Four Color Comics

I found myself randomly surfing the wikipedia entry for Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars the other night. This series was a HUGE deal in 1984, and I can remember being completely absorbed by it. I was a freshman in high school when Secret Wars began, and was still buying my comics from the grocery store spinner racks. I was awestruck by the sheer scope of the series. I also thought it was stupid. (Mostly, I hated Spider-Man’s new costume.)

After reading about Secret Wars, I read about other Marvel mega-crossover events, most of which I’d never heard of before. The original Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars signaled the end of my comic book collecting career. I still bought certain mags for several more years, but it was more from inertia than from interest. I was never exposed to the major Marvel events from 1987 to the present. Cable? Who the hell is he?

I then read the wikepedia entry about Crisis on Infinite Earths. I was a Marvel fanboy growing up, and mocked DC mercilessly. Sure, I read DC comics from time-to-time, but they all seemed so flat compared to the Marvel universe. I have no memory of Crisis on Infinite Earths when it was released in 1985. The first I recall hearing of it was in 1991, during my senior year of college, when a friend tried to explain it all to me. It sounded dumb then, and it sounds dumb now. I bought a copy of the Crisis compilation a few months ago. I had debated buying the Absolute edition, and I am oh-so-thankful that I decided against it. It’s dreadful. I’ve managed to make it half way through the story and I find it an incomprehensible mess. It’s dumber than Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars! (And, simultaneously, cooler, if that makes any sense.)

Reading about all of the crossovers and developments in the Marvel and DC universes since 1985 helped crystalize something that has been buzzing in the back of my mind for the past few months. You see, I’ve been trying to read some of the new superhero material. I’ve given Grant Morrison’s New X-Men a shot. I’m reading Marvel’s Ultimate line of books. I’m even reading some modern DC stuff. With few exceptions — Ultimate Fantastic Four by Bendis, Ultimate Spider-Man, DC: The New Frontier — I hate this stuff. I don’t find it enjoyable to read. It’s a waste of time. It’s convoluted, mired in its own mythos. The stories are angst-filled garbage. The art is stylized beyond words; what happened to artists who draw realistic human figures?

The solution? I’m not going to read this stuff anymore. I’m not going to read Ultimate X-Men. I’m not going to read All-Star Batman. I’m not going to read the modern incarnations of the major super-heroes. Call me an old fogey, but I will focus my collecting on the stories I love and remember, particular the stuff from the mid-seventies to mid-eighties. Both major publishers have excellent reprint programs, and I plan to take advantage of them. I will have a complete set of Marvel Masterworks by the end of the year. I will then focus on collecting silver age DC Archives. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to collect the black-and-white reprints from both houses, as well as the trade paperback color reprints that come out from time-to-time. (Such as the recent New Mutants paperback from Marvel.)

I’ll still continue to buy new comics. But I won’t be buying the major super-heroes. I’ll be buying stuff like Powers and Fables and Y: The Last Man. I’ll be buying Age of Bronze and the ouvre of Alan Moore. I’ll continue to focus on collecting comic strip compilations.

Marvel and DC (especially Marvel) are pale shadows of the great houses they once were.