Bang! Zowie! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!
Christ, I’m linking to The Corner again. But this is pretty funny. Apparently, it all started when Jonah Goldberg mused idly as to whether Stephen Strange was gay (be quiet, Ana Marie):
Let’s review some facts. He’s a remarkably thin and extremely neat older bachelor who claims when asked to have never married because a woman broke his heart years ago. He’s an upscale urban professional who lives alone except for his young Asian manservant and “business partner” “Wong.” He and Wong are devoted to yoga and alternative medicine. His brownstone is immaculately decorated with the finest antiques. He is extremely well-kempt with an at times bushy but usually thin mustache. He wears very bright, flashy clothes made from imported silk and other natural fibers including an actual red silk and gold lamé cape and what appear to be skin-tight blue satin pants. His jewelry is ostentatious and right beneath his chin he wears a flashy one-eyed amulet. And, by the way, his name is a synonym for “Dr. Queer.”
Once a reader wrote in to assure Jonah that Strange was, indeed, married (in some weirdo magic ceremony) to, you know, a girl, Corner newbie Peter Robinson penned this brief jeremiad:
Trying to find something last winter that my eight-year old son would actually read, I did my best to think back across the eons to when I was his age, recognized that I used to love Spiderman, then went online and ordered my son an issue a month for a year. My first surprise was that comic books don’t cost 15 cents apiece any more. The bill for twelve issues? Almost twenty-five bucks.
My second surprise occurred when the first issue arrived. Flipping through the comic book before handing it over to my son, I found that smack dab in the middle of the story we find our hero naked, in bed, and engaged in unmistakeable activities (with a woman, which is why I know Spiderman is hetero). I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. Believe me, amigos, that sort of thing just didn’t take place in the comic books I used to leaf through in my pediatrician’s office. In every issue since, it’s been the same: midway through the story, sex, and pretty explicit sex at that. Since I can’t figure out how to cancel the subscription, I simply keep tossing the darned things out.
The question: Are there any innocent comics left? My eight-year old son could still use something that’s fun and easy to read—especially now that it’s summer. What superhero has forsworn soft-core porn?
Apparently, Peter hasn’t gotten the memo. Jonah has, though his industry analysis falls short of the nuance a Dirk Deppey, say, can bring to the table:
The fact is that comic book publishers and Marvel (publisher of Spider-Man) in particular never managed to hold onto the youth market. So the people who read comics when they were ten are the people reading comics today. I think the average Marvel reader is probably in his mid-twenties to early thirties.
Now, there are lessons to be drawn—apart from popping our eyeballs at Jonah’s insultingly casual bigotry, or sniggering at Peter’s cultural ignorance. (Would he have ordered a book sight-unseen for his eight-year-old? A video game? A DVD? What on earth led him to believe comics had escaped the general coarsening of the culture his compatriots decry at every coffee break?) —It’s a reminder that there is a market for kids’ comics out there, and—though Peter’s slapdash efforts are hardly a fair test—it’s woefully underserved. (In Peter’s defense—you have to click pretty far into the Spider-man minisite to find out Amazing Spider-man has a PG rating.) It’s also a reminder that comics are still the red-headed stepchild of entertainment; too many people just aren’t capable of comprehending that they’re no longer just for kids, darn it, and they never really were. (We can apportion the blame later, if you like.) And finally, not even a moderately decent mainstream superhero book is arresting enough to keep an average(ish) non-comics reader from chucking it in the trash.
Anyway. Go, read the list of eight-year-old–friendly comics a Corner reader sent to Peter, and giggle up your sleeves; send him a list of your own suggestions, if you like. And maybe reflect for a moment on how far comics have come, and how far they still have to go.
Or you could savage Jonah Goldberg for his smirking homophobia. —It’s all the same to me, really.
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....sniggering at Peter’s cultural ignorance. (Would he have ordered a book sight-unseen for his eight-year-old? A video game? A DVD? What on earth led him to believe comics had escaped the general coarsening of the culture his compatriots decry at every coffee break?)
