Nah, it’s preachy.

the true essence of Batman, even though it was glorified torture porn riddled with plot holes.

But… everyone loved that movie – it’s only comic fans I’ve heard gripe about it.
Everyone else thought it was top-notch – it was a critical and commercial smash hit.

I find 3 camps to be fiercely loyal to the movie: Heath Ledger fans, comic fans and people who just always go with the hype (like the people who believed Crash was as good as the critics claimed). Out of these 3 camps, i find comic fans to be the most rabid in their love for the movie. Non-comic fans were the most likely to be willing to admit it wasn’t the best movie ever created.

i think that’s also a big reason why comic fans LOVED The Dark Knight and claimed that it captures the true essence of Batman, even though it was glorified torture porn riddled with plot holes.

But… everyone loved that movie – it’s only comic fans I’ve heard gripe about it.
Everyone else thought it was top-notch – it was a critical and commercial smash hit.

They are often uninterested in joining comics-specific online discussion groups, but seem to like sharing and discussing whatever they’re reading with their current circle of friends. Multi-volume series with finite plots like like Fables, Walking Dead, and Y the Last Man are usually preferred over anything involving superheroes, unless it’s something self-contained like Watchmen. They tend to also really like webcomics and those print collections of webcomics that sell so well these days. This group is not as overwhelmingly male as the traditional comics fan, the gender split seems more 60/40. I talk about comics (and swap recommendations) with other women more now than ever before, even in periods when sales were overall much better.

If I didn’t hear the same story repeated online so often, and not in places I expect to hear about comics, I would be inclined to think it was not significant, too. Instead I think a quiet revolution has happened concerning the nature of the industry and how it attracts new readers, but it’s only being really noticed in the parts of the comics community not primarily interested in superheroes or monthlies. Essentially I think part of the industry is experiencing healthy growth while other parts may be destined to atrophy.

Personally I think demographics have just changed, such that now most people come to comics in their 20’s.

I just think new people don’t come to comics period anymore, except for an odd exception here or there. I can’t imagine it being a common occurrence for a 20-something to start a serious comic habit at that age, unless it’s independent comics, and even then I don’t see it being a major routine in his life, just an occasion purchase here and there.

Personally I think demographics have just changed, such that now most people come to comics in their 20′s. That’s roughly when people usually get plenty of disposable income to use to develop hobbies and neurotic passions, and comics is a hobby that demands a fair bit of money these days if you want to be remotely well-read.

My source was 2000A.D… about three years ago they quoted the age (based on their subscriber base, merchandise purchases, DreddCon attendees, and Titan UK subscriptions for comic-related magazines) was 32. Five years previously they had given it as 30.

@ DanCJ

I know the maths is dodgy. But the point is there must be readers under 30 as well as over 30… especially as the average age (again, admittedly in the UK, and not the US for certain) went up by 2 years over a five year period… that SHOULD mean a greater influx of younger readers, but may simply mean more deaths of older readers…

If anything, “other media are killing us excuse” should be forcing American comic companies to work harder to fix the problem, and to try and find more and better ways to attract readers.

The average comic reader may be in their 30s, but that means for every reader in their 40s, there’s someone in their 20s, and for every one in their 50s, someone in their teens…

At least, based on the law of averages…

Not at all. One reader in their 50s could be offset by on in their teens or two in their twenties.

(I’m not commenting on what the truth is – just pointing out some dodgy maths)

The “other media are killing us” excuse is just a way for people to say there’s nothing that can be done to fix the problem, so we may as well keep doing what we’ve been doing.

Shit, if I were a kid today, I’m not sure if I’d even bother with comics. If an adult handed me a comic book or the latest Harry Potter or whatever books series is hot among kids these days, I’d probably go for the book.

What repels kids isn’t the darkness or grittiness. Do you see many kids walking out of something because it’s too gory? Maybe it happens, but it’s more likely that a kid would dislike something because it’s too talky, too boring, too dreary. And I don’t mean dreary as in pessimistic (it’s only us old farts that worry if a story is uplifting or not), I mean dreary as in a long movie about office politics or intrigue.

In the old days, comics were found everywhere at newstands and 7-11′s. many of us who are into comics got into them from our parents buying us a few for kicks while at the newstand or convenience store buying something for themselves. Nowadays they are only sold in specialty shops, meaning mom and dad are not likely to be buying comics for kids as an impulse purchase. The mom and dad that buy comics for kids are going to be adults who are fans of comics themselves. Why else would they be in a comics store nowadays? And if they are comics fans, chances are they’re fully aware of the content inside, meaning they’re probably not going to be likely to buy it for their children? What kind of sick parent would buy a copy of the latest gory Nightwing issue as their kid’s first comic for example? And even if they did buy their kid a comic, the impenetrable continuity and sorting through the endless retcons would be the next deterrent to keeping the kids interested.

