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Are comics for everyone?
So I've turned 24 and after that point, I've become hooked on both Marvel and DC.
But I've met people who dismiss comics and the Marvel movies as "dumb childish nonsense"
I disagree with that statement, but I'm wondering if anyone agrees with me that comics can be enjoyed by anyone way into adulthood
I sometimes worry I'm to old for comics, so I'm curious how people here cope and feel about it.
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[QUOTE=CrazzyRazzy;5682615]So I've turned 24 and after that point, I've become hooked on both Marvel and DC.
But I've met people who dismiss comics and the Marvel movies as "dumb childish nonsense"
I disagree with that statement, but I'm wondering if anyone agrees with me that comics can be enjoyed by anyone way into adulthood
I sometimes worry I'm to old for comics, so I'm curious how people here cope and feel about it.[/QUOTE]
I think us veteran comic fans have all met people who regard comics as childish nonsense.
And to be honest I do feel a fair amount of mainstream super hero comics are poorly written. (But many prose books are poorly written. And there’s a fair wedge of poor films.)
Often I ask myself 2 questions when deciding how to behave:-
Do I enjoy it?
Does it hurt anyone else?
If the answer to the first is “Yes” and the second is “No” , then I happily do it. Comics pass the two question test!
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I would not worry about being too old. You are doing something you enjoy that is not hurting any one. Who cares what others think.
I am 40 and read comics almost every day and collect action figures and super hero posters.
You do you pal :)
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[QUOTE=CrazzyRazzy;5682615]So I've turned 24 and after that point, I've become hooked on both Marvel and DC.
But I've met people who dismiss comics and the Marvel movies as "dumb childish nonsense"
I disagree with that statement, but I'm wondering if anyone agrees with me that comics can be enjoyed by anyone way into adulthood
I sometimes worry I'm to old for comics, so I'm curious how people here cope and feel about it.[/QUOTE]
People still say this stuff in 2021?
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I believe it was Neil Gaiman who said art is considered high art, sells for millions and put in museums. Writing receives prestigious awards like the Pulitzer and authors are respected.
But put the art and writing together, and people call it kid stuff.
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Comic books are an artform, just like movies, novels, plays. The artform can tell any kind of story for any kind of audience. Unfortunately, the big two are often limited in what kind of stories they tell. I'd suggest looking for comics from other publishers. Even the big two used to put out comics that were geared to different readers, but they don't do that as much as they used to.
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Yes comics are for everyone and no comics are not for everyone.
Age does not matter. I am 40 years old and have been collecting since I was 4 or 5 years old.
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In the US generations have slowly come to not care about what's labeled as "adult" or "for children". Adults play video games, watch Disney or other superhero movies and cartoons, collect toys or other memorabilia that would have been frowned upon by "adult society" 30-40 years ago, and in general are more comfortable with enjoying what they enjoy and not "putting away childish things". And it turns out that it's not the end of the world. Not everyone, of course, but it's no longer largely frowned upon. Same with piercings and tattoos and things like ear gauges or dyed hair. In times past seen as the realm of teenagers or childlike adults, but now pretty common.
Sadly comics as in the hobby I've had for nearly my entire life is so niche I don't think it's worth discussing who they're for, because they're clearly not for almost everybody. We're lucky the hobby still exists at all, and it mostly does because of nostalgia and inertia. It will likely (and likely should) die in its current form sometime in the next 20 years, and the hope is that there's enough goodwill from the profitable Disney movies of the world to allow comics to exist (maybe to flourish?) as an online/digital form of storytelling that in almost no ways resembles the hobby as we know it currently. That's already begun, in many ways, but it needs to continue if comics (at least as they are in Western form, though not sure manga as a print hobby will continue many years after the Western style comics die out) are to adapt and survive.
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Either the people who say comics are for children are being prejudiced or they have only read comics that are really for children.
Either way, I don’t see the point: you know what you read and you are able to see if the comic is for children or not. You are not responsible if people are short-sighted.
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[QUOTE=CrazzyRazzy;5682615]So I've turned 24 and after that point, I've become hooked on both Marvel and DC.
But I've met people who dismiss comics and the Marvel movies as "dumb childish nonsense"
I disagree with that statement, but I'm wondering if anyone agrees with me that comics can be enjoyed by anyone way into adulthood
I sometimes worry I'm to old for comics, so I'm curious how people here cope and feel about it.[/QUOTE]
Kevin Feige would probably disagree with those that dismiss you.
When and where I grew up, there was a pretty heavy stigma similar to the one that you describe associated with comics. It bothered me for a long time. I came to realize the circle of fellow fans was far larger than I'd thought, and they weren't a collection of emotionally-stunted people with late-life acne, living in their parents' basement. We come from almost every walk of life. Liking Big Two comics doesn't make you childish or dumb; it's simply one of those things that make you who you are.
CS Towle above probably has a point in saying The Big Two don't make output for as wide an audience as they used to do (or as wide as some indies still do). Even that doesn't matter; if you're enjoying, enjoy.
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Comics aren't for everyone because [I]nothing[/I] is for everyone. Some people hate television, others spend hours every day watching it. Some people read (print) novels constantly, and others haven't read a novel since the last one they were required to read in high school or college. Some people travel over the country and the world to go to art museums, and others have never been to the one within 30 minutes of their house. The buzzword these days is "diversity", so embrace your own preferences and don't be ashamed just because they aren't universally shared.
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Of course, comics are not for everyone. But if the reason someone doesn't read them is because they've labeled them childish, rather than genuinely not enjoying them, that is itself a mark of childishness, a juvenile preoccupation with being "adult" in some shallow way. To quote C.S. Lewis:
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
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[QUOTE=Mik;5682712]People still say this stuff in 2021?[/QUOTE]
Yeah when I first read that there are still dinosaurs with that kind of mentality walking around, my first thought was, "Hey, the 1950s just called. They want you back there where you belong".
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Different comics are for different people. The comic book industry is still very much dealing with the fallout of Seduction of the Innocent in the eyes of the masses. Sure, superheroes are mainstream now, but more than once I've seen people who watch the movies deride the people who read the comics that inspired those movies. And with only a handful of exceptions (mainly Saga and The Wicked and the Divine), comics that aren't about superheroes don't sell very well. Folks keep talking about manga doing better because it's cheaper, but they don't understand the level of poverty for the vast majority of mangaka: it's rare for a manga creator to strike it rich doing what they love.
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If comic shops are any indication, I'd say the majority of comic fans are adults.