Fair Warning: ANGRY RANT BELOW

I'm sick of it. Really.

Looking at the big events (and I mean looking, I don't buy event comics, but I check out the Newsrama previews and check in at a lot of fan forums to get all the spoilers) at Marvel (Avengers Disassembled) and DC (Identity Crisis and the Jim Lee drawn Superman) I have to admit, that well, who the hell wants to read this?

At the risk of sounding like an old man here, the comics I read as a kid involved superheroes (I won't say they were brightly coloured; I was a child of the late 80s/early 90s, when pretty damn near all superheroes wore black) actually, you know DOING THINGS about the various disasters happening all around them. Now, I look at these two examples which are being held up to the media and what do I see? A bunch of grown men (in tights and out) seeing disasters happening all around them and bitching about how helpless and ineffective they are. Who the hell wants to read comics like that? Actually, I take that back. I can see where there could be a dramatic need to tell that type of story, but this is way too much, and it's over the top.

Now, the prevailing logic is that the reason these stories are as somber as they are is because they reflect the feeling of powerlessness the world felt on that day which need not be mentioned (I'm sorry, but in an election year, politicians of all stripes have used and abused that day so much that it is begining to lose meaning, so I choose not to mention it by name). Well, you know what? That's entirely ass-backwards. On that day, and the many days since, we have seen many feats of heroism of a very human nature, and in some ways, a superhuman nature. Whether it was at the site of disaster, or a soldier on a battlefield (while I'm against some of the wars currently being waged, it is because I doubt the sincerity and reasoning of the leaders who lead to war, not the soldiers), or any decent act of charity (and that oh so brief feeling of global unity), THAT IS HEROISM. THAT DESERVES TO BE CELEBRATED.

I don't want to look back at the comics made in the first decade of the 21st century and say it was the age of "Shock and Cynicism". We deserve better. All of us. Demand it.


Michael Paciocco