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Comment by LegitShady | Hacker News Reader

I will agree there were some comics that talked about social issues, but even those tended to not hit you on the head with the message so hard, and they weren't the majority of comics books - they were a small minority of books. Now everyone wants to be Alan Moore, or they don't understand why Alan Moore is important and they want to dress their heroes up for party instead of make interesting stories with cool action.

Comics are alive and well in non-western comic traditions. It's the big two (Marvel,DC) as well some some smaller companies like IDW that can't produce stories people want to read on a regular basis.

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Are you sure? The entirety of the comic book genre is almost 100% based in social issues. Even going back to the first superhero, Superman, in the first issue of Action Comics #1, the protagonist rescues a woman about to be executed for a wrongful murder conviction (wrongful convictions and death penalty), rescues another woman being beaten by her husband (domestic abuse), rescues Lois Lane who was kidnapped by a gangster for rebuffing his advances (sexual harassment), and investigates a senator suspected of corruption (political corruption). It also acknowledges topics like media propaganda with the Daily Planet editor wanting to stir up the news. That's not even to speak of later super heroes like the X-Men whose entire existence was an exploration in marginalization of groups based on genetic differences. If those aren't main plot points based on social issues, I'm not sure what is.

Maybe it's just that as kids, we didn't recognize these things as being so politically charged as we do in our adulthood. Perhaps it's because as kids, it just seemed like common sense that these things shouldn't even be controversial so much as just being obviously bad things against which a hero would fight. It's hard to maintain a kid's perspective on things when we leave our kid years.

Edit: wording.

I was never a DC fan, so I can't speak to them, but Marvel used to give their writers much more freedom in the 80's and early 90's (coincidentally, when comic sales were doing great) as well as owning smaller "independent" publishers, to let their talent publish small, offbeat, "risky" comics with subversive themes. It was GREAT. That's what Image Comics was (owned by Marvel). It was like how Large movie studios would own small art house film studios in order to entice good directors (like Spielberg and Lucas) to make blockbusters for them.

Besides, good literature isn't supposed to hit you with their message so hard. Good literature isn't a blunt instrument to be wielded like some dullard wielding a sledge hammer in a slaughter house. It's a gentle and subtle poison that changes your mind from the inside. V for Vendetta is a great example. On the outside it just shows how government is corrupt, but it also shows the risks of human experimentation, the problems of corporate and government cooperation, how easily people are swayed by a compliant media, how easily small things in the beginning can have huge consequences far down the line that were never suspected, even in a time of conflict and rage the need for human connection is important... and all of these things are laid out in the sub plot of a comic book. Again, from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when risks could be taken =)

>That's what Image Comics was (owned by Marvel)

Image comics was never owned by Marvel - it was founded when 7 of the big marvel/DC artists realized they didn't need marvel to publish them and left to do their own thing. Each artist had his own company (like Silvestri's Top Cow, Liefeld's Extreme Studios, Todd Mcfarlane's Todd Mcfarlane Productions, Jim Lee's Wildstorm, etc). Image's job was to act as a publisher that took minimal financial value from the project away from the creators, and didn't own any of the IP.

DC comics did have some smaller publishing houses - Vertigo comics, Wildstorm Comics after they bought it from Jim Lee, etc. Vertigo owned IP so it wasn't creator owned stuff, and I think Wildstorm was a mix. Vertigo imploded after a woke reboot that lasted from 2018-2019, and DC consolidated its adult oriented lines to DC Black Label.

Marvel had Icon Comics with creator owned stuff like Kick Ass (that later got a movie) but it was really about stopping Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar (netflix acquired Millarworld Limited in 2017) from shopping those IPs out to other places.

>good literature isn't supposed

99.99% of comic book writers today don't know how to write good comics, let alone good literature. DC has imploded and gone through multiple rounds of layoffs and there are very few of the people who were involved with the comics you remember left there anymore. Marvel is happy to make garbage if it hires people with the right diversity checkboxes (see Vita Ayala, who somehow keeps getting more work while being completely unable to write stories people want to read).

>V for Vendetta

Originally published in the UK, later put out by Vertigo Comics (DC) in its hayday. But Alan Moore is better writer than almost everyone left at either of the big comics houses these days, and he was writing in a time where it was less culturally acceptable to write blunt propaganda into comic books.

>Again, from the 80's /sigh ... it was a freer time, when risks could be taken

This is because our society has switched. In the 80s the left was fighting right wing christian censorship and largely winning. Today we have inverted.

>>Image comics was never owned by Marvel - it was founded when 7 of the big marvel writers realized they didn't need marvel to publish them and left to do their own thing<<

No kidding! Today I learned. Thanks... I really thought they opened this up to hold on some of these artists (specifically McFarland, who was notoriously hard to work with). =)

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