Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, just in case anyone was confused.
And just because something’s slightly dumb, doesn’t mean it’s bad. See Hellboy.
What about Manga? It has everything from science-ficiton, to historical dramas, to lighthearted romance. True, it’s not quite as popular or widespread in the U.S. as it is in Japan, but it’s still out there.
You beat me to it, so I’ll have to second you. Manga is pretty diverse, and (usually) has good, interesting storylines, and very nice artwork. It’s a bit more expensive, perhaps, but, at least in my experience, the books contain quite a bit more material than normal comic books do, so…
Ranchoth, good point about Manga. It is more diverse than the standard American comic, reflecting the mainstream popularity of the sequential art medium in Japan. It is catching on in the U.S., but (IMHO) it has a long way to go before it is viable in the states.
That’s because Manga is stupid.
Indeed, it is almost overwhelmingly preposterous.
Second that. SPOOFE, do you want to explain why you feel that comic books are meaningless and inane? I’m not quite understanding you.
No, he’s talking about the other guy. The one with the cool gas-mask and the wire-poon gun. He’s a great detective, too.
Maus
From Hell
Promethea
V For Vendetta
Age of Bronze
Peep Show
Love and Rockets
American Splendor
Virtually anything by R. Crumb
Hell, Promethea is about the Kaballah, one of the most insanely complex philosophical systems on the face of the planet. Alan Moore’s work in general makes most of Gaiman’s work look like cheap pulp fiction, and most popular novels look like the scribblings of a preschooler. Age of Bronze is a brilliant adaptation of the Trojan freaking War. Maus won Art Spiegelman a goddamn Pulitzer, for Chrissakes.
How can you possibly say comics are stupid, SPOOFE? You simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
What are the sales of these titles compared to an average X- or Bat-book? The presence of high quality work only highlights the appalling stupidity of most comic books.
There seems to be a double Sturgeon’s siftin gin comic books. 90% of them are crap, and 90% of that non-crap group is merely adequate.
(You forgot to mention Planetary or Moore’s work with Supreme. Those are a lot of fun for folks with an appreciation of the history of comic book publishing. I admit to being a sucker for the spandexed goober genre.)
Sure, superheroes dominate the market in the US. But it isn’t the least bit difficult to find non-superhero comics:
Queen and Country: Spies.
Fables: Fairy tales turned sideways.
Y: The Last Man: Science Fiction.
Walking Dead: Zombies (sci-fi).
Mythstalkers: 19th century paranormal investigators.
Strangers in Paradise: Relationship drama.
Or graphic novels that are true novels (in addition to those already listed):
Blankets
A Contract With God
300
The Name of the Game
Ghost World
Our Cancer Year
Torso
Jar of Fools
And just to show what a geek I am, I’m going to nit-pick the strip that inspired me to write the OP. “Amazon Girl” is clearly meant to represent Wonder Woman. Having an extraordinarily attractive body is actually one of her “powers”–she was granted great beauty at her creation by Aphrodite.
Wholeheartedly agreed, in principle, DrFidelius. However, that is wholly beside my point. I was responding to SPOOFE’s allegation that
He specifically states that comics are self-limiting by their nature, and therefore stupid, apparently being offended by the “flashy art.” I charge that regardless if 99.99999999_% of every single comic book out there is utter buttwipe-quality dreck, that in no way means that the medium is “stupid” in any sense of the word. There are examples of truly awe-inspiring art in the comics medium.
However… I’d lay very good odds on that 90% of all Manga produced in Japan are just as much stupid dreck as their American counterparts. The advantage is that the variety is much broader, the number of titles so much higher, and the competition for eyeballs so much more profitable, that there’s a higher chance by sheer force of numbers that we’ll find good, interesting storylines with very nice artwork. (And of course it helps A LOT that it is viewed as more than just children’s stuff) But I’m sure there’s some guy on the Tokyo metro right now saying “Man! I wasted 1,000 Yen on THIS crap?”
But as has been mentioned earlier, there ARE good American comic works out there, and not even that hard to find. But that only helps point out how lame is most of the stuff the two big publishers put out. So Watterson has an axe to grind with the commercial mainstream of comicdom… can’t say I blame him. I may feel he’s not totally realistic in expecting the other parties involved in the business to care beyond the bottom line, but he has a legit gripe.
