Category Archives: Things I Like

We can all be thankful that Comics Alliance hired Chris Sims, because now we get to enjoy his "Super-Fetishes: 5 Super-Heroes Who Used Their Powers For Sex" column. Not unsafe for work, but let's be honest, no one wants to get caught looking at super heroes getting freaky by anyone, at home or work.

(I'm delighted to present the following guest post from author and frequent commenter Ian Healy. Thanks Ian! I'm posting it today because creative writers putting together interesting super-hero novels is definitely a Thing I Like. -- Jeff)

Jeff asked me (out of desperation, surely) to write a guest post for the HeroMachine blog this week on account of he’s, y’know, moving and stuff. Since I’ve been using the HeroMachine pretty much exclusively for the images on my website (www.ianthealy.com because I’m also plugging it here), I couldn’t possibly say no.

My name is Ian, and I write superhero fiction. Now that I’ve gotten that admittedly embarrassing confession off my chest, let me tell you a little about it.

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Don't click the link if you're upset by bad language, or if you don't like rants, or if you have a deep abiding love for Roy Harper (aka "Arsenal", aka "Speedy"). Actually, if you have a deep abiding love for Roy Harper, you should probably put the computer away and go play outside or something, because I'm pretty sure that qualifies as a disability and you don't have to go to work today. But, if you're up for a good rant, head over to MightyGodKing.com and enjoy his thoughts on "Arsenal" in particular and comics in general.

What I love about Mighty God King's post, though, is the point he raises that all too often, "modern" comics have to get their "edge" by basically insulting you as a reader for enjoying the product:

But on top of this being about Roy Harper, whom you don’t care about much when you think about it for more than two seconds, it’s a terrible series because it seems to be designed to remind everybody that superheroes, as a concept, are really quite stupid. We all know that superheroes are a stupid concept and they don’t work if you think about them for two seconds.2 When Roy screams out that the entire idea of kid sidekicks just endangers kids or that Donna Troy abandoned her kids to go “whore around in space with Kyle Rayner”3 all it does is remind me that I am reading a comical book about people in tights fighting crime and how none of that actually makes sense. It’s like if I was reading Lord of the Rings and Sam suddenly started whining about why hobbits shouldn’t have hair on the tops of their feet. It makes the entire comic feel like a judgement [sic] on the reader for enjoying the genre, for crissake, and it’s something DC in particular just keeps doing again and again and again, and when it’s not this particular thing, it’s something else about how I don’t like comics in the right way and every time it happens I want to read DC comics less and less.

We all know these things don't make sense. We know super heroes are silly, and the plots are usually re-hashes, and the entire edifice breaks down with any kind of actual consideration. But we like them, ok? They're fun, and they're cheesy, and they're awesome. Nothing is as much of a buzz-kill as some full-of-himself creator sneering at his fans as if they're morons. And I tend to get that feeling a lot reading some of the mainstream stuff. Maybe that's why I enjoy "Invincible" so much, it is what it is and the creators revel in it.

Marvel has always gotten this, even though they built their reputation as the more "realistic" company. As MGK explains, maybe that's part of the reason it works:

Marvel can also generally avoid the “but how does the real world come into this” trap because their heroes tend to be more real-worldy in the first place, and when they aren’t, they basically just say “aw, hell with it” and have Thanos eat a planet or something.

So, yeah, more planet-eating, please, and less whining and condescension from our comics creators would be great. Get on that.