I’ve been buying titles like Batman Adventures, Teen Titans Go and Justice League Adventures for my kids for years now. My daughter is now 11 and my son is 8. Lately, my daughter’s been leaning more toward the Archie comics, but she had read the others as well. My son now enjoys the new Super Friends and Tiny Titans comics.

In the past, I’ve tried to get my kids into books or toys I enjoyed as a kid. Some of these efforts failed. However, the DC animated comics were a successful way for me to get my kids interested in comics.

Maybe my family is an exception, but I wanted to point this out to Greg, who clearly has spent much time on the subject.

- Frank Esposito
Wickliffe OH

“Mark Waid wrote the betrayal story you mention, by the way, not Grant Morrison.”

My apologies for being incorrect on the credits for the ‘Betrayal’ story. I thought it was during Morrison’s JLA, but since I only borrowed the trades out of the library (and then quite some time ago), I didn’t have the contents on hand to check. Thank you for the correction.

“While a lot of people wrote Batman like that for a very long time, Morrison and Dini and company are making him more like what he once was; a father figure that puts together a large family.”

I agree that Batman has been more encouraging and supportive of his allies as of the OYL storyline to current. But I still can’t see him as a ‘father figure’ or the cast as any sort of “family” because of how dysfunctional and destructive many of his supporting cast members are to themselves and to one another. To me it’s more “Bruce Wayne’s Rehabilitation Center For Screwball Teenage Assassins and Wayward Heroes”.

Yes, many of the stories of the DCU animated series are mature themed. Mostly because often they are adapting late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s pre-Crisis materials (Particularly B:TAS, but also Superman and Justice League). You can find a good 70% of that stuff or more of what you refer to in the old Detective and Batman comics by Denny O’ Neil, Steve Englehart, and Doug Moench among others between 1968-1982. And the B:TAS comic is still in that vein, thematically.

But ever since THE KILLING JOKE and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (and I guess add Tim Burton’s BATMAN films into the equation as well), that really has not been who Batman is in the regular titles.

The current mainstream Batman comics are not noir. The character is an ultraviolent, overly obsessed borderline psychotic vigilante who has repeatedly alienated those whom he’s trained and worked with over the years. The villains are far more *graphically* violent than they were in the past. (And there is no dire need for it,. As you rightfuly pointed out with the Joker from the cartoon, Many of whose stories are verbatim lifted from the 70s comics by Denny O’Neil and Steve Englehart, you can get the message across very easily, and keep in mind the cartoon showed MORE than the comic.)

Today’s Batman is so paranoid he develops contingency plans as to defeat all of his fellow superhuman heroes and then apparently is so stupid as to allow an opponent to gain access to those plans (see the Grant Morrison story in JLA that got adapted into a JUSTICE LEAGUE episode as memory serves). He’s constantly guilt ridden and withdrawn, whereas the Batman of the B:TAS / the Pre-Crisis era, while always sad for losing his parents, is at least somewhat well adjusted as Bruce Wayne, not constantly hiding behind the mask and not tripping over himself with survivor’s guilt all the time. The stories in B:TAS were about the adventures and the mysteries and the crimes. Not an obsession with the fractured psyche of the character. If that’s all you really want to write about – and that’s been a large aspect of how the character’s been approached by the majority of writers post 1986 – you really don’t “get” this character, as far as I’m concerned.

Today, the character is so obsessed with the “mission” and the notion that only HE can do it, that he seldom if ever calls in aid. (See KNIGHTFALL – am I really supposed to believe that Batman is so damn stupid that when Akham has a major breakout and many if not all of his major enemies are running loose, he’s not making a call to Nightwing asking for Titans assistance? Or the League? Or the Outsiders? Oh no, he’s the by goddamn BATMAN, and he’s going to go solo and kick everyone’s ass until the plot says he’s too tired to continue and Bane can break his back. *rolls eyes* Okay, So Bruce is obssessive bad ass. So what? Even then, am I supposed to be so ignorant as to believe that Alfred won’t make the call? Or that the League or Nightwing or someone won’t become aware of the situation on their own and realize he needs help and come running? Sorry, but no. Bad plotting, bad writing that broke all the conventions of the character for the sake of getting from Plot Point A to Plot Point B. By company directive, certainly, but still a failed work. And what’s worse, is that it *didn’t have to be*.)

