The Value of Comic Books

Bill Maher recently said something dumb (quelle surprise) that criticized that people were mourning the death of Stan Lee and posited that Donald Trump could have only been elected by a populace that took comic books seriously. I’m going to give Maher’s link of comics to Trump the rigorous analysis that it deserves, which is none at all. But since Lee died, I have been thinking about comic books and their importance.

I did feel a little sadness when Stan Lee died. The guy was 95 so the feeling is more that gratitude for a life well lived that you feel when very old people die, but I still felt a little pang. I’ve been reading comic books for over 35 years and Lee co-created the foundational teams of the Marvel Universe: the Fantastic Four, the Avengers and the X-Men. He wrote those titles for many years and created a very large part of the Marvel mythos. Lee had a hefty amount of help from artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, of course. But Kirby died decades ago and Ditko (who also died recently) was a recluse, leaving Lee a very visible symbol of the old days of Marvel. So when he was gone, and people like me lost the man who helped create so many treasured four-color icons, yeah, there was a little mourning.

Comic books can be two-dimensional but Lee helped bring a sophistication to them. Marvel did something in the Silver Age that other publishers weren’t doing: giving superheroes real personalities and conflicts and basing them in something close to the real world. Spider-Man was always broke and wracked with guilt. In the Fantastic Four, the Thing had to come to terms with his mutated form and fought constantly with the Human Torch. At Avengers Mansion, Hawkeye belligerently questioned Captain America’s leadership while the Scarlet Witch chafed at Quicksilver’s overprotection. Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the original X-Men tried to serve a world that hated them just for who they were. Nobody had done this before in the medium.

Because of the work of people like Lee, Kirby and Ditko, later creators were inspired to create sophisticated comics themselves. This led to what middle-aged people like me read and still cherish: Frank Miller’s cinematic Elektra Saga in Daredevil, Bill Sienkiewicz’s wildly impressionistic New Mutants, John Byrne’s back-to-basics Fantastic Four, Chris Claremont’s examination of corruption and power in the “Dark Phoenix Saga” in Uncanny X-Men, and many more.

Comics are for kids, critics will say, and when you grow up, you need to start reading something more adult. But it’s a mistake to think that comic readers are only reading about Spider-Man, as many of us can actually handle reading more than one medium or genre at a time. I pick up a comic once in awhile but I am reading real, actual adult material constantly, to the point where it’s probably off-putting to my family. I have to have a book in front of me at all times—have to. Once I’m done one, I immediately go to the next one like a chain smoker. I am always reading some doorstop novel, and I’m also a comic reader. How about that.

This is something familiar to many people: Caring about more than one thing at once. I can watch a sportsball game and at the same time, devour news about politics and world affairs. Someone else can watch reality TV and have an encyclopedic knowledge of classic music. Et cetera. It’s not hard for most of us and there are comic readers who do have other interests.

Comic books have always done more than “inspire people to go see a movie.” They have inspired people for decades to write and draw, and not just comic books. They were part of what inspired me to write, and my accomplishments in that field are nothing to write home about, but they may not have happened at all without comics.

Comics also inspire kids to read. This is nothing apart from what the Harry Potter books have done. People have rightly praised JK Rowling for her contribution to getting kids to read. Why should it be any different for comics? There are many comics that over the years have developed characters as well as any other long-running serials.

I don’t read too many new comics these days but I do still revisit the oldies in their plastic bags sometimes. A few times a year, I’ll go crate digging for some Bronze Age back issues. Some of these are issues I once had and lost or traded away decades ago and when I find them again, I’ll see a panel that I remember from childhood, and it will inspire nostalgia and recognition, like a little blooming flower in my head. It’s those little bursts of pleasure that make comic books worth it for me and other people. Let people have that.