I genuinely think that the vast majority of people who want "depth" and "meaning" in their comics, because "comics are an adult medium", are actually pretentious twits who wouldn't look out of place in a coffeehouse, analyzing Stan Lee's comics for their semiotic thickness and asking, "Yes, but is it Art?"

Because comics are not an adult medium right now. Comics are a painfully adolescent medium, obsessed with seeming grown-up, disdaining things that are "babyish", interested in sex and violence, and really awkward and clumsy in dealing with the opposite sex. And most of the people who complain about comics needing more respect as an adult medium are arrested adolescents who are unwilling to let go of the comics they used to enjoy as a kid, but want them to change so they can read them without being ashamed of themselves. So they demand more sex, more violence, more awkwardly-inserted "depth", and insist that anyone who doesn't want what they want are stupid kids. (By, say, repeating "I thought that this was a blog called 'Comics Should Be _GOOD_'", every time someone likes a comic that doesn't fit their rigid criteria for intellectual acceptability.)

It's a mentality I'm thoroughly sick of, and frankly it's what is killing comics as an industry today.

(And as an aside, if what you said was meant as a private comment to Anthony Strand, then email it. By putting it up on a comment thread, you are opening yourself up to...you guessed it...comments.)

I'm not saying your experience isn't valid, Apodaca; however the vast majority of people do in fact place great value on just plain being entertained. The makers of gourmet chocolates are not considered lesser artists because their product is lacking nutritional value; same applies to gourmet brain candy.

At any rate...unless you're prepared to argue that chronicling the adventures of, say, a man swinging around dressed in spider-themed longjohns is truly meaningful, there's a core of pure joyful irrelevance at the heart of any superhero-comic-reading experience. If Parker can tap into that, then I'd suggest he's actually created something seriously meaningful.

Maybe sometimes YOU want something light, frothy, and meaningless, but I don't. My brain doesn't turn off and I'd rather read something that gives it some exercise, than not. Otherwise, my brain wanders off to more engaging things. And, like I said, there's no reason something can't be goofy, exciting, off-the-wall AND profound. I haven't read it myself, but that seems to be the design of Flex Mentallo, for instance. And I don't know why you think that kids don't want profundity. My favorite books as a kid were ones like "A Wrinkle in Time" that were both profound and exciting. Sure, Goosebumps entertained me, but those stories aren't the ones that had an impact on me or even stick in my memory. Effectively, they didn't even matter.

You sound very defensive in your post. Nobody's telling you what you have to like. I'm telling you what tickles my fancy. If that feels like a challenge to your own stance, that's all on your side. I don't really understand, though, why you feel the need to justify disposable entertainment as being a peer to more meaningful stuff. Your enjoyment needs no justification. However, your enjoyment of something, alone, does not indicate any sort of quality. If that were true, Gallagher would be one of the comedic greats of all time. He was immensely popular.

I just don't get how, on a blog called "Comics Should Be Good", there is such fanfare for comics that are meaningless. Fun does not automatically equal good. See: any drunken sexual mistake ever.

Why settle for the pastiche alone?

That's all.

What more could you want?

It would be nice to see him get a mainstream book, but on the other hand, I'd love to see him turn in a run of a hundred issues of X-Men First Class.

Great art, story and value for money. There are very few valid reasons known to man not to own it.

And I say that as a diehard DC guy. Parker and Dan Slott are pretty much the beginning and end of Marvel for me.