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| Christopher Reeves just stopped combines . . . |
I tried
to go in with an open mind. I like Ryan Reynolds, but I forgot how much I hate
the character. I was still reading comics when he first came out. I hated him then and I hate him now—I hate that this movie’s success means that somewhere, somehow,
Rob Liefeld is making a buck.
I
hated the movie. I hated that this cheap Wolverine/Spider-Man rip-off, a relic
of a fad-driven 1990s comic book industry was getting any representation. I
hate that he’s the symbol of where comic book heroes are going. It’s either “Grimdark”
(re: Man of Steel) or potty humour.
I don’t
want to make it too big a deal, but the success of Deadpool can be equated to the success of Donald Trump. Maybe
people truly are getting stupider.
The
movie sucked. It had all of the depth and creativity of a Family Guy episode, and it’s an insult to twelve-year-old boys to
say it’s full of their humour. It’s idiotic, but idiocy sells.
I
haven’t collected comics in almost twenty years. I know there are many people
who still think of me when they think of a comic nerd. And although there’s
something about their mythos that still appeals to my lizard brain, they’re
mostly just a topic like Star Wars
that I associate with my bond with my kids more than with myself. I guess I
simply outgrew them, along with video games, three chord punk, and party as a verb instead of a noun.
Nowadays the odd comic-inspired flick neatly serves the purpose, especially
since most of the stories are based on what I read as a kid.
I got
into comics when I was very young, and so I understand that my kids are getting into them. Unfortunately,
the only ones I can give them are mine from thirty years ago, because comics are
no longer for them. And Deadpool and
its whole R-rated superhero debate might be a sign that the movies are going to
follow their source right into the toilet.
The
problem is that we’re lying to ourselves as to what comics are about, who they’re
for.
I have
a graphic novel of 1970s Neal Adams Batman
stories. Read it with my kids. Couldn’t believe it. Batman was telling jokes,
playing a prank, even smiling. I mean, it wasn’t the camp of the TV show ten
years prior, but nor was it the brooding, husky, grim character of the 80s and
beyond. He was an actual human being. This is all the more poignant because the
modern comics and their films with adult themes for adult readers are often
praised for their realism. Which is asinine, but we’ll come to that.
Those
1970s comics were a fine balance: Superman and Batman still wore their undies
on the outside, Robin still had no pants, and the costumes of the Avengers and
X-Men lineups looked like they’d been designed by Crayola. But it was also the
time of the brutal death of Gwen Stacy, Green Arrow and Green Lantern teaming
up to take on social issues and combat drug abuse, and the lamentable creation of the
Punisher: a dude with a gun. The worst superhero creation ever and the
door-opener for a long line of grim, pointless G.I. Joe-wannabes up to and
including Mr. Pool.
See,
1970s comics—and I’m too young to be saying this out of nostalgia—could be
relevant and entertaining at once, and they understood they were still for
kids. Smart kids, yes, but kids. Now they’re just for dumb adults.
Generally,
it’s a mistake to see comics as an art form. And before you get all worked up I
say that having high regard for comics, at least for what they once were.
They are advertising-based
entertainment. The 1980s saw the advent of comic books (Super Powers, G.I.Joe, Secret Wars, Micronauts, etc.) that existed just
to sell toys. That is, to children. Only in the later part of that decade and
in the 1990s did toy collection become a serious and seriously creepy business.
As with comics themselves, weirdos were finding justification for remaining
children into adulthood and buying their youth back at ten times the original
cost. Toys became much less playable, more for posing on bookshelves next to
books about talking to girls and losing weight on a dollar cheeseburger diet.
No,
strictly speaking, comics are not an art form. There have been moments where
works of art have come from comics—The Watchmen,
Ronin, The Dark Knight Returns, Arkham Asylum—but these were blips, mostly
in the 80s, a time where the medium stretched its muscles before embarking into
the territory of constant merchandising. The problem is these dark forays away
from what comics truly are have become the rule. The audience aged and felt
that it should still be the target. It’s like expecting Bugs Bunny to have a
mortgage and taxes.
Like
video games, professional wrestling, horror films, and porn, comic books have
their passionate followers who try to defend the artistic merits of capitalistic
entertainment of little substance. Interestingly, the majority of the fans
crossover between these media. Maybe that’s why the lines between them have become
so blurred.
See,
the problem is guys around my age. I’ll admit it. We messed up. Those who
defend comics as art thinking those few stellar exceptions should be the norm
grew up and became creators themselves, feeling that their creations should
reflect their own “maturity.” Funnybooks about dudes in tights with sketchy science
and multiple religions and myths overlapping (Zeus and Odin and the Archangel Michaelare drinking
buddies) got dark, gritty, dirty. Adult. Real.
Real.
Comic book superheroes. People who get exposed to radiation and develop wild
powers rather than cancer. Aliens who can do pretty much anything because of
solar energy. More real you say? Consider the medium for a second. Its merits
are its complete lack of reality, for
it is grounded in the ludicrous, it has grown from the corner of a child’s mind
where the question “How can this be?” is never uttered.
Comics
are for kids. Making them exclusive by adding grit, gore, or soft core porn and
thus making them exclusive to adults (that is, adults stuck in teen mentality) is
a disservice to that audience and an underestimation of what adults need for
entertainment. Comics are created by manboys for manboys and Deadpool is a sign that the films are
set to follow this unhappy trend.
Let’s
take the first and greatest of them all: Superman. Attempting to make him “real”
and “dark” calls for us to ignore what is ridiculous about the character: everything. He’s a perfectly humanoid
alien who has the powers of the entire X-men team, has the silliest of silly
names, the silliest of silly disguises, and for the majority of his career wore
bright red underpants and a yellow belt. In 2013’s Man of Steel Zack Snyder asked the audience what it would be like
if Superman was grimdark (it’s a thing on the Internet), lacking any humour and
with the colours so washed out that even the Academy of Motion Pictures couldn’t
tell who was which race.
Grimdark,
utterly humourless, a hopeless movie that claims to be about hope. In no way
was this a film for kids. Or even adults not suffering from clinical
depression.
And it
was about a fella in a cape named Superman. Think on that.
Man of Steel, Deadpool, Suicide Squad.
Adult comic book fans are demanding superhero films that reflect their own
eroding values. Rather than leave this medium to childhood, it’s been smeared
with a reality while avoiding the simply ridiculous unreality of where it comes
from. When did “It’s dark” become a compliment?
What
will happen in a decade, when we’ve depleted the fanbase completely by cutting
it off at the roots, or worse, by corrupting that fanbase with joyless and
graphic depictions of breakfast cereals?
The
superhero is supposed to be inspirational. Yes, he can be complex,
conflicted, even troubled. But, man, since when did their films have to either
resemble an emo band video or a romp through Larry Flynt’s basement?
Time
to grow up and stop taking things from the kids.
