Why Comics?

Perhaps the first way to begin this blog is to explain the very nature of how this came to be.  And the best way I can explain this, I suppose, is to explain how I came to be the person I am.

*Sigh* Reader, let me first explain, I am not a man of few words.  My friends know this dearly, and I am accused of it often.  But in fairness, this is not a question that can be answered in few words.

I will attempt such a feat, though.

I grew up a fan of all-things comics and heroes.  The quicker I could get my hands on a comic book, the better.

But it was television that changed things.  Television would one day offer daytime children's cartoons that would steer my attention.  As a child of the 80's, ThunderCats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and, of course, Hasbro toys-turned-cartoon-franchises G.I. Joe and Transformers all had heroes defending good against evil.  Television in the 1990s changed everything, however - and in particular, television can be be narrowed down to Fox Kids.

Fox Kids, for those unaware or did not grow up in the 90's, ran a plethora of comic book cartoons: X-Men, Spider-man, The Tick, and the Cadillac of them all, Batman: The Animated Series (affectionately known by fans as Batman: TAS or BTAS).

Comic books in cartoons was not a thing specific to the 90's.  Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Superman, Super Friends, 1960's Spider-Man (the one with the theme song we all know & love), etc had all come and gone before.  But there was a noticeable change in the 90's cartoons - kids, perhaps, were finally perceived as brighter and more mature than in the past.

"If I could only...get...the strength...to get my...___..." To me, this was very typical of cartoons of the past. I can close my eyes and picture, in my mind, any of the Super Friends, He-Man, Lion-O, Spider-Man (1960) etc uttering a line like this.  "Holy Shark Repellent, Batman," sit down and watch Adam West's Batman, and my point will be well made about people calling out their actions.

Understand, reader, these lines were necessary in comics back in the day.  A character had to make statements like these because there was no narrative - if the character was knocked down and reaching for something, it may have to be off-panel, and so such a statement was required.  In fact, a little-known fact, the character Robin (Dick Grayson) was created so Batman could say these things to someone instead of thinking them aloud all the time in the form of a Shakespearean soliloquy.

The problem is, once cartoons were created, it seems as though the same speech model was used, and so conversations like this were static instead of dynamic like the visuals you were watching at the time.
I think this is the major reason why people my age today have a problem going back and watching their favourite childhood cartoons again - the previous feelings of nostalgia are overshadowed by the current feelings of boredom.

When the 90's cartoons arrived, however, they seemed to drop a lot of these troubling lines - or, at the very least, hide them into dialogue (again, Batman explaining to Robin how he deduced a criminal's identity, etc).

Again, is this the product of better writers?  Or were writers finally giving kids the benefit of the doubt ("Gee, Batman's down, and he's reaching for his belt.... I bet he wants it...") of recognizing what was playing out on the screen in front of them?  Perhaps the children of the previous 60's cartoons grew up and were now themselves writing the cartoons of the 90's.

Cartoons of this time also dealt with heavier themes, like death.  In X-Men, the created character Morph died in the opening two-part episodes (only to be revived later, but still...); Mary-Jane Watson was killed in Spider-Man (or thrown through a dimensional portal, unbeknownst to Spider-Man); and in Batman: TAS, Batman made it clear, unlike many previous cartoon and/or Adam West appearances, why he was out pounding the pavement, night after night: so no kid would ever lose his/her parents to criminal scum the way he had.

Fox Kids had me hooked.  Outside of Fox Kids, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on CBS quickly took over my childhood, and most of my then toy collection.

And so it was, that cartoons drew me in ever-deeper into the realm of comic books and heroes.  How, then, does a now 30-year old man, married and working full-time, continue to keep such an interest in this genre?

Because in many cases, the writing continues to evolve and get better.  As I grew and evolved, so did my favourite cartoon of all-time, Batman: TAS.  The same creative team eventually paved the way for Superman: TAS, Static Shock, The New Batman Adventures (TNBA), Batman Beyond, and ultimately, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.  Creators of these series had characters cameo and assist heroes in each other's shows (ie Batman helping Static in Static Shock, Superman protecting Gotham City while Batman was away in TNBA, etc), and as I continued to grow, so did the shows and their histories.  By the time I had ventured into university and moved out on my own for the first time, Batman, the exact same Batman from my childhood and not some brand-new incarnation, had grown and decided that protecting Gotham City was no longer enough, and joined Superman and the Justice League to help people on a global scale.

And, to honour the long-time fans of their shows, the producers and writers of these shows knew that their once-upon-a-time target audience had grown up, and was still following these adventures.  So, once again, the stories got darker and more mature as the real world around me did too.

Fast-forward down the road even further, and it's not hard to see how most of the world is starting to embrace comic books in the media, especially the movies.  While DC and Warner Bros are seemingly dragging their feet getting their heroes to the silver screen,  The Dark Knight was the highest-grossing superhero movie of all-time (posthumously earning Heath Ledger an Oscar).  Marvel has been pumping out superhero movies as of late, and The Avengers, currently in theatres, has been breaking box office records in its first week out the gate.

So, as a fan of comics and comic-book related material, well, it's a good time to be me.

"And now you know the rest of the story."