I’d quibble with the notion that popular culture promotes an idea that self-defense is unacceptable. I would agree that depictions of guns in popular culture tend to be excessively sentimentalized in one direction or another—either the tear-strewn all-guns-are-inherently-evil story or the I-got-my-gun-now-you-can’t-touch-me-this-is-in-no-way-phallic revenge fantasy. As gorjus suggests, it’s simply a questions of genre constraints (if we’re talking about superhero stories here).
Everyone’s so sure that’s “really” Bucky, huh?
I mean, I think it’s Bucky. But I also think the Falcon is Sam Wilson, social worker. If you know what I mean.
Professor, your argument fails at the first step. If you can find me a person who walks around in modern society wearing a flail, I’ll concede that your comparison has merit. Unfortunately, it doesn’t – but there are literally millions of real, live firearm users in the modern world, seemingly ignored by entertainment, except for a few fanciful cliches and the occasional psychopath.
You’ve actually described the other sneaky (and fallacious) anti-gun argument – that a person who uses a gun in self-defense will kill again, and again, and again. Or that a person who uses a firearm at all will become a killing machine. Sigh. And yet there are over a million defensive uses of a firearm in America alone each year. Where are all of those serial killers?
Work again. I’ll try and post more from the office.
To come back to what gorjus posted, you’ve hit the nail on the head. What firearms represent is empowerment. Heroes are given their abilities by a higher power, and normal people have to just muddle on like the cannon fodder that they are. Firearms upset that order, by ensuring that the would-be victims have the ability to fight back.
A gun isn’t a badge of authority. It is a symbol and a means. A symbol of the will to ensure one’s survival, and a means to back up that determination. Why are liberals so keen to strip away that will and means? Collectivists tell us that protection is the job of the police, but the police aren’t everywhere. Relying on others, in both the comic and real world, can get you killed.
Heroes don’t believe in killing, for whatever reason. Idealism is all well and good, but they kill hundreds by their failure to end the threat of the superpowered mass murderers they (momentarily) capture. Sure, they’re supposed to be held to a higher moral standard, but what about the man or woman in the street? Are they expected to just give up their lives? Become complicit with the rapist or murderer? Because that’s what not fighting back means. Once a criminal learns that they can get away with a crime, they’ll be more likely to do it again. By not stopping the criminal, you have become an accessory to their future acts. Is this social and moral failure somehow more correct than ending such a threat?
In short, comics teach a skewed and unrealistic moral code at best, and are dangerous at worst. Teaching people to become victims is literally killing them. That’s why I can’t bring myself to read comics any more.
Well… the flail thing was meant as a bit of funny nonsense (although I’ll bet if we looked hard we could find a flailist). The Punisher comment slightly less so, since on the one hand you decry the Punisher as an example of the psychopathic gun-nut cliche, yet on the other you say he’s the only character with the “right idea,” which confuses me—the Punisher’s “idea” is murdering those he believes to be criminals; if the “right idea” is to use guns responsibly and defensively, then the Punisher doesn’t have it. You might find it in some of the examples Gorjus suggests, though.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that the world of comics (by which I think you mean comics in the superhero genre) is a world in which ordinary people have no power—it’s a familiar critique of the genre, one that overlaps with observations about the problematically fascist nature of the superhero. Although we could probably pretty easily find a sizable stack of issues in which ordinary-joe bystanders stick up for themselves or for the hero, and a slightly smaller stack in which the whole idea of ordinary people being powerless in a world of gods and monsters is self-consciously problematized, the hero-rescues-victim dynamic is always going to be as much a part of the genre as capes and secret headquarters. A story in which a home-owner frightens off a burglar with a gun may be interesting or a more accurate representation of gun use, if your stats are right, but it’s not a superhero story. It might be an issue of The Spirit. There’s not much else to say about it, really; although I disagree that the superhero genre celebrates victimhood, if that’s the implication that you see, then yeah, not reading those sorts of comics anymore is definitely the right move. (That’s not snark—everything on the internet sounds like snark.)
I think the “liberals want to take away all our guns” line is a bit of a straw man—I base this on a very unscientific study in which I thought of the gun-owning liberals I know. The collectivists might want to take our guns, but I haven’t met any so I dunno.
This is completely unrelated to the gun thing but something you guys were saying about the generic convention of the hero-victim relationship reminded me of something that bothers me about NBC’s Heroes. To begin with, they’ve skipped this issue by making essentially everyone a hero. Now, some heroes ultimately end up as victims (of this Sylar/brain-stealing, power-stealing guy), but there’s hardly any characters that don’t have some super-duper power. So, instead of normal people being relegated to the background, they’re pretty much absent from the product altogether. Which pretty much means that the heroes are saving…themselves?
Secondly (possibly related) and perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this show, is the overwhelming sense of narcissism that you get from the characters. They’re all so self absorbed. The show’s narrative actually helps this along since the show consists of (usually) about 12 different plot lines that only tangentially interact with one another.
That’s disturbing if you consider the allegorical implications for the show and American culture. It’s like our culture is frantically saying: I’m special, right? Right?
Hey, I agree with most of what you’re saying. Not that I know comics deeply. But yeah, Ultimate Spiderman just got too cutesy-cute bigeyed teeny love for me. And like I wrote to you in an email once, I hate what the Ultimates did with the Hulk (have I got the comic right?), changing him into a coward and a madman. And what’s with giant guy killing his wasp wife? Jeez, get a handle on your relative importance in the world of meaning, writer guy.
For the others, you know them better than I do. Daredevil never appealed to me because I like superpowers. Batman is almost the only exception I make, and when I was a kid I didn’t really like him. Could we just lose Robin entirely? The recent versions have been better, but the kid never worked anyhow.
Re: Ultimates: exactly. I’d be fine with making Hank Pym a miserable wife-beater (as he was in the mainstream MU for a while) or the Hulk a cowardly horndog if Millar was doing anything with those characterizations besides using them as vehicles for his contempt for conventional superheroics. But no, it was just one note, played over and over again for years.
[...] my pull list, but I am picking them up regularly. (I dropped a bunch of other stuff a while back, as noted here.) These are just the ongoing titles; I’m not listing mini-series and the [...]