Pitting ignorant stereotypes about the comics medium

The BBQ Pit
1

I pit all the ignorant stereotypes about the comic medium perpetuated by journalists, the entertainment media, and other professionals who make a living writing about entertainment topics.

Here’s a hint to all who might have to write about – gasp! – a comic book or a work inspired by a comic book some day: not all of them are about superheroes. I know it’s hard to believe, especially after reading many of the discussions over in Café Society, but it’s true. The comic medium contains many genres, not just superheroes. Mystery, occult, noir, biography & autobiography, science fiction, history, fantasy – you name it, the medium contains examples of it. In other words, Roger Ebert, John Constantine is not a superhero, even in his action-oriented movie incarnation.

“Comic book” does not necessarily equate to “shallow story line, thin characterization, bright colors, ‘kickin’ & ‘splodin’, and hokey dialogue.” Comics are just as capable of showing deep, mature insights as any other medium. If you didn’t know that, ask a comics reader for recommendations. So Lisa Schwarzbaum, when you suggest that Constantine should “lighten up” because it’s a “comic book movie,” you’re displaying your ignorance of the depths available to the medium. The fundamental problem with that movie is that it already lightened up the source material. Lighten it up any further, and it would have floated away.

“It’s no good because it’s based on a comic book” is not a valid argument. That’s like dismissing a work because it’s “based on a novel.” If a (movie, TV show, whathaveyou) based on a comic is lousy, blame the scriptwriters, not the source medium. Not all fan complaints about changes to source material focus on hair color or fashion sense; pay attention and you might learn something about deeper themes in the original work. Quality comics do not begin and end with Sandman’s World Fantasy Award or Maus’s Pulitzer, but we appreciate you noticed them.

While you’re picking out graphics to accompany your story, it helps if you realize that Jack Kirby is dead, and printing technology has advanced a lot in the forty-fifty-sixty years since the graphic you probably chose was published. Oh, and words like “Ka-Pow! Biff! and Zham!” were used during a mercifully brief period in comic history a very long time ago, and are positively embarrassing to current readers. Comics haven’t looked or sounded like what you think they do for a very long time.

Not all comics readers are drooling fanboys living in mom’s basement and in desperate need of a girlfriend. Many of us are smart, educated, and articulate. Some of us are even female :eek: ! Next time you want to interview a reader, please, look past the easy target in the sweaty Wolverine t-shirt. The stereotype of Cat Piss Man didn’t spontaneously distill out of the aether, but the vast majority of us bear no relation, and we’re all tired of guilt by association with such creatures.

2

Well said.

3

I blame the Simpsons. Specifically, Comic Book Guy.

4

Amen to this. Comic book/graphic novel art and writing takes a great deal of time and skill. Granted, there are lots of crappy comics out there, but there’s a lot of incredible ones, too. To blast the whole genre is plain ignorant. Anybody who says that series like Moonshadow and Kingdom Come aren’t works of art in and of themselves are narrowminded full of shit.

5

::Slow Clap::

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Guess the terminology is a little bit culpable for the confusion; perhaps a concerted effort to supplant the term comic book with graphic novel could be made and/or intensified.

'Cause a lot of people, when presented with the word “comic”, find themselves expecting something comical in connection with the subject.

“Comic” = “Superhero” is a different kettle of fish entirely, of course, and might be confusing to people who used to read Sgt. Rock.

7

Totally agree. Even (hell, IMHO, especially!) the most over-the-top, four color, just for fun superhero stuff can be well written, and touch on deeper currents in between all the time travel and the beating of Jet Apes.

I roll my eyes when film critics get huffy about comics, when so much of modern film is obviously derived from that medium.

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[aside]
I’ve slow-clapped myself out of bed in the morning. It’s suprisingly effective.
[/aside]

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The problem with “graphic novel” - a term I use for lack of anything better - is that many people assume “graphic” = “porn or intense violence”, especially if you slap the dreaded “mature readers” tag in front of it. I’ve encountered that problem, and I understand that the misunderstanding is absolutely rampant in library settings.

Oh, and to pit the industry while I’m at it: in what other medium is everything not suitable for young children labeled “mature readers”?! When I walk into a book store, there’s a clearly segregated kid’s section, and there’s everything else. Og forbid comic stores should be permitted to treat their customers as adults and sell their wares in a similar fashion. (Not that I blame the retailers - recent court cases have born out that the “comics are for kids” mindset is so engrained that prosecutors salivate at the chance to go after comic shops. :mad: )

10

Worst. Rant. Ever.

(sorry, someone had to do it!)

