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Once upon a time I cared. I cared enough to run to the local newsstand and snatch up my favorite comic books. I visited the local K&B drugstores (since bought out by a larger chain) in the two towns nearest me because each store had a spinner rack full of comic books. I also remember how excited I was the first time I visited a comic book store. That was back in 1983, about two years before a hard freeze caused a plumbing nightmare the business shut down. I absolutely loved visiting comic book shops back in the mid-80’s, and that feeling lasted for a long time.
Back in the day, comic book shops were places where I didn’t have to go to get Marvel and DC titles. I went to comic book shops because I could find the weird, the unusual, and the strange worlds of comics from companies that were not Marvel or DC. Over time, those comic book producers have been called indies, alt-comix, art comics, etc. They weren’t available on newsstands like DC and Marvel were back in the 80’s. I could only buy titles from small companies like Eclipse, First, Comico, etc through the Direct Sales Market. The independent companies offered me a colorful, exciting world of new characters and concepts.
But something changed. Somewhere along the line DC and Marvel gained a stranglehold on the DM (Direct Market), while the independent companies fell to the wayside, and even the ones that survived, lost market share or stagnated. But that’s a story for another time… because I need to move on to the real subject of this column.
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I just read DC’s much talked about weekly comic book series, 52, specifically the first issue, 52 WEEK ONE. It makes me sad that a market that once easily supported American Flagg, Elfquest, Journey, Love & Rockets, Nexus, etc. exists mostly to sell a comic like 52. It makes me sad that superhero comics are now about things like Civil War and Infinite Crisis. Somehow I got talked into hoping that 52 might be something special. It just isn’t.
52 isn’t bad, nor is it good. It exists not so much as a work of art or even entertainment, but as something with a function. 52 has a purpose, or more than one, actually. First, it’s a tie-in to DC Comics’ recent mega-event series, Infinite Crisis. Secondly, it’s a bridge between the event of Infinite Crisis and the various comic book re-launches and new series debuts that will come out of the events of IC. Third, 52 gobbles up market share in the Direct Market for DC. As a weekly comic, it helps DC surpass Marvel both in terms of volume and total dollars. 52 ships four times per month (five times a month in a few cases) at $2.50 a pop. It would take four of Marvel’s monthly titles to match this one DC weekly title, in measuring market share.
Reading it, I get the idea that for fans, 52 serves their addiction, this neurotic need, or whatever you want to call it, to live vicariously through they favorite DC characters in this well-ordered fantasy universe where nearly every event has a specific place in a fictional timeline. The lives of every character is ordered from beginning to end, and everything has it place. When things get too cluttered, it takes a mega-publishing event to kill off some characters and timelines to bring stability back to this fictional universe. 52, like much of what DC has done the last year or so, is about correcting the contradictions and bringing order to the chaos of a fictional universe. Apparently, DC’s customers cannot enjoy one or even a few DC Comics if the entire superhero publishing line doesn’t make sense as a universe and if every book and character isn’t connected and related to all the other books and characters.
So with the need to bring order, it’s no wonder that hardly anything happens story-wise in 52 Week One. It’s less a narrative than it is an anally detailed sequence of events. The characters drink and smoke heavily, are depressed and sad, and are in mourning. One even puts the barrel of a pistol into his mouth. They’re not the amazing costumed wonders that superheroes were for a long time. They’re soap opera characters that dress strangely.
I still like superheroes; I still care. I’m just not that interested, not in the way 52 and comics like it would require me to be. I can buy reprints and archives of the books that enthralled me. I can’t be involved the way superhero comics are now (at least not actively). This isn’t escapism as entertainment; it’s escapism as navel gazing or chronic masturbation. If DC believes that comics like this are the way to bring in new readers – pre-teen, ‘tweens, and teens – then, the sales and marketing people at DC will have a tough row to hoe.
I also write movie reviews, which you can read at http://www.negromancer.com.
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