Let's talk, you and I, for just a minute about something very close to my heart: an art form, misunderstood, misrepresented and generally left by the wayside by most people who care about fiction.
I'm talking about comic books.
Yes, comic books. No, not "Archie" and "Jughead," or other magazine-stand nonsense. Proper comic books, the kind you can leave on your coffee table and say, "Yeah. That's a comic book. Very controversial." (Or whatever makes good conversation.) The popular word for serious, important comic books is "graphic novel," which doesn't refer to pornographic literature, but to comic books that deal with serious subject matter and are aimed at adults. There's good stuff like that out there, getting ignored by the public at large. Comic books have never been a hugely popular industry, and even the burgeoning catalogue of comic book-based movies hasn't done much to bring them to public attention. People love X-Men, Spiderman and Hellboy, but interest in the pretty pictures the stories came from is still just about nonexistent. Why? I don't know. There seems to be this stigma against reading anything with drawings that isn't found in a Sunday newspaper. I don't understand this mentality, especially in the face of the phenomenal and atmospheric artwork some of the people are doing.
Frank Miller, one of the giants in the comics industry, writes and draws his own series of Film Noir-styled stories called Sin City (which is being made into a Robert Rodriguez movie -- expect it out sometime this year). Miller was already one of the comic giants back in the 80s, and is credited with bringing Batman back from the brink of destruction and turning him into the moody vigilante we know today with a graphic novel called "The Dark Knight Returns."
That, along with a graphic novel called Watchmen, gave the comics industry the push into dark and mature subject matter it needed. The author of "Watchmen," Alan Moore, has gone on to become one of the greatest names in comic books, and is also responsible for writing "From Hell," "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" and his own Batman story, "The Killing Joke." In some circles, the man is worshiped as a god.
And not without reason. There are people out there -- Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Mike Mignola (of "Hellboy" fame) working harder and producing better stuff than 90 percent of the well-known fiction writers, but receiving only a tiny sliver of the attention and, more likely than not, pay the big names in novel writing can claim. I don't understand it, and I'm not happy about it, but that's the way it is.
For those looking to get into comics, and not sure where to start, I recommend "Hellboy: The Seed of Destruction" by Mike Mignola, "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller, "The Sandman" by Neil Gaiman or "Watchmen" by Alan Moore. There are hordes of other good comics -- "Transmetropolitan," "Preacher," "Poison Elves," "Cerebus," "Hellblazer" -- and it's mostly a matter of finding what works for you. If you're interested in it, there's probably a comic about it somewhere, and there's almost certainly a Web comic out there somewhere -- although Web comics are a column's worth of trouble all on their own. There's a comic book store off of McGalliard and another near the park, and what they don't carry, they may be able to order. So go take a look sometime.
Write to Jonathan at Tenement_cellar@msn.com
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