Marvel’s Civil War & The New Face of Comic Books
I’m a big fan of comics, almost to a fan-boy state of mind. I’ve followed Marvel and DC Comics since the early 90’s, although I tend to lean more to the Marvel set of characters since the names and backgrounds aren’t nearly as hokey as DC’s second tier of heroes tend to get. I’m not talking about Superman or Batman, but people like “Elongated Man” or “Captain Atom.” Never heard of em? Me neither, at least until Paul Dini’s Justice League Unlimited cartoon. I’m more of a Spider-Man and X-Men fan.
Anyway, I take a break every few years due to terrible story lines or poor artwork. This happened big time in the late 90’s, when all of Marvel and DC’s good artists and writers jumped ship and started their own comics company (Image Comics). The stories and artwork dipped horribly, and I lost interest.
Jump forward to around 2001, and suddenly the face of Marvel Comics was changing. The good artists all returned for freelance projects, they hired even better artists, and commissioned Hollywood writers such as Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), J. Michael Strazenzski (Babylon 5), and Damon Lindloff (Lost) to work on projects. The biggest change? They dropped a severely archaic and ridiculous rating system established in the 1950’s (and only slightly updated since) called the Comics Code Authority.
Comics came under heavy fire in the early 1950s, thanks to a public’s rising fear of juvenile delinquency and one prominent psychiatrist’s willingness to pin the blame on the vastly popular comic books of the era. Under intense public pressure, the comics industry agreed to adopt a code of ethics and to establish a “voluntary” authority that would approve every book prior to its distribution. In truth, there was nothing voluntary about it; in the days before independent comic shops — when most comics were sold in supermarkets, department stores, and mom-and-pop corner stores — comic publishers had no choice but to comply with the CCA if they wanted to survive.*
Almost every comic from the 1950’s to 2001 had the CCA stamp on it’s cover except for a few key issues in the past, such as Amazing Spider-Man #96 which featured a story about Harry Osborn turning to drug use to deal with his problems, or D.C. Comics’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 that featured Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy on the cover as a prominent drug user–complete with paraphernalia and all. DC & Marvel pushed the envelope at the time when they released these comics. The CCA threatened to block distribution on these issues, however when they released each of the titles made history making sales.
Today’s comics are not what they were in the 1960’s, 1980’s, or even the 1990’s. Because of switching to a more ratings-type system like movies and television have, they are free to publish all sorts of stories from tame children-safe comics, to much more mature (read: violence and profanity) titles like The Punisher.
A good example of the huge and entirely impressive change in storylines can be seen in the recent multi-title crossover event in Marvel Comics’ Civil War series which pits hero-vs-hero and will change the face of the Marvel Universe forever.
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Link: Marvel’s Civil War & The New Face of Comic Books
Posted by Haggis on July 6th, 2006 @ 3:09 pm.
I figured since this is my DJ weblog now, I’d make a new category for posts: Music. Duh.
