Comic Book Resources

DC Universe isn’t all ages, its older teens and up while Johnny DC is all ages. While I think that killing the kid for shock value was cheap that basic misunderstanding makes this hard to take seriously

Ah, but DC sells its mainstream universe as all-ages, for the most part.

Vertigo has clear warnings.

The mainstream DC titles with all the superheroes plastered over its covers? There’s nothing in there to indicate what’s inside should be for teens and above. And there’s plenty of other marketing by DC and its parent company that tells people these are all-ages.

I read comics a lot. I know what’s suitable for my kids and what’s not. I know what DC puts out isn’t mostly for them. But there’s no way anyone picking up, say, the hardcover of Identity Crisis in a bookstore will.

Besides which, it’s not that hard to put in adult themes and keep the comics suitable for most kids. Look at Pixar. Up is all about growing old and dying and being useless and abandoned. Those are dark themes. Those are very adult themes. And yet they manage to work them in without excessive gore and death.

Identity Crisis ended over 5 years ago. It’s time to just…

Get. Over. It.

If DC had an actuall rating system the argument “Its not All-Age” would be valid, but DC does not have a rating system at all, Some titles have the CCA stamp on them (and they often have very much Gore in them)

Cry For Justice had no stamp but then again how many do actually know what the stamp stands for anymore anyway?

Besides which, it’s not that hard to put in adult themes and keep the comics suitable for most kids.

Can current superhero comics writers do that, though? Writers who skillfully do adult/kids combinations or who write adults in multi-level stories are probably fantasy novelists or doing scripts for cartoons, not working in comics. There’s also the question of whether the audience for all-ages comics would be large enough to compensate for the loss of the hardcore comics fans. Evie at “Awesomed by Comics” recently had a piece on negative reactions to Marvel cartoons: http://awesomedbycomics.blogspot.com/2010/03/fun.html

One of my favorite storylines (WEST COAST AVENGERS) had a ghost (Phantom Rider) taking revenge on Mockingbird for letting him fall to his death; he’d used mind control to seduce her. If that type of material could appear in all ages comics, then I might buy them, but not comics that resembled episodes of Super Friends.

SRS

Lawson’s premise deserves more consideration, if for no other reason than it is a framework for general Literature. I guess if we want to maintain that comics aren’t Literature, then that’s one thing. But are we certain that’s really where we want to go?

I personally expect more from comics. The current trend can’t even be explained away or justified from a sheer entertainment viewpoint. If Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pt. III had been released with Indy’s dad being gutted and his body parts spread across three continents, would anyone take seriously a hero with a whip roaming the planet with the world “Justice” scrawled across his belt? A film like that would be the bane of the industry.

Yet for whatever reason, the general public expects less of its comics. It’s not just juvenile; it’s stupid. And violence or gore aside, I just don’t want my kids reading stupid. There’s too much else to choose from out there and DC is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

There are books at DC that are worth reading, though still not necessarily for kids. For example, R.E.B.E.L.S. and Doom Patrol.

I don’t know, the DC line of comics appears to be all-ages. Vertigo isn’t, and thus it’s books are labeled “For Mature Readers.” DCU books aren’t. There’s nothing to indicate that Super Friends and Identity Crisis are for different age groups by looking at the covers, is there? Some of the more violent scenes I’ve noticed in DC books over the last few years have even occurred in Comics Code Approved-stamped books. I can usually tell what age group which title is aimed at–even though I’m occasionally shocked at how violent some of them are–but that’s only because I read the damn things and spend so much of my life online reading about them. To someone brand new to the world of super-comics, “Cry For Justice” looks like just another Justice League book.

DC Universe isn’t all ages, its older teens and up while Johnny DC is all ages. ,/blockquote>
As long as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are appearing on children’s pajamas, fruit snacks, Fisher-Price toys, et al, then DC is very definitely being marketed as “all ages.” The existence of a children’s line (not “all ages”; it’s written for and aimed at children) does little to mitigate this. Superman is Superman, is an all-ages character, and has been for 70 years. If he’s now a PG-13 character, he needs to stop appearing on children’s products and in children’s entertainment.

