hsut@pur-ee.UUCP (Bill Hsu) (12/11/85)
Some followup comments to other followup comments... I found Soren Petersen and Henry Spencer's comments on "children's" comics very interesting. I agree that it would be terrible if ALL comic books were for adults; heck, I would never have discovered comics as a kid if that were so :-). My "comics utopia" is where there are comics of every type, from the most complex creative experiments to the simpler fare for children. Right now, it seems that the comics produced are rather heavily biased in one direction. We have superb children's fiction (maybe "had" is more accurate, but I don't keep up on these things :-)), and we have modern masterpieces of fiction like Italo Calvino (does fellow Calvino fan Bill Ingogly read this group?) and Joyce. It'd be nice if we can have all types of comics in proportionate quantities as well. Henry brought up the deterioration of children's entertainment. This seems like a whole new can of worms. It's really sad to see how bad the new Peanuts cartoons are; I used to go out of my way to see the odd rerun, but the few recent ones I've seen are depressing. (Actually most of the animated sequences are far inferior to the original strip: another case of Schultz's almost perfect use of the comic strip medium not translating well to the screen??) I feel that all good children-oriented entertainment can be enjoyed by adults as well, perhaps on different levels. A lot of the classic comic strips as well as more modern stuff like The Secret of NIMH seem to fall into this category. On a different subject altogether, I'd like to put in my own two bits on "Miracleman --- a stage III superhero?" Some of Moriarty's comments were similar to some things brought up in the Frank Miller interview in Comics Journal #101. However, Miller seems to have weird ideas about the degree of realism you can bring to superheroes. Some of Miller's remarks seem to echo what Alan Moore has been doing with Miracleman and Superman/Justice League in the Swamp Thing teamups, the portrayal of heroes as almost godly creatures with human failings (kind of like the Greek gods). I was fortunate to get Miracleman #1 & 3 (for only $2.75 total, heh heh). I really enjoyed the issues, but I don't really see the break from the very best stage II characters, such as Miller's recent Daredevils. Or maybe we should reclassify the new DD as a stage III character? Bill Hsu pur-ee!hsut