Violence in Comics

Welcome! All of the previous posts about the RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE series are still available along the column on the left. But I have decided to write posts as often as I am able about various subjects that may be reflected in the series itself or relate to topics that I have addressed in the series in one way or another, primarily or tangentially..

The following is my take on an on-going issue that comic books, which influenced my writing, have always faced since they were viewed, more so in the past than now, as a medium primarily for children and young people, Violence in Comics:

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I must admit that I am currently way, way behind in my comics reading. Not just weeks, perhaps, but months. It may be one of those temporary periods of personal malaise. Between Marvel Comics' DARK REIGN and DC Comics' BLACKEST NIGHT, was it all becoming too bleak, too unremittingly morose for me to take at this stage of my life? It may also have become one of those situations where, once I got behind, the task of catching up has become, in and of itself, a chore that has taxed my desire to read so many comics all at once. (BTW, I still keep buying my weekly comics, to the delight of my comic store guy, Ray. It's just that I buy them and leave them in the bag I brought them home in. Thereafter, the bags of comics pile up around my already snug condo.).

Now, the one advantage of reading these many series of comics titles in order is that I have a better chance of understanding what is happening with the titles I still do read (from Marvel: NEW AVENGERS, X-FACTOR, MIGHTY AVENGERS, and a few others now and then; from DC: GREEN LANTERN, FLASH, SUPERGIRL, JSA, JLA, and a few others now and then). And now Marvel has begun the special event SIEGE, and I am not even caught up with the preceding DARK REIGN--though the two events are related and SIEGE directly follows events in DARK REIGN..

I am much the same way with TV series I follow: I wait until the series seasons appear on DVD (and now, more than before, on beautiful Blu-ray), and I watch the entire new season episodes all at once: HEROES, SMALLVILLE, THE SIMPSONS, TORCHWOOD, FRINGE. I am a member of a gay online comic discussion group, the gayleague.com, and it was during an early issue of SEIGE that the group discussed at length the issue of violence in comics had come up yet again. One character, already unbalanced to say the least, has violently, and I have learned, graphically, killed another character (an inherently violent individual himself)..

How much violence is too much violence? How graphic is too graphic? Decades ago, when I first began reading comics widely and pleasurably, even subscribing to a number of titles, especially the Legion of Super-Heroes in ADVENTURE COMICS, where a character killing another character began the focal point of the specific issue. Star Boy, when faced with his own murder, kills his would-be assassin before he himself is killed. For the Legion, killing was against their carefully crafted code. Star Boy was tried, found guilty, and expelled from the Legion. Most fans were upset that Star Boy had been expelled, me among them. Around that same time, an episode of the E.G. Marshall TV show, the Defenders, found an abused housewife on trial for murdering her husband, a mean, nasty monster. I stopped watching the series when she was found guilty of murder rather than being let off for having acted in self-defense. College came along and my record album collection began to take precedence, and I stopped collecting and reading comics, except for the occasional Legion comic now and then..

Flash forward to 2000 or so, and after I found the GLA once again, having lost the Web site before that, and I began to contemplate two more RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE volumes that would definitely require that I read comic books once more to catch up. I was advisted to read CRISIS and SANDMAN and STARMAN and PROMETHEA and several other titles to catch up then. But even though, throughout the decade, I was reading many titles and trade paperbacks, I still never felt that I had caught up or ever would catch up. I had missed almost the entire 70's, 80's, and 90's; and that would leave me with a serious handicap I might never overcome..

By the end of the decade of the 2000's, comics had become more and more dominated by these BIG EVENTS such as AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED and INFINITE CRISIS and SECRET INVASION and then these newest, DARK REIGN and BLACKEST NIGHT. One BIG EVENT after another began to wear on me and eventually caused me to find myself with stacks of comics piling up, and I was where I currently am now. But in one minor comic, BAST, I saw something that made me stop reading that title and even returning that issue to the comic store in protest. A violent character took a little kitten and through it against a wall. The kitten's death was graphically depicted, and I was thoroughly repulsed. The writer and artist and editor had crossed the line as far as I was concerned. But how would I respond to this latest, violent event in comics, the death depicted in SIEGE? Tune in tomorrow, because I promise that I will have caught up with all the current issues of Marvel's latest event, SIEGE, and I will relate my thoughts.

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