And just to repeat the secondary point that I sort of ran past: Johnny DC is not, not, NOT an “all ages” line. “All ages” means ALL ages, not just children. Back in the ’90s, the “animated” books were very much “all ages,” but that ship has sailed, that time has passed, that noun has verbed.

Vertigo is DC’s “mature” line, and Vertigo characters are specifically and explicitly excluded from appearing in the main DC line (and vice-versa) because there must not be any crossover between the two lines. Johnny DC is DC’s children’s line. The main DC line is intended to be, and marketed as, an all-ages line. If that’s not the case, then none of the characters in the Johnny DC line should be appearing in the main line, and vice-versa.

If DC’s main line of books aren’t all ages then where are the new readers supposed to come from? Do you think someone who’s 18 is going to pick up a comic like Cry for Justice?
Currently comics are just concentrating the fan fiction elements for the already existing readers. So obscure characters come back from the dead and side characters are murdered or raped. They just want the readers to feel something, anything that’ll make them pick up the next issue. Which only means they’ll need a stronger hit next time. More insider baseball stories, more graphic violence and shock for shock’s sake. That audience will only get smaller over time.
Roy’s the second Teen Titan to have his arm torn off in the last few years and also the second to have his kid killed. You’re going to end up with a bunch of young heroes who have all been raped, maimed and with dead kids.
Wonder Woman killed a guy when it looked like she had no other options. That situation is going to happen again unless you never want a cliff hanger or any danger, so is she now a killer? If yes you’ve ruined Wonder Woman.
Superheroes need an elastic reality. They can be stretched but they need to snap back in order for future stories to be told. You’re leaving a bloody messy sandbox for whatever writer comes next.

Ah, but DC sells its mainstream universe as all-ages, for the most part.

Vertigo has clear warnings.

The mainstream DC titles with all the superheroes plastered over its covers? There’s nothing in there to indicate what’s inside should be for teens and above. And there’s plenty of other marketing by DC and its parent company that tells people these are all-ages.

I read comics a lot. I know what’s suitable for my kids and what’s not. I know what DC puts out isn’t mostly for them. But there’s no way anyone picking up, say, the hardcover of Identity Crisis in a bookstore will.

Besides which, it’s not that hard to put in adult themes and keep the comics suitable for most kids. Look at Pixar. Up is all about growing old and dying and being useless and abandoned. Those are dark themes. Those are very adult themes. And yet they manage to work them in without excessive gore and death.

_____________________________________________

I agree with every single thing you said.

I would also like to add that if the DCU isn’t no longer supposed to an all ages universe, then DC and their parent company needs to stop marketing and aiming their characters outside of the comic book industry to an all ages audience. It surprises me that Time/Warner doesn’t come down hard on DC and tell them to make sure their superheroes are suitable/appropriate for kids/all ages.

This discussion is silly because young children haven’t read comics since the 50s or 60s. Teens and even some pre-teens sure. But small children? No.

The critique of Cry for Justice is spot on. Both the maiming and the death were cheap, and used to boost the profile of a villain that ends up dying anyway. So it is both distasteful AND pointless. Identity Crisis at the very least led to some interesting changes in the status quo, but there’s no question the ending of IC left a lot to be desired.

However, Lawson starts from a flawed premise: The universe of Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Cry for Justice and dozens of other titles isn’t a “supposedly all-ages universe.” It hasn’t been in a long time, for good or bad. And while the approaching Brightest Day just may turn the page on some of the gloom and gore, I just can’t imagine many writers of superhero comics will suddenly tackle bloodshed with “a mature tone that will help children and teens learn about how to deal with death and tragedy.”

-

If we accept this the only conclusion to be drawn is that DC is mismanaging its fictional universe. If your far more successful animation division causes its audience to check out the comics which inspired the cartoons only to discover rape, torn torsos and massacres on American soil, you’re doing it wrong. See also with regard to tie-in merchandise as noted above. Not only does it make little commercial sense to have such a disjunct between the different media on offer, but in terms of storytelling the scale of the tragedy is such that the behaviour of the characters is bizarre.

