COMIX

So, my wonderful girlfriend got me "Arrow" Season 1 on DVD for Christmas.  She wanted something we could binge watch (what an odd term) together that neither of us had seen before, thus preventing either of us from spoiling it for the other.  Anyway, we've been working through the series, and it's pretty darn cool.  Really good, really entertaining teevee.  With the hour long format there's tons of time for Action, Romance, Personal Conflicts, Soap Opera Stuff, and Flashbacks to Green Arrow's 5 Years he was stranded on the Island.  There's lots of little in-jokes and references for all of us Geeks, and they've been smart enough to add plenty of characters from the DCU to further interest us comic geek types (a pretty large tactical error on the part of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD (which I'm not dumping on, SHIELD is a pretty darn good show too, and they've been smart enough to tie the show into the movies, so there's that)).

Arrow and SHIELD (heck, we might as well talk about both) are both rooted somewhat deeply in reality.  I mean, yeah, both shows have lots of "not real" elements.  People get superpowers and Asgardians show up and we invent weird drugs called Vertigo and whatnot, but they still try to create a couple of shows where there's enough of a foothold in the real world to make it accessible to all audiences.  This coincides with a running theory that I have that movies and teevee have to present a believable reality in order for audiences to accept the show/movie.  Take "Star Wars" for instance.  Star Wars is a sci-fi movie set in a distant galaxy and features highly advanced technology.  Not all that believable, right?  But Star Wars sold its outlandish premise through great costumes and cutting edge special effects.  Compare Star Wars to its cheezy, low budget, poorly made counterparts sometime.  Oh wait, you can't find those movies?  Yeah, that's because they've been lost to the annuls of time because they're not "believable".  No matter how ridiculous or impossible a movie can be, if you root it in a level of reality, audiences will buy into it.  On the other hand, if you go all "over the top" with what you're doing, like the ill-fated but still excellent "Scott Pilgrim" movie, then audiences won't buy into what you're doing as much.

And as I've been watching Arrow and SHIELD and the Marvel and DC movies and enjoying the heck out of them, I have also had a running thought while watching them:

"These would make absolutely sucky comix."

I'm in a weird place with comics right now.  You have to understand I have read everything by now.  EVERYTHING.
40s and 50s Superhero comics (mostly Kirby, but I've got some really weird stuff in the collection too).
50s horror comics (I got a little EC and some 50s Kirby).
60s superhero comics (Kirby, Kirby, and more Kirby, oh and Ditko).
60s underground comics (mostly R. Crumb).
70s progressive comics (more Kirby, some Starlin, and Gerber.)
80s Coming of Age comics (when we "grew up".  Allan Moore and Frank Miller mostly.  I don't care about Byrne.  Sorry.).
80s Independent comics (classic TMNT, Cerebus, and pretty much everything by Ted McKeever)
90s Flash and Trash comics (still got a soft spot for those).
New Millenium revival comics (Astro City and whatnot).
Fancy Pantsy British guys writing American comics comics (Moore, Morrison, Ellis, Milligan, Gaiman, Ennis).
British guys writing British comics comics (yep, I got me some Judge Dredds floating around somewhere, along with some other stuff).
European comics (Asterix, Metal Hurlant, Jodorowski, and a leetle bit of Moebius).
Classic Japanese manga (Tezuka and Monkey Punch to name a few).
Modern Japanese manga (One Piece, Naruto, and whatever else was running in Shonen Jump when that was around).
High class American Independents (Los Bros Hernandez, Clowes, Ware, ect).
Weird, primitive Underground comics (Gary Panter and everyone influenced by him).
Don't even get me started on comic strips.
And tons of Small Press and Mini-comics.

I have read everything.  EVERYTHING.  And much like movies, whenever I had watched just about every dang movie ever made, I find myself in the unusual position of honestly asking myself a very simple question:

What DO I like?

And this question has started to shape my approach to what I pick up and enjoy.  The biggest thing I've discovered is that I want the exact opposite of the "Movie and TV" approach.  I don't want reality.  I don't want something down to earth and rooted in our world.  I can get that from movies and tv.  Comics should be Comix.  They should be big and bold and wild and untamed.  They don't need to be tethered down and introspective and "real".  Real is all around us all the time.  And the real that they present on movies and teevee isn't even really real anyway.  It's like that joke about the tv series "24":  For 24 straight hours Jack Bauer won't go to the bathroom!

Comix are words and pictures on paper.  They're marks of ink or, nowadays a buncha digital pixels and fancy techno-nonsense.  You can do anything in a comic.  You can be as wild and big and impossible as you want.  You can be as real as you wanna be, but why would you want to when you can build entire universes any way you want?

I figure in a few years my tastes will change.  I'll get older and I'll want comics that are simpler and smaller and more grounding in reality.  I will want deeper, more emotional, more introspective, character driven comics.

But right now, if it's not big, if it's not wild, if it's not impossible, then it's not COMIX.

And if it ain't COMIX, I ain't interested.