Well, guess what happened this morning. Yep--more ruminations in the shower. This time my mind turned to the subject of romance. Not in the way youre thinking, though. At times I have spoken of the romance in comic books, but I dont think Ive necessarily been understood. When people think of romance in fiction--any fiction--they usually think of love stories. (A genre well represented in comic books, to be sure.) Thats not what I mean here. Thats not all that romance is. Science fiction, in fact, was once called scientific romance. Its true. To clarify just what Im getting at, I went to Black Beauty and inquired of its internal dictionary for the *second* definition of romance, the one that people either dont know or always forget: a quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life. I ask you, is there anything in all the world of storytelling that is more romantic--by that second definition--than super-hero comics? Well, that used to be more true than it is now. Romance is intimately bound to the sense of wonder that is essential to the appeal of super-hero comics--*good* ones, anyway. Romance and wonder are indivisible. I realize at times that one of my problems with the state of the art in comics today is that the medium and those who have been accepted to work in it have forgotten, overlooked, or outright sacrificed and dismissed a large measure of the romance of comic books. The second definition of romance, not the first. Ironically, it is the stuff that I love the best thats where the problem started, though it would be decades before that became apparent. When Lee and Kirby created the Fantastic Four and thus began the process of humanizing super-heroes, they retained all the romance (definition 2) alongside the humanity. But they couldnt have possibly known what they were starting and where it would lead. In time, Lee and Kirby led us both for better and for the worse to Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and others of their ilk. It was the end result of the process that The Man and The King started, and the kind of thing that populates so much of comics today; work like The Authority and Kick-Ass (I even hate the *title* of that book) that is the very antithesis of romance. And therein lies one of my great problems with the state of the art. Too much of the romance of comics is gone. And I tell you quite honestly...I WANT IT BACK.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:08:50 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015