To be fair, though, his choice was not entirely sight unseen. He had extensive experience with it as a child himself and, coarsening of the culture in general aside, there is nothing in long-running children's lit to suggest that it would change much over time. Case in point, any Archie title at the checkout counter (the crossover with The Punisher being a brilliant fluke, of course.) Archie has not changed in style or humor for decades. Why should Spider-Man?
So I sympathize with his shock. However, I don't condone his passing onto his innocent child a taste for overmarketed superheroes. The kid would be better off with Frank.
Why Byatt is Wrong (But Kinda Right)
I wasn't gonna get into it, but.... Kip teases Sara for her endorsement of A.S. Byatt's rejection of the Harry Potter series. Before the previous incarnation of this blog was destroyed by silicon valley gremlins, frequent visitors of this site...
(Snort.) Sorry, but if those comments about Strange are "bigoted," so is *Will & Grace,* where I don't think such a monologue (either by itself or bloated into something passing itself off as a plot) would be at all out of place. Then again, I hate nearly every sitcom ever made. :p I'm Just No Fun.
A) Amy, bigotry is 50% context. You know that.
B) Nobody, but nobody, indulges in such a lame-ass joke to such an overindulgent extent without a hidden agenda, my dear. And I didn't see any gentle with-it in-crowd ribbing or knowing self-mockery in Goldberg's post. So.
C) And whoever said Will and Grace didn't have its problematic moments? Huh?
Oh, and D) Kevin: I have a little sympathy for Peter, yes; but if he’d been paying any attention at all to the graphics used to sell Spider-man these days, he might have tripped to the fact that this wasn’t his old-school comic book. Of course, he’s worried about sex stuff, not dark, scary, violent stuff. —But that’s a kettle of fish for another time.
Which 50% ? Just kidding.
At any rate, you're free to stick around and find the hidden agenda. I mean, a cursory read reveals that the folk on that board are obviously 90% Loopy Right, so their agenda and context would only be hidden to other Righties reading it. And, hey, you went over there and sampled it, bringing it back to us benighted masses who'd never look for it on our own. You and your cast-iron stomach, Baby. Not me. My body produces more than enough stress-related illness without me seeking extra stress out *sans* a well-armed guide, y'know ?
OTOH, I'm impressed that Peter Parker still has the same wife he did the last time I glanced at an issue of *Spider-Man* (this would be at least a decade ago, I hope). Considering the customary mortality rate of action-heroes' girlfriends/wives/etc., Peter Pundit should be relieved over that, at least.
I think the Dr. Strange as Dr. Queer breakdown is funny. Ripped from the loopy right context you found it in, it would get laughs around my office. At least among those of us who remember who Dr. Strange is. What also makes it funny is that Jonah is probably correct.
...the graphics used to sell Spider-man these days...
Perhaps, but in context of a million other ads using sex to sell shampoo, beer, cars and credit cards—plus the movie being a product of the Hollywood Whore of Babylon—why should he have given this particular instance a second-thought?
Geeze, you guys just aren't getting into the spirit of kicking Jonah Goldberg around, are you? Sigh. I never thought I'd play baseball that far inside.
And Kevin: you misread me. He was looking for sex signs, and didn't see them. He didn't seem to mind his 8-year-old reading a dark-looking, brooding, potentially violent comic book. And your argument here misreads the kulturkampfers, and your own point: it's precisely because of such Whore of Babylonishness that contemporary culture is as suspect as it is. Why, then, should comic books get a miss? --Your reading of Peter's mindless, thoughtless nostalgia in your own blog is much closer to what I think is the mark.
SuperQueerness
Speculations about the queerness of Dr. Strange aside, there are more serious thematic and existential parallels between superheroes and queers—or so sez Annalee Newitz at AlternNet. Aside from making the critical mistake of confusing a medium (comics)...
I read this a while ago, but I didn't read the roleover until Becca noticed it. I'm amused and flattered.