I've been in a mood for re-reading comics lately. It started with a book I bought a couple of weeks ago when we were picking up the usual comics - a guide to Sandman. It runs through the basic plot of each thread, explains a few of the obscure references, and has some interviews with Neil Gaiman and several of the artists. The book is organized to match the trade paperbacks (collections, for those of you not familiar with the comics world), and as I read it, I was overcome with the desire to re-read the collections. I mentioned it to Matt, who looked at me as if I'd grown a spare nose and reminded me that I have all the trades, and that this wouldn't be a terribly difficult task. Oh, yeah.
So I re-read Sandman. There are ten collections, comprising seventy-five issues and (I think) a couple of specials. It took me a while to go through them all, especially since I had other things to do. When I finished, the desire hadn't actually been slaked.
I re-read a Kabuki trade I'd picked up. Matt picked up the middle Transmetropolitan collection (there are currently three) and I devoured it - it contains my very favorite Transmet issue. (If you happen to be a curious fan, write me and I'll tell you which one it was, and why.) A couple of Strangers in Paradise collections. I read The Watchmen, which was one of the first comic collections I'd ever read, and the very first I'd ever bought. Reading that put me in the mood for something a little grimmer, and last night I read the first and third Transmet trades. I'd been meaning to re-read the third anyway - the political plot was pretty confusing one month at a time - not helped by the fact that the main character changes sides at least three times - and made much more sense as a collection.
The hunger still isn't slaked, and I'm trying to decide what to read now. Open Matt's comic boxes and dig out the rest of the Transmet political issues while I'm still understanding everything? I haven't re-read any of my Books of Magic trades in a while. V for Vendetta is powerful. I haven't read Maus yet, either. Re-reading Matt's Cerebus collection could keep me busy for over a week. Between the two of us, Matt and I have one entire bookshelf filled with nothing but comic book collections. Over-filled - there are other bookshelves in the house that are home to a collection or two, but this one is completely full. And we're still collecting. We've both read most of them. (There are a few of Matt's that I'm not interested in reading, and vice versa.)
It's funny - there are still comics that are "Matt's" or "mine" but we both read most of each others' comics. I pay for Strangers in Paradise, but Matt snatches it up as soon as I'm done. I sometimes don't wait for him to get to Transmet or Thieves and Kings - he's usually got a bigger pile of comics to read, and I get impatient. I've offered to make the weekly comics run one of "our" expenses - put everything on the joint account, but Matt refuses on the grounds that he buys a lot of comics that I don't read, and he doesn't want to spend money that's half mine on something I don't want. And it would be ridiculous to write three checks every week: Liz's comics, Matt's comics, and our comics. So we keep buying them separately, and I keep feeling a little guilty that Matt buys three times as many comics as I do while I read two-thirds of his.
It's weird; I would never have guessed that I was the sort of person who got "into" comics. They're boy things, you know? Superheroes in their leotards and capes and utility belts and women with breasts the size of basketballs and zero-gravity bras. I read Watchmen, by Alan Moore, when I was a freshman in college. I loved it because the superheroes weren't perfect. They had sexual hangups and squabbles amongst themselves and unrealistic opinions of what the world owed them and and they fought with their parents and their romantic liasons crumbled and they aged and even the women turned ugly. And it had this ending that just blew me away. I won't tell you, in case you're interested in reading it sometime, but it was just amazing. Very antithetical to the standard superhero story. I loved it - I read it in two days, without stopping for anything, and then gave it back to the friend who'd lent it to me.
When I was in grad school, I was went to the Waldenbooks to try and order a book that turned out to be out of print. While I was there, I wandered around a little, and my eye was caught by a stack of Watchmen, and I was overcome with a sudden urge to read it again. It was $17 - very reasonable for twelve issues of comics, but still a little steep on my graduate student budget. I couldn't resist, though. I bought it anyway, and spent two days reading it all over again.
About a year later, I was hanging out with K.T., and I picked up a comic from her table and started leafing through it. It was actually Matt's comic (this was while they were dating) and I didn't understand most of what was going on, but I was fascinated. Instead of superheroes in tights, this comic was populated with fairies and creatures of imagination and a boy who was less of a hero and more of a victim, even if he was the center of the plot. Later, I read Neil Gaiman's Books of Magic mini-series that began John Ney Reiber's longer series, and the first issues of the longer series, and the issue I'd picked up from K.T.'s coffee table made more sense. It's the first comic I ever bought in serial form.
When I started dating Matt, I read a lot of his comics, and a whole new world opened up. I still don't care for most superhero comics, though I'll put up with tights and capes and breasts larger than heads to get to a good story. I like a lot of Batman series, for instance, and J. Michael Strazinsky (I know I spelled that wrong) is currently doing a superhero story in which I'm enduring moderately crappy artwork to enjoy the plot.
I came to the conclusion that comics are just as valid a medium as books and movies and painting. If words are a valid art form, and pictures are a valid art form, then why can't words put together with pictures be a valid art form? It's because comics have a reputation for being children's stories. Specifically, the stories enjoyed by barely pubescent males who lock themselves in the bathroom and jack off to the image of the damsel in distress. Was that too harsh for you? It's what most people think of, in the secret backs of their minds, when they think of comic books. I used to be one of them.
But there's schlock in books and movies, too. Go into any bookstore and compare the space reserved for romance and adventure novels with the space reserved for the great classics of literature. Go into a video store and see how many copies of Citizen Kane they have, and then how many copies of Austin Powers. How many houses have Dogs Playing Poker on their rec room walls, compared to the houses with prints of Mona Lisa? Schlock can be fun, as long as you understand that it is schlock. But the good stuff is there, and it should be recognized as being good.
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