I’m probably going to expand upon this in “But I Digress”, but…
I was at a playground yesterday with Caroline. There was a little boy there, seven years old, named Steven. He was talking to other kids about Spider-Man, and what a big Spider-Man fan he was. He was showing off his Spidey sneakers very proudly.
And I said to him, “Do you read Spider-Man comics?”
He looked at me oddly and said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“I watch the movies,” he said. “And I play the video game. I beat Doc Ock,” he added proudly.
“Okay, but…Spider-Man’s a comic book character. Aren’t you at all interested in reading the comic?”
He shook his head. His ten year old brother said, “Why should he?”
I said, “Well, because you keep watching the movies, it’s the same story. What about new adventures, new stories about Spider-Man?”
The big brother shrugged and said, “He watches the cartoon.”
“I watch the cartoon,” Steve echoed. “And the movies. And play the game. I’m a Spider-Man fan!”
Spidey’s biggest fan…except for, y’know, the whole comic book thing. That he really doesn’t care about.
And why should he? How many have you, in the past five years, have seen a James Bond movie or played the video game? Now…how many of you have read a James Bond book? Seen a Sherlock Holmes film or a repeat of the Jeremy Brett TV series? As opposed to reading Conan Doyle or any of the many pastiches?
Comics used to be the only venue for following the adventures of iconic heroes, just as books were once the only means of keeping up with literary heroes. And now the heros’ popularity has outstripped any need for literature…or readers.
And you wonder why comics are hemorrhaging readers.
PAD
• 
You know something? I always liked the concept of the clone story. I saw soooo many things that they could have done or could have added to the concepts of the Spider books off of that concept.
Then the books started to hit the stands and I wanted to hammer the creative staff half to death.
My friends and I hashed out so many ideas that we thought would be so cool about this when we first heard the news (one idea even got played out almost %100 the way we talked about it as a major story arc for then entire third season of Farscape.) Then we joked about all the What The!!! (the comic book) type stories you could play with using the concept (the real Peter gives up the hero life, drops out and joins a hippy biker gang.) Imagine our horror when versions of the what The!!! concepts we threw about started showing up in the real Spider books.
Great idea. Bad follow through.
****************************************
I’m evil.
Just to make Spidey fans turn sheet white…
Just to throw the idea out to demented little future Spidey writers…
Just cause they could do it…
“And Ben Reilly was killed, so that his clone body could disintigrate, proving once and for all that our Peter had always been THE Peter.”
No, they didn’t show anything of the kind. They only ended up proving that Ben was a clone. It didn’t prove that Peter wasn’t. They both could have been clones.
Yeah, I seem to remember an extra “just to be sure” test taken after Ben died. But an advanced clone may have fooled the test that was done.
For all we know…… The real Peter Parker is still out there even now waiting to leave behind his life as an Xtreme Sports motorcross racer and reclaim the mask that belongs to him….
😉
(And, as someone named “Luke”, I also appreciate someone who realizes that the line is NOT “Luke, I am your father” !)
Correct, the line is, “No…. _I_ am your father.”
Just as Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
And James Doohan never said, “beam me up, Scotty.”
O.K., that last one’s pretty much a no-brainer. But you know there’s an expression often used here- even by PAD, if I remember rightly, and I really _don’t_ understand why they use it, because it’s not accurate.
That expression is: “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?”
I’m sorry, but that’s combining two completely unrelated statements from _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off_. Ben Stein’s character did say “Anyone? Anyone?” when seeking answers to question, but the only time he said “Bueller” was when calling the roll.
Incorrect quotes are a bit of a pet peeve. I also find it annoying when people mess up Theodore Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
Or as Sally Brown would put it: “Speak softly and carry a beagle.”
Rick
By the way, speaking of making comicbooks accessible to new readers, can anyone tell me whether the Supergirl introduced in _Superman/Batman_ was introduced in the present day (meaning the “Matrix” Supergirl still came from a pocket universe, and still merged with Linda Danvers at the start of PAD’s run); or if Supergirl continuity has been retconned and she’s now the only Supergirl the world’s ever known?
Personally, I hope it’s the former. I think it’s more reader-friendly for Kal-El to find a long-lost relative many years after believing he was Krypton’s only survivor, than it is to say “all these stories never happened.” What’s more, Kara’s decision to call herself Supergirl could honor both Superman, and the former Supergirl, Linda Danvers. And if the Linda Danvers Supergirl hasn’t been retconned out of existence, she could theoretically return as Superwoman.
(On a side note, I found it amusing reading references to Sue Richards as “The Invisible Girl” in _Essential Fantastic Four_ #4. Sue was at this point married and a new mother. I don’t think “girl” is the right word.).
Rick
Hemorrhaging readers? I think it’s more like “Draining readers dry”. I love comic books, I think my collection of 15 years would help qualify that statement. If not, then take a look at my link and try to tell me that I don’t love it. Quite frankly, I can’t afford the $200.00 a month needed to enjoy the medium. I can’t justify $3.00 a book when rent is due. This isn’t a complaint over multi-crossover gimmicks, I just enjoy a varied supply of stories. I’ve been hoping for an iTunes type of solution. Pay a buck, get a .pdf download. But I guess if it ain’t movies or music, developers aren’t interested.
Here is the problem, most comics are gawdawful.
Now, that has probably always been true. It is certainly true of movies and TV. If were to read a random comic from the Golden or Silver Age, then it probably wouldn’t be very good. However, the big difference is that in those examples the average quality doesn’t matter.
In current comics from the Big Two, it does. That leaves the best creators beholden to the worst ideas of their least talented colleagues. This syndrome is worst with the most popular characters. There are 4-5 different writers working Superman and Batman every single month. I’ve lost count of the various Spider-Man titles. Do you think Claremont & Byrne could have pulled off the ‘Dark Phoenix’ saga with 20 different X-books crossing over into it? There is a reason that there has not been a classic, in-continuity comic book story in forever.
Take Superman as an example. Everyone on Earth knows the basic story. When the new movie comes next summer, it will probably $300+ million in the U.S. alone. That means roughly one person in ten will have seen it in theaters, or 30 million people. The comic, on the other hand, is considered a roaring success if it sells one half of one percent of that. Forget the movie, the comic would be doing well if it had 5% of the weekly audience for “Smallville”. Why?
The simple reason is that a Superman fan that watches the movies, loves the various TV series, plays the video games, etc. has very little hope of randomly picking up an issue of the comic and having any hope of knowing what on Earth is going on. The endless retcons since the 1980s have left the basic story that everyone on the planet knows a total muddle. Does he hang out in the Fortress of Solitude? Is Lex Luthor an evil businessman (as he has been exclusively seen in other media)? Is Supergirl the last daughter of Krypton?
I don’t know the answer to those utterly basic questions and I follow comics. Moreover, Superman is probably the most straight-forward major character. If you loved the X-Men movie, then what hope would you have with the comic? How would you know which version of Spider-Man was for you?
I live at 33756 Commonwealth in Seattle. Been up here before?