The end of the affair?

This coming Saturday, May 2nd, is Free Comic Book Day. So what better time than this to stop and reflect on my long, sordid relationship with comic books and to make a startling confession....

I'm falling out of love with comics.

But, it wouldn't be the first time.

My on-again, off-again affair with comic books started as many relationships do: I was young, naive and lonely.

Actually, I was probably only about 8 or 9 years old when my brother gave me a stack of his old cast-off 70s DC comics. Mostly Green Lantern (my God, Hal Jordan seemed handsome back then!) and The Flash. Admittedly, I don't think I had any idea what the stories were even actually about but they seemed to open up a strange, new, almost underground kind of world to me. I was intrigued by the bold, colourful artwork; the iconic look of the characters; the inexplicable little melodramas; and those strange advertisements were completely fascinating. (X-ray specs? Sell "Grit"? Keep on Truckin' iron-on t-shirts?) Probably around this same time, our local tv station started airing re-runs of the old "Marvel Super-Heroes" cartoon. It was shown weekdays around 5pm and very early on Saturday morning and I watched it religiously. My favourite was Iron Man, although it seemed like they'd always re-run the Hulk way too much! Say what you like about the animation, I still have a soft place in my heart for those jerky, choppy, traced Kirby panels being dragged across the screen (which seemed archaic even back then!)

Inevitably, as the saying goes when I got a bit older I "put away childish things" and lost interest in comic books. My time was filled with other distractions: I got more heavily into "grown-up" books (like "Interview With the Vampire" and Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" trilogy!), music, and of course, chasing boys. At that awkward, self-conscious age I tried to sever all ties to anything childish. Ironically, it was when I started high school, when most kids tend to gravitate toward more mature interests, that I was again seduced by comic books. This time I was hooked-up by a friend.

In high school I struck up a short-lived friendship with a girl in my Art class who collected Spider-Woman comics. (I say "short-lived friendship" because she moved away the following year and we subsequently lost touch). Whenever we'd hang out, we'd walk down to a local used bookstore and flip through old, dog-eared comics. I started buying cheap horror comics, like Charlton's "Ghost Manor". Honestly, they were bad. The artwork and stories were lacking, and the magazines themselves were in terrible condition. To my teenage mind there was nothing childish or immature about horror comics (yeah right!) so by reading them I was somehow being cool & alternative. Such are the delusions of youth! In retrospect, horror comics were my gateway drug: they got me back into comics again. On one of those nights rummaging through the used comic bins I found something interesting. My new drug of choice: The Joker.

Although I've never been much of a "collector", I became smitten with The Joker & sought out any comic that he appeared in -- any I could find and afford, that is! Again, my teenage mind made excuses: The Joker is cool. He's a homicidal lunatic -- there's nothing childish or geeky about collecting Joker comics. Sure. In my quest for more Joker comics, I graduated from the used bookstores to the local comic shop. It was located above another business, on the second floor. Through a poorly marked door, then up a steep staircase: there was the musty smell of paper and all kinds of new and exciting things I'd never even heard of there. And people hung out there all the time, like it was some kind of secret club (like the Masons -- for nerds!). This was very indie and underground, I told myself. It was a good time to be collecting Joker comics though: Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" was released around that time.

All the money I earned in my part-time job as dishwasher and kitchen bitch went into comic books. I started branching out, collecting Wolverine (OMG! No one does that!) and The Punisher. My best friend at the time starting collecting "Heavy Metal", which we read without a hint of irony and for some reason didn't think were all that smutty. Being the 80s, we inevitably got into grading our collections as "Fine", "Very Good" or "Mint" (we really had no idea!) and putting little price tags as to what each issue was worth. It was around this time that the allure of comics began to fade for me. With variant covers, multi-title crossovers, holographic foil gimmicks, barrel-chested heroes with huge ridiculous guns... my "secret life" with comic books seemed less & less like love's innocent dream and more like a heartless money-sucking burden. So comics & I went our separate ways.

It was an amicable split. I checked in on them from time to time just to see how they were doing. It wasn't until many years later, after I met my husband, that I rekindled the flame with comics. He introduced me to Mike Allred comics, which were a bit like how I remember comics used to be... only updated, and with a bit more heart. Again, I was attracted to non-super powered characters like the meditative Dr. Strange and wise-cracking Hawkeye of the Avengers (although I can't delude myself into thinking they're in any way "indie").

But as everything comes around goes around, so comics too seem to be heading in the direction they were in the early 90s: huge summer "must read" blockbusters, multi-title crossovers, hot-shot creators dictating the "house style", unnecessary "deaths" of beloved characters... and again I feel the romance is drying up for me. I find myself philandering: my roving eye has been checking out "indie" and alternative comics more and more and I find myself getting more satisfaction from the likes of Harvey Pekar and Daniel Clowes than from the superhero set. (Plus I can read graphic novels for free from the library, so there's no commitment or money burden either.)

Of course I plan to take part in Free Comic Book Day, hoping to find the next thing that will captivate my interest. My relationship with comics plays out like a Billie Holiday song. Maybe "This is my Last Affair"...?


http://www.freecomicbookday.com/