Tag Archives: misc.

So What Comics Do I Read?

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I have to admit I’m a Marvel fan and their books will be the one’s mostly covered (though not the only ones). I was always drawn to Marvel as their universe is rooted more in reality. Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, and many more are in “our” New York City vs. Batman‘s Gotham or Superman‘s Metropolis. And in doing so Marvel, too me, is easier to relate to.

Marvel also isn’t afraid to put their characters in modern situations. Post 9/11 they had their characters reflect on their failure to prevent the atrocities, Captain America entered the War on Terror, and the undertones of the general unease of the real world populace and erosion of our civil liberties began creeping into their ongoing series. In my view DC has generally shied away from this mixing of real world issues with a fantasy setting. Their characters are insulated from 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Patriot Act.

And maybe that’s why I rarely read Batman or Superman, I couldn’t relate? Where as DC’s super heroes and villains are reflection of our mythical gods, Marvel presented the every person. Spiderman was a teenager made powerful, Captain America an anachronistic soldier. Neither, god-like in their abilities, just a normal person given extraordinary abilities. Compare that with Superman’s basis in Jewish culture and Moses like exodus from his dying world Krypton and messiah like benevolence for his new adopted world.

But to not get off on a too much of a rant, the books I currently read (some in tradepaperback) are, Avengers, X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, Kick-Ass, Ex-Machina, DMZ, Walking Dead, Y the Last Man, the Twelve, Iron Fist, Runaways, Fantastic Four, and those are the one’s off the top of my head.

Welcome to the World’s Reflection

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I’ll put it out there, I’m a grown adult and I still read comic books. I grew up reading comic books exclusively. All the classics, yeah I read those in comic book form. The combination of the stories and the visuals just hooked me. And the stories were usually so over the top and grand they had me coming back gobbling up 20 or more different series week after week. But I took a break in college. My attention turned to tv, movies, and video games, but in the back of my mind I wondered what ever happened too (fill in the blank of whatever book I read).

Then a funny thing happened, I opened an issue of Entertainment Weekly and they had a review of an interesting new comic book series called DMZ. It followed a journalist caught in NYC covering the Second American Civil War. I went out and bought some issues, and I was hooked again. I quickly expanded my purchases and went back to reading some of the ones I loved as a kid.

So that brings us to this blog. What do comic books have to do with politics? Well, a funny thing I noticed, many of the stories I was reading and attracted to had deep political undertones. They were a reflection on today’s political issues. What comics allowed is for writers to reflect on current events in a timely fashion as it’s a monthly (usually) medium as opposed to other forms of entertainment that take many months or years to produce.

And that’s where we are. Each week I’ll go through my purchases and pull out the juicy themes and dissect them here on this blog. And in between those weekend posts I’ll go into the vaults to catch you up on stories or some great graphic novels for you the readers to check out.

Hope you enjoy.