Another thought: It's similar to the way that superheroes have come to dominate comic books over the years. Part of it's that superheroes are what sells. Part of it is that kids grow up reading superhero comics and if they're lucky enough to work in the industry, that's what a lot of them want to write/draw/ink/color/letter/edit.
Not really. The reason superheroes dominate comic books is largely down to
Frederick Wertham,
Seduction of the Innocent, the
Senate Subcomittee on Juvenile Delinquency, and the
Comics Code Authority. Fights-and-tights isn't a bad match for the comics genre due to things like an unlimited sfx budget and freeze frame scenes that are one of the best ways of representing superpowers, and for colateral damage. But superheroes aren't the natural genre for comics - horror is. Horror
really benefits from the freeze frame ability to zoom in on single terrifying moments, and from the creepiness. And can use all the SFX budget you give it. In fact prior to 1954 and the Comics Code Authority, horror not superheroes were the dominant genre in comics - and it was horror comics that were strongly objected to. However some of the major points from the original comics code are below.
- In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
- Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
- No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title.
- All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
- All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
- Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
- Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
...
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities
(OK, so that last one was
thrown in for amusement)
As the list makes obvious, the purpose of the comics code was to kill horror comics stone cold dead. When your medium has the advantages of almost unlimited sfx and superb freeze frame but must tell stories of good winning and can't be gritty, probably the thing that plays most to the exclusive advantages of the medium is freeze-frame. And if we look at the
British Invasion in comics, it's my belief that it was so successful largely because it consisted of artists who spoke English as a first language but with a comic book market that knew about the Comics Code and wasn't bound by it. Certainly if we look at Moore's, Morrison's, and Gaiman's most important work (Swamp Thing, The Invisibles, Sandman respectively) they all seriously cross the lines the Comics Code would like without crossing them for the sake of crossing them.
So the reason superheroes rose to the top of the comics pile is not so much that superheroes are what sells, but that for about 30 years the mainstream US comics market was banned from selling anything else.
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread.
