I listen to a lot of comics podcasts--here's a paradox you're always hearing on there, from the savvy comics-reading grown-ups.
Them: "So tired of the same shit on a different day. Why isn't anything new? We want something new! So excited when someone's trying something new!"
Also them: "So I picked up so-and-so's new (Spider-Man/Superman/X-Men/None of those) and, come onnn, who wants to read this? I mean, on page one (something that seems maybe weird but benign to me happens). Lol. They don't have a handle on the character at all!"
Wait.
Do people really want the same thing over and over? Or do they want something different?
Whenever something is popular we always see one of these two completely opposite explanations: people like it because its the same old shit and people are idiots, or people like it because its showing them something they never saw before and they want something new.
--
While the question goes far beyond comics, I found the most cogent answer in an issue of Batman.
Writer James Tynion IV has given The Joker (who is still, 70 years on, fighting Batman) a daringly oblique scheme to fuck with the Caped Crusader's head:
He will make the citizens of Gotham City all watch The Mark of Zorro, the movie the Wayne family was on its way out of when Bruce Wayne's parents were killed.
Afterwards he makes them into nano-zombies or something I can't remember but Jorge Jimenez drew it so it's all lovely and I don't care that I can't remember but at one point halfway through some hapless NPC says something about the movie and the Joker answers:
And that's it right there.
7 comments:
Yeah, you're right. The Joker is right. That's how I've felt about it for a long, long time. That's why I rewatch stuff like CASABLANCA, that's what I want to get (and almost never get) in comic books.
I guess the only thing left to do is to peel that layer back myself and see what I can put in there.
I found this fascinating.
The interview with those podcasters that you did - when you talked about how much you consider your RPG work "normal d&d" has really stuck with me.
The idea that you can describe a shower as a box you stand in and turn a machine in that makes rain, and just the fact that elves, religion, magic all exist on RPG spaces, and discussing how a lot of what you have written re-examines things to illustrate how weird they already were. Eg medusas, golems, elementals, demons...
It is a solid point - this assertion of nostalgia being seized upon and attempted understanding of what caused it being a big driving force of the OSR.
Maybe that is why me and my brother were very nostalgic about stuff that happened to us relatively recently at a very early age - we were examining and trying to figure out what we were interested in very early on.
Lots to think about, thanks for the post!
Very clever. I’ll have to think about this for a while.
@anonymous
Sorry, no anonymous comments allowed.
Beauty
The current X-Title lineup fucking SLAPS, *and* does something new.
@Vaxier
Well all good things do something new.
But my post wasn't about what's good it's about what people want.
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