Mature, Adult or Merely Sophomoric

In last week's post, Komiks for Kids, I said that the comics industry, and in particular the Big Two in the US (i.e. Marvel and DC), has moved more and more towards material aimed at mature readers.

Comics as a medium, the argument often goes (sometimes unbeknownst to the general public), has grown up. It is no longer kiddie territory, but now a cultural realm also for adults. What is sad with this reasoning is that it is based on a couple of faulty suppositions:

1) That comics were previously only for kids and as such by default rather unsophisticated.

2) That all that has come after this assumed growing up is in and of itself mature cultural material.

The flaws of these two suppositions are plentiful. Not only were comics not only for kids prior to all of this (the entire notion of comics aimed at readers of all ages goes back quite a bit after all), but the assumption that even something aimed at children exclusively or primarily needs lack sophistication is questionable. At best and to put it mildly.

With regards to the second supposition, I have to say that there is something particularly sad with the term mature being applied to some of this, admittedly adult oriented, material in that its claim to maturity is based on two simple factors: sex & violence. Personally, I would posit that graphic sex and violence (while clearly unsuitable for under-age audiences) do not maturity make. Much of this material rather firmly reveals itself as sophomoric, trying to pass itself off as mature.

It's not that I'm saying that sex and violence cannot be part of mature comics (because I do believe they most certainly can) or that some mature comics using these components (or certain themes or visual elements) might not also be unsuitable to kids. All I'm saying is that there is something very, very wrong when the two major companies in the US comics industry, with a strong history of comics aimed either directly at kids or (perhaps more accurately on many occasions) at All Ages audiences, are publishing comics that you'd seriously hesitate allowing any children you know to read if you just took a look at the cover. And (I hasten to add) in this case and based on my own experience and understanding, the content rarely belie that assumption.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is room for mature themes in comics (and I do mean mature, really), actually both in comics for mature readers and comics for all ages. Because let's face it, there are some pretty mature themes that have been handled in All Ages comics over the years, that are properly mature and have been maturely handled, especially when compared to some of the stuff put out by the sophomoric brigade (and not even that is saying that all things sophomoric in and of themselves are bad, or even bad ideas, merely that we should, perhaps, not leap at the opportunity to praise it as mature).

While I (as stated many times over) do believe that the medium has plenty of room for a full spectrum to exist, I would like to raise this single question: Why ruin fictional worlds that, while certainly not exclusively for children in the first place, should never be exclusively for adults either? Think about it.

Komiks for Kids

Apropos of my previous post on Wayne Osborne's FX, I have been thinking a bit about the preconceived and often mistaken ideas many people seem to have with regards to comics. The most frequent one being the age old notion that comics are for kids. Needless to say, perhaps, I find this a rather brusque way of pushing an entire medium off the table, as it were.

Don't get me wrong. There have been plenty of comics written and drawn specifically aimed at kids. But there has also, for a long time, existed a notion of an audience group entitled All Ages. That is, material neither aimed exclusively at kids nor at adults, but one going for a broader market encompassing both (early Marvel comics at the hands of Stan Lee et al surely refined creating comics for that particular group). And then, of course, there are also an array of comics aimed directly at adults, both in the sense of adult material and material for mature readers (terminology which I'll deal with further in a forthcoming post).

In my mind, there is certainly room for all of these categories in the spectrum and it is sad that there exists such an at least seemingly large group of the general public who still see the medium itself as aimed only at children.

The latter is also somewhat ironic, seeing as how there's been an ongoing trend lately (basically since at least the mid-90s onwards) at the Big Two in the US (i.e. DC and Marvel), both of which have slowly been moving more and more into publishing aimed at mature readers. Very much so, in the sense that I would not easily pick up a mainstream superhero comic for kids I know, without first really, really making sure that the content is appropriate. And more often than not... well, let's just say that you can toss a great number of them out the window as inappropriate just by looking at the covers.

Now, the reasons mostly cited for this move state that the companies follow their readership. There have been a number of long time fans developing over the years (and yes, to certain degrees I am certainly in those numbers), readers who have followed the comics (or, in some cases, at least returned to them) rather than abandoning them when exiting adolescence. This in and of itself is probably not new, but in the wake of the Direct Sales Market's impact on the overall market and a lessened availability of the comics themselves, a younger, new readership simply isn't exposed to comics as easily as once it used to be. Consequently, the readership by and large has tilted, giving way to an older audience, at least part of which has quite different demands vis-a-vis requested material, and the companies respond to the readers whose voices can be heard (i.e. the readers already there).

Much as I can see the gains of having specialised comics stores (speaking as a Swede, I sincerely doubt I'd have made the shift to reading my comics primarily in English if not for the existence of a local comics store selling US imports), the market punishes itself if those outlets are the only ones carrying the material. Because the problem with any specialist store is that it requires that people have a reason to go there in the first place. With some types of merchandise, say tools or the like, needs may arise that force potential users to find the tool store. But there is no such natural need for a comicbook. It needs to be introduced and the interest then nurtured in some sense. Much like reading and literature.

And there is the insanity of it all, because if the companies don't tend, not only to the dwindling audience they have, but also to the potential new audiences out there, they will end up losing it all.

It seems fairly clear that people who read comics when they were young are more likely to pick up comics as adults than those to whom the language of the medium is as foreign as... well, a foreign language. And it is well known that we learn languages more easily when we're young.

I maintain, this should not have to be an either-or situation. As I stated early on in this post, there is room for all the categories under discussion, but it is ever so important that the stuff specifically aimed at (or at the very least inclusive of) kids cannot be taken away. Such a move is counter-productive.

Children's literature has not been pushed out to make room for literature (for adults). Rather children's literature is what we use to help children, not only learn how to read, but to appreciate reading and reading for its own sake. It is what publishers and the literary market use to get new readers hooked on the concept of books itself, to secure new generations of readers.

Comics being a medium in its own right requires the same introduction. Comics must be readily available to children, both as an additional useful tool in the quest to acquire reading skills and as a way of introducing not only the medium itself but its language of sequential images and text as well. Because if that isn't done, where is the next generation of comics readers going to come from?