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There was a guy that would come into my cafe and attempt to hit on me. I mentioned in the course of one conversation that I have a lot of comics at home and he looked at me funny and said “From when you were a kid?” I replied that no, I had only gotten into comics recently and some of them had more mature themes than most movies, TV shows, novels, etc. He gave me a look of ‘yeah right.’ I didn’t bother explaining that one of my favorite comics is the dark, twisted story of a young, boy prostitute and a serial killer. He also thought that ‘Lord of the Rings’ was for children. I stopped talking to that smarmy bitch sometime after the comic book incident.

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I can’t really comment on your rant. There were no pictures, so I got bored and stopped reading.

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Perhaps not, but Constantine is quite accurately described as a “superhero movie.” It’s certainly not based in any reasonable way on Hellblazer, and the one John is not the other.

Your criticism of Schwartzbaum is fine, although I’d suggest that one swallow does not make a summer. However, int he context of the review I think it’s clear that Mr. Ebert doesn’t particularly deserve your ire.

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I hate to drag a perfectly good pit thread off the trail, but I strongly disagree, Andros. While not a spectacular movie one way or the other, and not a particularly good adaptation of Hellblazer, Constantine wasn’t an action movie - it was a Raymond Chandler style film noir. It follows the style from the word go all the way down the copious slanted shadow-casting blinds in Constantine’s apartment.

I have a bee in my bonnet about this because the trailer made it look like an action movie by cramming everything that happened in the third act into thirty seconds, totally obscuring the actual movie in the process. It’s a much better movie than the trailer makes it look.

Oh, and since I’m here: Fuck.

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Thanks, Selkie. I never read a graphic novel (unless you count Gonick’s Cartoon History series) until I was in my 30s and I’ve become amazed at how deep and truly innovative they are. Shanower’s retelling of the Trojan War, Gaiman’s works, Alan Moore at his best and others are on par with the vast majority of prizewinning bestselling novels I’ve read. I haven’t read any of the Hellblazer series but intend to in the near future.

I wonder if the same people who scoff would do so at Shakespeare since, after all, he wrote to be performed to a live audience of mostly plebeian stock, or at Steinbeck and Faulkner since they were on the payroll of movie studios during an era of Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland musicals.

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I was converted last semester through Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. That book is amazing. I’m only scratching the surface of graphic novels/comics–I’ve read both Persepolis books, Epileptic, and Zot. I bought Reinventing Comics and the American Splendor anthology, although I haven’t had time to read those yet. I’m constantly impressed at how something so simple as a couple words and an image can evoke such powerful emotions and memories. I am starting to really love comics.

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I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, although I’d disagree that it’s noir (dark, sure, but Chandler-esque is a hell of a stretch). I’d also say that it was more a “piss-poor adaptation” of the book than “not particularly good.” But that’s neither here nor there.

Fact is, John in the movie is a supernaturalist and an active ass-kicker and name-taker. He’s not a comic-book superhero, certainly, but I think within the confines of the movie world he qualifies as a film superhero. He is a hero, and he has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

(Shame acting isn’t one of them. I don’t mind the dark hair or the American origins or even the increased magic use. I just don’t think Kanunu could convincingly take a shit on screen.)

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Lisa Schwarzbaum displaying ignorance of the medium she’s reviewing?!? NO!

She’s always had a bug up her ass because she works for a pop culture magazine and doesn’t want to admit it to herself. So she has to undermine the legitimacy of anything “less” than Entertainment Weekly in an attempt to elevate her own position; she’s a Film Journalist For A National Publication, Much Like The New Yorker, not some schmo writing about movies for some shallow pop culture rag.

What she continually fails to understand is that the bulk of the readers of EW (myself included; I’m a subscriber) don’t give a rat’s ass about High Art vs. Low Art; we’re fine judging a work on its own merits instead of what it says about us that we like it. If we wanted to read The New Yorker, we’d just read The New Yorker.

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Hear, hear, Sol. I like EW a lot, but I ain’t going there for serious film criticism.

20

Dammit, Selkie, now you’ve gone and made me do one of the things I swore I’d never do: defend Lisa Schwarzbaum.

I’d been avoiding reading any reviews of Constantine, because I was already biased against the movie and didn’t want anything else thrown into the mix until I finally saw it. But this thread made me curious, so I actually read the review.

And it wasn’t actually dismissive of comics at all – if anything, it supports the philosophy of the OP. It says, basically, that there are intelligent, deep, and well-told stories, and then there are light-hearted action and adventure stories, independent of what medium you use to tell them. Schwarzbaum’s claim was that the movie didn’t tell its story effectively, it wasn’t a good adaptation of the themes told in the Hellblazer comic book. So if it wasn’t going to tell an intelligent story effectively, it should’ve just dropped the pretense and been a big action-packed demon-battling “comic-book movie.” From the review:

I think your OP is still valid, of course, just that this review was a bad example to use for it. Schwarzbaum at least gets what it means to say something is a “comic-book movie,” and that that’s not necessarily a pejorative if that’s what the movie is aiming for, and that that doesn’t mean that no comic book is capable of a compelling story.