Comics?!

Comics are an amazing art form. They've been maligned and insulted, relegated to children and treated as nothing more than cultural detritus--the evidence of our all-encompassing descent into idiocy. But, one could say, with flecks of hype-saliva spraying out of your mouth, "comics are back!" I make no such claim. Comics never really left. I just started buying them again.

Admittedly, comics have gained a recent surge of popularity. I remember last summer seeing a 'graphic novel' being sold as a hardcover NYT blockbuster in Borders or B&N. (DC's Identity Crisis) More so than that, there's the amount of "big" movies based on comic books or comic book characters. It seems that comic book movies have replaced disaster movies as the summer blockbuster choice of studios. A hastily thought-up list:

• Spider-man (2, 3)
  
• Fantastic Four (2)
  
• X-Men (2, 3)
  
• Superman Returns
• Batman Begins
• Daredevil
• Elektra
• Hulk
• Blade (trilogy)
  
• Ghost Rider
• Catwoman
• The Punisher
  

And let's not forget my favorite burgeoning film genre: movies based on relatively obscure graphic novels. These are movies which aren't based on the general mythos and intellectual property of bankable characters, but are based on the typically easy-to-translate-to-the-screen graphic novel format. Comics books that producers and directors can look at as pre-made storyboards. Most people don't even realize that some of these movies were once comic books before they were (good/horrible) movies:

• Sin City
• 300
• The Road to Perdition
• A History of Violence
• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Constantine
• V for Vendetta
• Art School Confidential

Part of the blame can be placed on movie studios being incredibly unwilling to risk any money on an untested piece of intellectual property, and I'm sure DC and Marvel comics can be partially to blame by trying to expand beyond color-printed funnybooks.

This surge of comic book-based means something besides a vague discussion of cultural economics for us geeks. We get to see new, different, and sometimes amazingly [un]inspired interpretations of our favorite characters and themes. This hasn't stayed on just the silver screen either. The CRT (or LCD, DLP, Plasma) screen has had a fairly recent infusion of superheroics as well. Smallville started several years ago as a teen drama ostensibly about the mythos behind Clark Kent/Superman. It progressed as a teen drama with supernatural elements (see: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc) until recently, when (from what I have read on wikipedia) it seems there was a surge of other DC characters and villains. Cool. There were other shows launched based on the strength of Smallville (Birds of Prey, Aquaman) that never made it off the ground, so to speak.

Then there was Lost. The first (in a while, anyway) unqualified, non-cult hit television show that was also a sequential story with a (theoretical at this point) ending. Lost's success and it's tangential tie to comic books gave birth to my newest addiction: HEROES.

If you haven't heard of Heroes, wikipedia sums it up pretty well. The show is awesome, and combines the character-focus and cinema quality of Heroes with the X-Men-esque mythos of people somehow gaining amazing abilities. Awesome.

Watch it here. Or, you know, bittorrent. There are only 18 episodes right now, but the show starts up (to finish season 1) on April 23. Watch 'em all to be ready for the madness!!!

And what's more, they have downloadable (pdf) comics that give you extra information about the characters, etc. Sweet.

And now that we're on the topic of comics on the web, allow me to link you to several favorites; comics that my gtalk status message borrows from daily.

• Scary Go Round - My number one favorite online comic. Excellent writing, excellent art, excellent stories.
• Dinosaur Comics - Verbose Dinosaurs in the exact same poses each day of the week. Only the words change. But oh, those words!
• Diesel Sweeties - Pixels, Irony & Sarcasm, my old friends. Now in actual newspapers!

Please enjoy those comics. I know I do. Helps me make it through the day.