And kids do care about pessimism. At least when it’s relentless.

Well, that and kids today have much more sophisticated alternatives to comics…more and better quality video games, cartoons, and movies…

That’s an excuse used by adult comic fans that insist that superhero comics “grow up” with them. They are afraid if they admit in any form that the tacky adult content of the books is to blame for low sales, the content will be rolled back to being kid-friendly again, which would mean they would have to go back to being ashamed of reading superhero content. As long as superhero comics are kept excessively adult in themes, they can somehow justify to themselves and others why they’re still fans as adults. i think that’s also a big reason why comic fans LOVED The Dark Knight and claimed that it captures the true essence of Batman, even though it was glorified torture porn riddled with plot holes. They loved it because it was “adult,” meaning that they could tell the mainstream “look, no kid-friendly stuff here! Now do you see I’m not childish for liking this stuff?”

These fans are afraid of acknowledging in any form that these immature “adult” themes are shrinking the industry, so they blame movies, internet, videogames, cartoons, but tell me this: if it’s competition from other media that’s killing superhero comics and not content and continuity, why does all-ages manga ABSOLUTELY KILL IN SALES? I mean, the sales are so through the roof that manga graphic novels are making it onto the top 20 of regular bookscan book sales lists, beating out conventional fiction paperbacks. The other-media-as-competition thing is just an excuse that doesn’t hold up when you see the sales of manga.

My point is that it’s wishful-thinking and a-historical to imagine some “innocent time” in the past when superheroines weren’t sexualized. Regardless of the target audience, they were always written and drawn by adult men who knew exactly what they were suggesting.

And yet, they weren’t.

Mary Marvel was in no way sexualised, and Super Girl was about as sexual as Lois Lane, which is not very.
In fact, it’s weirding me out that people keep arguing that she is – if you see anything at all sexual in her first appearance, or any others in the original insanely popular run, then that’s you projecting your own messed up issues – there’s certainly none of it on the page.

Just because Wonder Woman and Phantom Lady were created as sex fantasies, doesn’t mean they all were.

As for the idea that every female super hero owes a debt to Wonder Woman, I disagree.
She has very different powers and a very different origin.
Up until Spider-Man, most superheroes could be traced back to Superman or Batman quite easily, you can see who was based more on one than the other, but I don’t see that with Wonder Woman.

I’d say the same for why few women read comics. It’s become fashionable to complain about how sexist superhero stories are, but has anyone here read the “Twilight” novels? They’re a huge hit with young women, and they’re as “sexist” as they come, with a physically weak and emperilled damsel protect by her manly superhuman vampire lover.

Talking about how violent and sexist superhero comics are has become fashionable, but it seems to me it’s more about the politics of some fans than a real cause for certain kinds of public not reading comics.

Sex and violence may make some older fans angry because it serves as a signal that creators don’t care about the kids anymore, but it isn’t the reason why kids left in the first place. My own theory is that kids left because the serialized soap opera model introduced by Marvel in the 1960s became even more extreme and dominant, almost completely replacing the more action-driven, standalone model of the Silver Age.

i think Baker’s view of superhero comics relies too much on an outdated “Hey Kids! Comics!” paradigm. yes, i’m sure kids still read comics, but not in large enough numbers for them to be thought of as the primary audience.

Well I think that’s part of the problem. The companies make the stories less and less kid friendly and new reader friendly. Then less kids and new readers read comics as a result. Then supporters of new comics use this as justification to continue in that direction: “Look! Why be kid friendly? What new readers? There are none left. That ship has sailed!”

Maybe if there were more kid-friendly comics, then more of the readership WOULD be kids. They’re obviously interested in comics based on how they crowd to the manga aisle.

as much as i love Kyle Baker and Plastic Man, i have to agree with Rene here… the issue this page is from was in the last (or was it second to last?) issue and i remember the series getting a bit heavy-handed towards the end.

i think Baker’s view of superhero comics relies too much on an outdated “Hey Kids! Comics!” paradigm. yes, i’m sure kids still read comics, but not in large enough numbers for them to be thought of as the primary audience.

what Baker was satirizing in Plastic Man was not just DC’s recent darkness, but the idea of “seriousness” in comics in general, which he’s never been a fan of. he’s said that when he worked as an inker at Marvel in the 1980s, he didn’t even bother to read the comics he was inking because he found them too boring, too full of plot and soap opera.

ask him his idea of a satisfying comic? “on every other page you either see a pretty girl or someone getting punched in the face.” which can be a lot of fun when you think of Kyle Baker drawing it, but can also justify the worst excesses of the Image era.