To those who would argue that pregnant women are killed in the real world, children die due to tragic circumstances in the real world etc., there are consequences to these events! In the DCU the world changing event which occured last week is already forgotten, or referred to only obliquely.

The problem with relying on shock as a storytelling device is that eventually it wears off, or your audience becomes numb to your efforts to get a rise out of them. As Corrina points out Cry for Justice is not Watchmen, nor should that self-contained, one-off story be seen as a blueprint for contemporary comic books twenty five years after the fact.

DDH, you haven’t been to my local public library, or to my school library, where the kids will tell you they DEFINITELY read comics!

The best-selling book in my just-completed Book Fair was Smile by Raina Telgemeier – a graphic novel.

The kids are reading comics – they just may not be reading mainstream DC/Marvel comics.

Identity Crisis ended over 5 years ago. It’s time to just…

Get. Over. It.

I would agree with you if Identity Crisis was a one-off anomaly and not the beginning of a new status quo of tackiness, gore and stupidity for DC.

To all the people saying DC mainstream superhero comics are not meant to be all ages…if that’s so, why does DC have a “mature readers” line with warnings on the cover saying they’re only for adults? Wouldn’t that be redundant as well as inconsistent? And why do Vertigo titles have “mature readers” warnings and the mainstream superhero titles don’t have such warnings if both groups of books are intended to be for mature audiences? And why are Vertigo books chock full of swearing but they still don’t allow swearing in mainsteam DC superhero books? After all, if the mainstream superhero books are not intended to be all-ages but rather for adults, who are they protecting by not allowing curse words?

DC apologists really need to think their arguments out better.

There is swearing in the mainstream DCU books, but it’s not as strong as the Vertigo books. Cuss words like damn,hell,bastard,bitch,ass,asshole,and goddamn are all allowed in mainstream DCU books.

I’ve yet to see asshole and goddamn, but that adds to my point…why not go as strong as Vertigo books then and let it all hang out? My point isn’t that the DCU mainstream books are actually all-ages in content (hence the few curses Blade X uses in his example) but that DC tries to straddle this weird gray area between pretending they are all-ages and are not adult-oriented by maintaining a separate adult-oriented line and still having arbitrary rules about levels of swearing and licensing and merchandising heavily in kids’ mediums, yet having increasingly slippery slope of gory and lurid material, threesome talk and increased swearing. They want to have their cake and eat it itoo. You’re swear examples add to my point. Why are some swears acceptable and some aren’t? Why do some books merit a “mature readers only” but other books that fans claim are written strictly for adults in the mainstream DC universe with rape, torture, genocide and child murder not deserving of “mature readers only?” If everything is presumably adult-oriented at DC and not meant to be confused with all-ages work, why do some books have adult only warnings and the rest don’t?

To all the people saying DC mainstream superhero comics are not meant to be all ages…if that’s so, why does DC have a “mature readers” line with warnings on the cover saying they’re only for adults? Wouldn’t that be redundant as well as inconsistent? And why do Vertigo titles have “mature readers” warnings and the mainstream superhero titles don’t have such warnings if both groups of books are intended to be for mature audiences? And why are Vertigo books chock full of swearing but they still don’t allow swearing in mainsteam DC superhero books? After all, if the mainstream superhero books are not intended to be all-ages but rather for adults, who are they protecting by not allowing curse words?

DC apologists really need to think their arguments out better.
————————————————————————————————————————————————–

T, you hit the nail on the head. Too many apologists on DC’s (and Marvel’s) side. After Identity Crisis I abandoned all DCU titles completely in favor of Vertigo, Wildstorm and later Dynamite Entertainment

It’s not Lawson who starts from a flawed premise; it’s the author of this piece. The initial red herring of a question should not have even been asked in the first place. ’nuff said.