I don't know what he means. Maybe he's talking about how many more people have seen the recent superhero movies compared to how many folks regularly buy comic books.

I've read the first half-dozen issues of the City of Heroes comic and I don't really care for it. The story is okay, but the art is not really my bag.

Image Comics is publishing a Freedom Force comic book. I haven't gotten hold of an issue yet, but from that preview, I can't wait. The story in Freedom Force was great (IMHO) and the art looks very old-skool and terrific.

Posted by: NeoApocalypse on March 1, 2005 03:18 PM

The only thing I can think of re: the editor's quote is this kind of situation: I used to read X-Men comics, but I stopped reading them several years ago; these days, as the X-Men movies are released, I'm ecstatic about seeing them, despite the fact that I no longer read (or have any desire to read) the comics.

So in a weird way, I like the idea of the X-Men comics, and I love it when I see films and games that are inspired by comics I used to read (and even ones I didn't used to read, as in your Constantine example), but I've "forgotten" about the value I got out of reading the comics themselves.

Still, part of the reason I still have little desire to read the comics is due to how entangled their narratives have become; the breaking point that made me stop reading X-Men, for instance, was when they had started some massive half-year crossover that involved every single comic book line in Marvel's catalog--comics I had little desire to read, and definitely not enough money to buy (not to mention the fact that I was barely familiar with any of the Marvel characters outside of the X-Men). Computer games, films, and even TV shows generally don't suffer from this complexity, which is part of why I find them much more approachable.

Speaking of comics, this is an old Reason magazine article I stumbled upon recently that makes an interesting case for why the comic book will never truly escape its status as a "niche" medium, if anybody's interested.

Posted by: Foopy on March 1, 2005 08:03 PM

Foopy has it close to right I think.

In the past decade or so I probably bought a half dozen comics before subscribing to CoH (July 2004), and another half dozen since. I've tried to get back into the habit but just can't, for whatever reason. Since subscribing to CoH I've been getting one sent to my doorstep pretty regularly.

It's great having the new book show up every month and spending a couple of minutes flipping through and reading it, it brings back a lot of memories of my youth.

Comics culture has gotten pretty huge lately, with all the movies and games based on books and graphic novels, but the dead tree media industry itself isn't really in all that great a shape from what I gather. Some people buy the books, but most get their exposure to those stories through other media, so hooking back into actual tactile sensation of flipping through the book brings back all sorts of good memories and stuff, and reminds me that it's good to buy these things in the original format.

Posted by: Rob Drimmie on March 2, 2005 06:55 AM

I'd like to think that Foopy and Rob are on the right track with the idea of the joys of reading real comics.

However, I think the Top Cow editor was probably referring to the superhero genre, which is too bad. It's sad to think that most people still equate comics with superheros. Fantastic projects, such as the Flight Anthology and many others, prove that comics can be so much more. I guess games are in the same position, in a lot of ways. The general public most likely equates videogames with Halo, Doom or GTA.

Will people someday be talking about a return to "the forgotten pleasures of videogames," meaning violent shooters?

Posted by: Clubberjack on March 2, 2005 11:42 AM