And admittedly, while at times Batman acts this way in the B:TAS cartoon as well, it’s often presented as a sense of protecting / preserving those he cares for, than the deathwish “I’m the only one who can do this” attitude. And that DOES make a significant difference in perception and acceptance of who and what this character is.

As the years have progressed over the 22-24 years since DKR and TKJ, the character has become far less intelligent and more violent. Far less “Batman the Dark Knight Detective” and more “Batman the Bad Ass Vigilante”.

This is not typically the case in the animated style comics, or the occassional stories that used to be featured in LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, which were often referred to as flashback stories to “an earlier era” in his career, and were widely dismissed by fans, because it didn’t “jibe” with the postmodern vigilante version that DC / Time-Warner has been cramming down our collective throats for the past two and a half decades.

But this is not singularly about Batman. This is about the entire industry, and speaks of the overall approach to superhero comics in the postmodern era. Writing “mature” / “adult” content does not automatically mean ultravolence, mean-spirited parody, self-destructive behaviors, excessive graphics to shock the reader when the point can be presented visually more eloquently and truthfully more dynamically without the shock value, the pseudo self-psychoanalysis posing as ‘characterization’, or obsessive referencing to continuity (in as much to one’s own personal tastes / interests) or pop culture reference. And these practices apply with many of the characters, at both of the Big Two.

I find the creators who rely on these tactics to be producing lesser work than their predecessors or other creators in the business who do not excessively use such crutches in their work. Regardless of the respective popularity or expectation of segments of the audience who have become accustomed to it. That doesn’t mean they’re not capable, just that we’re not demanding it of them. (Or that at least not enough of us are.)

The Batman Animated is very noir in feeling, in tone, in mood. The stories would flow more naturally if the writers were allowed to go a bit more mature. Not much, but just a bit. You don’t need anything graphic, but a character dying now and then, would be just a natural progression to many of the scenes and a natural fit too to the world Timm and Dini created for their Batman. I mean, many of the episodes are real gritty police dramas, and you can pratically SEE Timm and Dini struggling to do them as dark as possible within the limitations imposed by television.

I’m not talking about things such as rape, obviously. But just an example. An episode already shows the Joker as a quite scary would-be killer, targeting helpless bureaucrats with his Joker venom, it actually shows the victims getting their faces distended and discolored. And then you have Batman applying an antidote and making a comment that the victims will eventually recover. Just because they can’t show a murder on kid TV. Isn’t it silly? They’re already showing all the scary parts, just editing out the bit where Batman says the victims will recover would make the cartoon unacepptable to kids?

Or when a character is apparently falling to their death, but then they show a convenient river for the character to fall into. Would it make the show so much more mature if the character simply died and they cut before the person hits the ground?

I’m saying all that because I am currently re-watching the Batman Animated Series episodes, and they’re really quite “mature” in many respects (atmosphere, scary villains, ultra-sexy Catwoman and Talia, psychological density, etc.) that it feels silly when they make such artificial concessions to the all-ages format.

“This all started with Joe Rice talking about Mike Kunkel’s new Captain Marvel book, which is *clearly* aimed at *younger* kids….”

Well, I dare say this isn’t book is aimed for younger readers at all. I think it’s aimed for superhero readers who want a “clean” superhero story without all the garbage that permeates postmodern superhero comics. I don’t think age consideration truly factors into it at all. (They may claim it, but just saying it’s so, doesn’t MAKE it so.)

One could made a sound argument that the DCU animated books historically have been the best written versions of the DC characters since Bruce Timm and Paul Dini started doing them in the early 1990s. And part of the reason for that is because by and large, they’re writing ‘clean’ stories. You don’t have to worry about characters being raped and / or graphicly murdered (Sue Dibny, Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend), heroes – or heroes’ friends / loved ones – going insane and turning on everyone (Jean Loring, Hal Jordan), in-joke parody versions of the mainstream characters (Apollo and Midnighter in AUTHORITY), ultraviolent borderline psychotic versions of the characters (Batman), etc.

That’s what makes the Johnny DC books potentially appealing. Not the damn “kiddie art”. Sadly, as nice as the DCU Animated style is, it can be pretty stagnant looking on the page. Both kids and adults alike want more sophisticated art. And that’s something DC doesn’t get. You put those writers on board with the top gun artists (without the writers going “adult”), and start telling clean stories again, with an *occassional* darker toned story aimed for more mature audiences, SOLICITED as being for mature audiences as separate series, and maybe DC (and Marvel, for that matter) will actually have books worth reading again.

