The Comic Book Renaissance

There was a time, not too long ago, that being a comic book reader would bring to mind an acne challenged, overweight, fan-boy 28 year-old with a bad haircut living in his parent basement. Or at the best, Brodie (The brilliant but sadly underutilized Jason Lee) in Mallrats. Thankfully, those days are over.

Comics sport some of the very best writers out there today. Yes, there are some real dogs as well, but right now the world of comic books is going through a renaissance. The plots, pacing, characterizations, protagonist, and originality are all at the forefront. Long gone, it seems, are the days of simply tales of spandex, muscle-bound super-jocks beating up the cardboard cutout super villain and rescuing the damsel in distress. Sometime in the last five years, comics became cool. More, they attracted a new breed of comic book creators, both artistically and the writers.

Looking back, one could point to a certain point in which mainstream America finally stood up and proclaimed, “This is cool, we want more of this!” But the path from lame comics, or at least the long time status quo, to cool hobby, was a road in which many missteps almost derailed the whole thing.

The mainstream finally found out what most comic book readers knew all along: comics are fun, interesting, and full of life lessons. The start of the new renaissance started in 2000 with the release of X-Men the movie, starring Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, and a supporting cast who took their roles seriously, so unlike many comic book movies in the past.

Back in 1997, the comic book readers were sure that Hollywood was about to kill, for good, the comic book movie. With the release of Batman & Robin, staring George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman, and others, Hollywood seemed to embrace the absolute worse of comics. The movie itself was a smelly, festering pile of mule excrement. There was no comic book reader who watched that film and had a positive feeling afterwards. Warner Brothers seemed hell-bent on ignoring what it was that made Batman work so well in the comic books, instead opting to a horrible movie with had no other redeeming value other than helping McDonalds sell some Batman inspired Happy Meals.

Then X-Men came out, which followed not only the same story formula as the best selling comic book, but focused of the characters, rather than a stupid utility belt and a BatPlane. Here was a world very much like our own, in which mutants are real, and are feared and hated by the public.

The actors showed real emotion. They became the character, especially Ian McKellen (Magneto), Huge Jackman (Wolverine), and Anna Paquin (Rogue). There was more depth in the first five minutes in X-Men than in eight hours of the last four Batman films. If you saw X-Men, you know what I speak of. A young Jewish boy being ripped away from his parents, tears’ streaming down his cheeks as a Nazi soldier clocks him with a rifle-butt. In that single opening scene, the character of Magneto is born. A boy with the uncanny ability to manipulate magnetic fields, revealed as the metal fence is bent towards the outstretched arms of a crying child.

The traditions of showcasing comics in movies continued in 2002’s Spider-Man, a movie some consider the very best true adaptation of a comic book to movie. X-Men 2, an even better film than the first X-Men outing, also received rave reviews.

Back in the world of the pulp from which the movies were based, something radical was going on. A new breed of creators was stepping into the spotlight, spinning tales of both old characters and new to lead a new golden age in comic books. Writers such as Brian Michael Bendis, Kurt Busiek, Bruce Jones, J. Michael Straczynski, Brian K. Vaughan, Mark Millar, Garth Ennis, and more. These are not all “new” writers to the comic book world, or necessarily those of the biggest names. But they are writers who are have joined the elite in the last few years, and have taken the creative process of comics to the next level.

Gone are the days of simple “BANG!” or “POW!” in comics. Today, you are apt to read an entire issue of Spider-Man without even seeing one knockdown, drag out fight scene at all. Rather, especially Ultimate Spider-Man (A modern retelling of the classic character, starting over from scratch without the benefit or crutch of thirty years of continuity to worry over) you will find an entire issue about Aunt May and Peter Parker talking and coping with the death of Ben Parker. Or three issues simply crafted to create a new origin for the bad guy Venom. All done logically, with writing that will make a fan out of the biggest comic book critic.

Super hero comics still far outsell any other title, but they are far from the only types of comics on the market today. Nor are they the only successful ones. If you are interested in comics, but don’t go for the whole super-hero variety, here are a couple comics you may want to take a look at.