I don’t get Watterson’s angst. Sure, 95%, or whatever percentage you want to say, of comic books are dreck. Ever checked out the New York Times Bestseller list? I’d venture to say that 95% of currently-published fiction, and especially the best-seller list, is dreck, too. But I don’t hear too many people claiming that “novels are incredibly stupid.”
There was recently an article linked to this forum (and I cannot find it for the life of me, and search ain’t workin’ for me) which gave some insight into Watterson’s “early retirement.” A number of Dopers (and Farkers, as the article was linked there) interpreted Watterson’s increasing perfectionism and disdain for marketing as something to be lauded. I myself saw a strong streak of elitism in the article. Watterson used to constantly nag Berkeley Breathed on “selling out.” It reminded me of reading New Music Express and seeing indie rock bands calling each other “sellouts” for daring to play listenable tunes or play a concert venue larger than the back room of a pub. It seems that he’s trying to have it both ways: he made, after all, quite a bit of money from Calvin and Hobbes, enough to go into early retirement, but he can fire bolts at other artists for being too populist and money-minded.
Mind you, I always admired Watterson’s anti-marketing stance. But it seemed to go too far near the end. I think perhaps even he realized that, and that the logical endpoint of anti-marketing had to be not selling anything at all.
I don’t know that necessarily trying to bury someone under increasingly large lists of comics-that-may-or-may-not-be-good is necessarily going to win an argument.
Does anyone care to back up their claims of why the comic-haters should bother to even read the list of comic books?
To throw out another Neil Gaiman reference (a man who is, despite having become a standard for quality, wrote SANDMAN as nothing more than the height of pretentiousness), when he was at the Chicago Humanities Festival two or so years ago, he answered a question with something to the effect of, "yes, there is only, say, 10% of comics that are genius (or even decent), but we’ve got 100 years of 10%).
Finding a definition from dictionary.com doesn’t necessarily prove that Watterson is a hypocrite, but rather that somone went around looking up definitions until they found one that helped their argument. If we go to the trade lingo, a collection of comic strips (or issues) that have been previously published is a trade paperback. A comic book proper would more correctly be called a “pamphlet” (as Warren Ellis and/or Steve Grant have pointed out and no, I’m not going to bother looking for a cite. Not until I’m pitted, that is). I’m going to second the notion that Watterson was referring to montly superhero publications.
Before we start dragging this into movie and/or novel comparisons, we should note that the “average person” (however you want to define that) understands that there are comedy, dramas, historical epics, action, &c. movies (because they’ve seen the trailers, read the reviews, etc.) and novels ranging from science fiction crap to impenetrable “classicl” novels, aslong with romances and best-sellers (whatever genre) because they’ve been forced to read them in school and/or seen people on the train. If we think about the most common exposure that the “average person” has had to comics, it’s either the superhero kind (in a magazine store? as kids?) or parodies of the comic (read: superhero pamphlet) fan which will necessarily color their opinions.
Yep. The vast majority of manga is mass-produced, predictable, derivative dreck written to be crammed into a 200 yen phone book-sized weekly comic that can be read while stuck on a train for 2 hours heading to school/work. Of course there are some with innovative, interesting storylines, but I’d argue that the overall quality level of American comics in recent years is higher than that of Japanese ones.
As much as I love his work, he’s always seemed a bit of an elitist ass to me. Not a lot of assness there, but there is smidgeon.
Well hell, Terminator 3 and Charlie’s Angel’s 2 both made the top ten at the box office. So did the American Pie films, as I recall. That doesn’t mean you have to condemn the whole medium of film.
And what, exactly, the deuce is wrong with a little stupid entertainment? I mean, Punisher/Wolverine Teamup isn’t the next Hamlet by any account, but it’s not pretending that it is.
Well, I bought this amazing example of great comic book art recently. I’m no fan of superhero comics at all, and I’ve never actually read any of the stuff Alex Ross draws for, but - WOW! And it appears a lot of the time it’s Paul Dini who writes for him, which I gotta admit is pretty cool.
Astro City, dammit! 
The Japanese market isn’t the only one where non-superhero comics dominate. Europe is
The biggest comics over here would be Disney’s different titles (Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse (though I’ll admit that most of these are mass-produced crap, there are exceptions. Carl Barks is a household name over here for a reason)) and European classics like Tintin, Spirou, Asterix, etc. Great stuff.