But back to BB&TPOS. Here Billy is, evading adult supervision and concerns (his nosy neighbor, his principal) in manners that in all honesty are as simplistic and unrealistic as a boy his age would come up with, and in that respect, Kunkel is actually doing a brilliant job of it. He’s writing it from the kid’s perspective, and you as a reader have to put yourself in the mindset of the character, not as an adults working at community shelters or as teachers acutely aware of the real world situation facing the character. There will be consequences for Billy’s actions, and I’m sure Kunkel will address them. I fully expect “Uncle” Tawny to show up as the surrogate parent before too long. I don’t think anybody needs to hit the panic button just yet.

I understand what you’re saying about it being too small, but I don’t think an oversized format would be the answer, nor do I think that making it a storybook as you suggest would necessarily work, either. Retailers (bookstores, comics shops, Wal-Mart / K-Mart / Target, I don’t care who) wouldn’t know what to do with it. None of them know what to do the manga as it stands now, for crying out loud. (Sorry, but SHONEN JUMP doesn’t belong next to SEVENTEEN magazine, necessarily. Nor do most of the mangas belong displayed directly across from the Dr. Seuss section of the kid’s books area. This is not uncommon store placement, unfortunately. Unless the store’s putting the manga over with SF/ Fantasy or in its own Graphic Novels section, which neither works for reaching kids – I NEVER see kids over in these sectors of any book store today.)

And I think that’s a key problem here. Nobody knows what format to work in, or how to market comics today. They don’t know what content, format, or how to educate mainstream society about the medium. Moreover, I honestly don’t think anyone working in comics particularly cares to try to figure it out and actively do anything to fix said problem. American society on the whole still thinks comics died out 25-30 years ago, because the product is actively out of sight, out of mind.

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RE: Marvel Adventures –

I’m personally non-plussed about them, but they don’t ‘suck’ as badly as the mainstream Marvel product. To me it’s recycled content from earlier eras with the creators trying to ‘modernize’ the content. I don’t feel that it works. They’re not *bad* comics, mind you. Just that I have a sense of “been there done that” when I read them and I’m not really clicking with the art styles of today.

I think half the problem with them is that the creative teams are more unknown commodities with no market presence and since Marvel’s already got umpteen books with these characters, the general fanboy audience doesn’t give a damn, and Marvel (just like DC) isn’t smart enough to market their product “outside the box” so to speak. By no means does that mean put *fill in superstar name here* on the books. What it does mean, is learning to say “THIS is the book we as a publisher want you retailers promoting to your new readers, NOT our crossover events. You can get readers into the larger commitment stories once you’ve got them interested in our characters to start.” Which we all know they’re not going to do, because it’s counterproductive to the marketing and publishing structures both they and the retailers operate under.

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“Just the fact that it’s a superhero comic doesn’t guarantee interest or a closer look from kids. That only happens with fans. If I put a superhero book, even one ostensibly aimed at young readers, even one based on the new hot Marvel or DC movie, next to a manga digest on the table in my classroom, I’ll bet you a year’s pay against a stale bagel that the kids all will lunge for the manga first.”

Well, duh. Do I want 22 pages of chapfic or 150 to 200 pages of a story? If you had NARUTO or BLEACH or POKEMON strictly in 22 page increments monthly instead of digest TPBs, do you really think your kids would be gaga over manga, Greg? I don’t. I can remember when manga first hit the industry in the 1980s and practically nobody was buying it. Why weren’t they, Greg? 1) Format. Nobody wanted black and white Japanese comics when they could get color comics for cheaper (remember in the eighties, most B&W titles were still $1.50 to $3 while Marvel / DC were .75 to $1). 2) More importantly, Anime / Manga was not yet a common pop cultural mainstay in America.

Nobody was getting it pounded into their brains daily with six hour blocks of Anime cartoons in the 1980s. Keep in mind we were still in the era of Marvel – Sunbow / DiC dominating the US market for animation. Sure, kids of the 80s dug Voltron and Thundercats and Silverhawks and Bionic Six and Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. But we also got He-Man / She-Ra and Bravestarr from Filmation, we still got the Marvel / Sunbow GI JOE, JEM, SPIDEY / HULK, we had Ruby/Spears with the Kirby and Toth stuff like THUNDARR. Hanna-Barbera was still going strong. You had *variety*.

Today, you’re pretty much stuck with whatever Time-Warner offers and a slew of anime-slanted styles on TV, regardless of the character property. So of course your kids who have been raised in this environment are going to want what they’ve been exposed to. That only makes logical sense.

