Mainstream superhero comics: Are we breaking up?

Over at Comics Should Be Good, Greg Burgas posts about a recent abysmal issue of Nightwing, which he describes as "torture porn" that stands out as offensively bad even within "a DC Universe that has recently been all about cruelty." Along with the painfully low standards of most of the commenters who leap to the book's defense, this pretty much pinpoints the reasons I have found myself more and more alienated from most mainstream superhero books.

Coming directly off of my weekend at SPX, as well as recently reading a string of excellent, engrossing graphic novels like Skim, Swallow Me Whole, and Alan's War, picking up a comic book like Nightwing #149 feels a lot like shutting my hand in a car door. And I'm thinking -- I'm thinking I should stop doing that.

I will admit that I am literally sick and tired right now and therefore probably not very patient, but I think my expectations for the medium should exceed my patience for this kind of subpar BS, and so should yours. I simply can't deny that more and more I find that my money and time is better spent on creator-owned works from smaller publishers with a greater emphasis on craft, characterization, and coherence -- and that includes indie superhero titles like Invincible and Powers.

It's certainly not the fault of the genre itself. I just find it hard, lately, to justify the time and money I spend on fractions of disjointed stories in shared and yet frequently discombobulated universes that bounce between writers and artists and fail to produce stylistic or narratively coherent arcs.

I realize that I'm enacting an enormous cliche by saying this, and nobody enjoys saying this about comics less than me, but I guess part of it is that I've grown up. That wasn't supposed to be a problem, though, because comics were supposed to be grown up now too. Except that when it comes to superhero books, they are too often adult only in the way that children imagine adulthood: freedom as irresponsibility, cookies for breakfast and no curfew. And so we get women as juvenile sex fantasies, gruesome violence as spectacle without consequence -- comics as a billboard of blood and breasts for their own sake, for the thrill of simply seeing them.

The problem is that when you become a grownup, boobies and arterial spray -- while still visually arresting -- can start to lose their novelty. So if you're someone telling stories for adults, you've either got to attach some sort of meaningful context to the sex and violence, or else ratchet up the shock value to even more fantastically gratuitous levels. One of these things is easier than the other, and I will allow you to guess which one I think they're doing.

I say with all seriousness that I derive more pleasure now from the few comics aimed at children -- Franklin Richards and the First Class books come immediately to mind -- than the average "mature" comic, because the former stands a much better shot of bringing me amusement or pleasure, while the latter will probably leave me frustrated, disappointed, and $2.99 poorer for it.

I know that these are not particularly revolutionary thoughts or feelings to have, only that I never really thought or felt this way before, to this degree. In the simplest terms, I'm just not having fun anymore with mainstream superhero books, and I don't think I'm going to be reading that many from here on in.

It's the same reason people break up, or friendships end: You realize, sometimes suddenly, that you're not getting much out of it anymore, that you've been doing it out of habit or obligation or nostalgia for a time when you really did enjoy it.

And so, you stop, and you give those parts of yourself to something that gives you more back. There are other comics in the sea, after all.