Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Get Off the Roof


Dear Industry,

Make comic books I want to read.

I've been reading comic books for three years, diligently, weekly. Like a kid in a candy store I bought anything. ANYTHING. I bought more bad comics than good for the first year or so. Batman was coming out of my ears. In three years I've amassed about twelve long boxes of comics, that can't bode well for future trends.

I like to think I only read good comics, or at the very worst I only buy a bad comic once. I need my comics to move, I want my characters to change and have epiphanies, the plots and ideas have to be fresh and plentiful, I can’t read one more book where over powered beings discuss life and death in a street for 3 issues, and can we please get over Batman seeing a boy lose his parents?

The DC New 52 campaign is great. I can’t imagine a comic book fan that doesn’t at least admire DC’s effort. The lead titles to start it all off were Justice League #1 and Action Comics #1, titles that uniquely define Get Off the Roof.

Justice League #1 was a good title, lots of action and big splash pages, lots of splash pages, some double page splashes. Green Lantern and Batman spend half the comic on some rooftops, a chunk in a sewer joking around, and then a finale in Metropolis where they encounter Superman. The most story movement was in Cyborg’s one page.

Compared to Action Comics #1 Justice League may as well have been 8 pages long. Superman was everywhere at once, reprimanding a crooked businessman and showing off his bullet-proof hands to some goofy police in two pages. Superman involves himself in a dozen or so crimes (both petty and against humanity), takes a quick break to change Clark Kent’s laundry and finally stops a speeding train to fall into Lex Luthor and General Lane’s evil plot.

I think Darkseid was mumbled somewhere in Justice League.

Make these characters move! I’m paying hard cash for pieces of paper, there is a reason I have 2 long boxes exclusively for Grant Morrison comic books: I want to read them again. I want to reread Secret Six. I can’t wait to crack open my Northlanders collection after its sat for a little while. These are comic books and creators I want to support.

Sincerely,
Steven Anteau

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