You might stop me there and ask, “Wait a minute, if that’s true why didn’t the DCU animated stuff fly off the shelves during the Batman: The Animated Series when it initially broke out in the early nineties?” Because the comics industry was too busy promoting crossover events, gimmick covers, the Image creators, everything BUT that sort of content. By the time someone at Time-Warner FINALLY tapped DC on the shoulder and they started doing something in the late 90s, that ship was long gone. That market had to be sold to in 1992-94, when it was fresh in everyone’s minds. What was DC promoting in that time, eh? Look back. Death of Superman. Knightfall. Emerald Twlight. War of the Gods. Darkstars because it had Travis Charest doing his Jim Lee impression.

What was the industry on the whole promoting then? Spawn. WildC.A.T.S. Youngblood. Deathmate. X-Tinction Agenda. Infinity this, that and the other thing. Valiant. Sin City. Watchmen. V For Vendetta. Dark Knight Returns. We were still “comics have grown up!” mode. And in fact, we still are. Arrested attitude much?

Do we really need to wonder what happened?

“Why are Marvel and DC clinging so stubbornly to the idea that if they only make the right 22-page booklet kid’s superhero comic, all will be as it was?”

Sad to say, the wrong people working in upper management both as publishers and as media companies. The comics are loss leaders to keep the properties out there, but ultimately, Greg, if Marvel and Time-Warner could shut down comics entirely and just make TV shows / movies out of these properties, they would. And that’s not to say that the people working in these positions aren’t capable, they just don’t seem to know how to get out of their own way or around those who impede the necessary progression (and by no means is this an easy feat).

“Give young people something that is tailored to the things they are interested in — not the things WE are interested in — and don’t talk down. Make them reach for it a little. More than anything else, that’s what’s been successful, over and over again.”

And isn’t that the crux of the key problem in the comics industry, today, Greg? That we’re stuck with a bunch of ‘writers’ and ‘editors’ who are basically fanboys writing to their own interests and tastes, instead of writing content that can speak to a true mass audience?

You guys weren’t buying them and they certainly weren’t being bought “for the kids”.

*I* bought them, dammit. And gave them to students, even. In fact, Brandon Hanvey, our own Comic Critics artist, sent a bunch of the DC Adventures books up here for the kids too.

Yeah, I know. I even caught it when I was editing myself. But I was too tired. And a jab here and there sometimes generates traffic. I mean, looking at Joe’s post I don’t think it would have generated that much debate if he had done the “cool & calm nice guy” constructive criticism.

In any case, I have been singing the praises of the Batman Animated line going back to when CBR was known as “envisionweb” or kingdomcome message boards… or whatever, I forget.

But it really hasn’t done the book any good.

Right now, Dark Horse has 3 or 4 Indiana Jones books out. The best one, by far! is Indiana Jones Adventures. It’s solid in story, price & availability. It’s been out for at least 3 weeks now and the only review I’ve seen was at Silver Bullets (which gave it like 5 or 6 stars/bullets).

Maybe I missed it, but as far as I can tell there was no *peep* from CBR, CSBG, Newsarama or IGN. So, you know… are we going to bury Billy Batson for being “too cheesy” for kids, but forget to praise Indiana Jones for doing it right? Or is Indiana Jones Adventures not that good either?

Perry Holley has sent my students a bunch of comics, including about 4 years’ worth of Marvels’ Ultimate line.

Kids’ reaction overall? They enjoyed them, but not enough to go get more of them on their own. They simply don’t get ‘hooked’ on superheroes the way we did. What they get on their own is manga.

I wonder if they’d like them in the “manga format”. And by that I mean…

If Marvel took Wolverine’s Enemy of the State, reprinted it as a Black & White collection in a 5.5″ x 8″ “digest size” format; making it very cheap on account that it’s a reprint… and it’s black & white.

And then, what if they distributed through “other channels”. Not by Diamond; but by “whatever means” manga is currently being distributed to drugstores and such.

Would it sell?

Is it an experiment worth doing?

Or do we need to consinder the possibility that Naruto is better liked than Batman & Wolverine (among kids) because they just are. (Or maybe they just are… the popular thing on TV right now.)

Well, regardless to your answer to that last one, I think it’s a experiment worth conducting and one that the Powers that be should consider on their next Free Comic Book Day. It could definitely settle the argument of format vs. content of the current manga lovin’ kiddie generation, once and for all.

