Comics Still Wonderful In Spite Of It All

–The panelists of Mythic Fiction in Comics included Bill Willingham, Kurt Busiek, Chris Roberson, Matt Wagner, and Dark Horse editor Rachel Edidin and they all agreed that superhero comics were a dying genre. They also all thought that it would be beneficial for everyone to allow the characters to lapse into public domain.

—Quoted by Matt Funk

The industry has been asking itself some hard questions recently, and my tweets and email are full of people being depressed about things being so bad. As I always say, the comics industry can be horrid, but comics themselves are eternal. And you know what, when you get down to it the industry isn't THAT bad either. There are some good eggs out there.

The acclaimed Portland-based Study Group 12 anthology is starting up a web comic portal for several of their contributors, with regular series & one-shots included, in addition to regular blog posts like this one...

Best American Comics series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel have just posted the Notable Comics of 2011 list, those comics that did not make the contents of this year's Alison Bechdel-edited book, but are still worthy of notice. The listing includes covers, links and more information:

Whether you had a great week or a crappy week, this should tide you over the weekend.

Clearly, then, you can’t rely on schools to teach these prospective writers to read. You'll have to do it yourself. Fortunately, there's an easy way. Comic books.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you've seen Tom Spurgeon's essay on facing a life threatening illness, an illness which led to his unexpected blogging absence earlier this summer, and which still affects him, although he's recovering. Since looking death in the face usually prompts some inventory of life, Spurgeon does just that in an astonishing essay that covers his life and his life in comics, if there is a difference. That a man fighting for his life should spend that time thinking about the Green Lantern movie is both ridiculous and awesome -- Tom's thoughts on why we chose the comics life and why we stay there speak for me about 80% of the time. It's not that we have on choice, but rather why would we WANT to leave a field that is full of such honest, unpretentious work and creative, life-loving people?

While there will be plenty of PR spinning about DC's big news as a great jumping on point for new readers and all that other doublespeak, let's look at the other side of the coin.

On Friday, May 25, 1984, in a small town of 1200 people, in a small grocery store on the highway not too far from cornfields, at the golden age of 14, I became a comic book collector. What set me on this path that has led me >choke< 27 years later to be a comics missionary, spreading the four-color gospel far and wide? Well, I blame Morgan Freeman and Jim Shooter.

From the comments of our "Saving Comics" post, Tim Stoltzfus went back to this Milennium Eve 1999 post by Warren Ellis that had the same message, and a call to arms on other matters:

Where are comics going anyway? Has anybody asked that lately? David Brothers and Matt Seneca have their own takes on the matter.