You don’t think it’s possible to do an intelligent young-adults superhero comic-book that takes into account your suggestions about format and content, and also happens to be about the Teen Titans, or Captain Marvel/Billy Batson, or the Young Avengers, or the Runaways?

POSSIBLE? Sure. Why aren’t Marvel and DC actually doing it? That’s what I want to know. I do suspect that if they did manage to do it, kids would only be lukewarm. But that’s just my hunch.

I’m not quite sure what the Marvel Adventures line is supposed to be doing wrong. On the contrary, they seem to have the whole “family entertainment” thing right- the stories aren’t dumbed down, they’re just straightforward superhero stories that don’t have anything too adult.

Content-wise, they are indeed awesome. But I really do feel that they are designed from an adult Marvel fan’s point of view; there’s an inability to see beyond repackaging the same old stuff. What I keep seeing is an approach that looks like, “if we keep doing superheroes, first this way, then that way, we will eventually luck into something the kids will respond to.”

My question is, if Marvel and DC are genuinely interested in getting the kids back to their books then why are they so obsessed with recycling superhero stories from decades ago? Doing it well or doing it badly doesn’t matter — this simply isn’t the kind of comic today’s young people respond to. Certainly not the way they respond to Naruto or Harry Potter –or Bone, as someone pointed out above.

What the Marvel Adventures line is doing ‘wrong’ is putting great stories out there — but doing it in a format kids don’t care for, in a genre that they are only mildly interested in.

then matt fraction and eddie bru can don tights and thump bloggers back into submission, once again making the universe safe from dweebs an their list of reasons why star wars is better than galactica!

The BILLY BATSON book isn’t meant to be THE magic bullet that gets kids liking superhero comics again, it’s meant to be another entry in the Johnny DC line.

No argument on that point. My frustration stems more from my opinion that the entire Johnny DC and Marvel Adventures lines are operating on a fundamentally flawed premise, and I’ve done my best to lay out that opinion point-by-point, above. The Captain Marvel thing Joe started was just the jumping-off place for all this.

But certainly, if people like Billy Batson, more power to them. I just think it could be formatted, edited, and presented a hell of a lot better, if it really is meant for kids.

However, I said a couple of weeks ago that it’s really impossible to critique comics intelligently without at least being aware of the business side of things. Should it figure into a review? Well, if you’re talking about what it looks like the book’s TRYING to do, I think it’s fair game for a critic to assess whether or not it was successful. But mileage varies.

( No, I don’t know if kineticism is a word. If it isn’t, it should be, goldangit! )

But there aren’t regular DC & Marvel superhero comics.

I also watched Batman the Animated Series weekly (along with Animaniacs and Gargoyles and some other contemporaneous cartoons) and discussed them with friends. This was the moment before, or just when Power Rangers were beginning to become popular (just to set the moment in its proper chronology). The reason I bring up this history is to show that comics still have the power to acquire new readers. Even superhero comics. After all, the 90′s weren’t that long ago. With superhero films invading theaters (I went to the Metropolitan Superhero costume exhibit and the place was flooded with kids pretending to be Iron Man) there’s no reason why kids shouldn’t be picking up comic books. Which is to say, I agree with the criticisms of Billy Batson (if, as a twelve-year-old, I had seen that in the comic book store, I would’ve passed it over for something else — but then again, I never really liked Cpt Marvel), but don’t think we’re facing a comic book apocalypse.

(Rereading this, I’m not sure if I made much of an argument, but sometimes I feel like comic book youth narratives become focused on the golden age + silver age of comic books, and plenty of adults today got hooked on comics in the late 80′s and 90′s, and soon to be 00′s. Nostalgia is a bitch, particularly when it ignores whole swathes of history in order to make its argument.)

Whether it’s financially viable or not, let the market decide that. Nobody can predict this with any certainty. The BILLY BATSON book isn’t meant to be THE magic bullet that gets kids liking superhero comics again, it’s meant to be another entry in the Johnny DC line. If it doesn’t work there will be other chances, and though it could be argued that Johnny DC has made a mistake replacing something like JLU with something like SUPER FRIENDS and leaving a gap where genuine adventure for under-13s should go, I don’t see how it’s fair that this title carry the burden of fixing everything that’s wrong with mainstream comics’ approach to child audiences.

Manga is a genre.

It’s really not. It’s a form. Saying it’s a genre is like saying “books are a genre,” or “TV is a genre.”