Why YOU Need to Read Comics

 

No Top Ten this week, I know you’re heart broken, but we do have something else entirely for you: a bulleted list of exactly ten reasons to read comics. Just kidding, I couldn’t think of ten so I’ll just give it to you in paragraph form. Besides, Top Ten stopped being cool the moment it became popular.

Of course, when I say ‘comics’ I’m not just referring to superhero-spandex-serialized comics, but also the online comic, the graphic novel, the trade paper back (TPB) and the declining (but still occasionally funny) comic strip in newspapers. All these examples are just different forms of the same thing—mix dialogue with sequential art and a comic is born.

So why read them? I mean shit, Spider-Man and Batman Begins was all you needed of that superhero stuff, right?

IDIOT!

 

Truth be told, I’m not here to push the superhero genre onto you. I don’t particularly care if you or anyone you know (or anyone you might have thought you knew but turned out to be someone else entirely) likes superheroes. Like historical fiction? Go read the wonderfully written ‘Nat Turner’ Graphic Novel. No, Nat Turner is not the love child of Nat King Cole and Tina Turner, read a book or…you can just read the graphic novel instead! Forget all those confusing words, endless pages and cumbersome prose.

Aren’t you tired of having to read so much stuff? Don’t you wish you could have the same story but with pretty pictures to look at? Don’t you wish you could walk around with something larger than most books so you can compensate for something that is found lacking? Don’t you wish you could wake up next to Heidi Klum? Then look no further than graphic novels (Heidi Klum not included in actual graphic novel).

 

Or try the online route, where you’re constantly having to wait a couple weeks or more just for a page! Who needs all that silly ‘content,’ I know I don’t. I’d rather have my story one page at a time so I don’t have to see the ending until a year later! I hear it builds a lot of suspense, until around the sixth month when you forget what the hell happened six months ago.

 

What about manga?

 

I know what you’re saying, “All those Emo kids I know read those after they cut themselves for being born.” Peer pressure to be like everyone else while proclaiming your snowflake singularity may seem like a good idea at the time. But it isn’t, so don’t be a moron and do what I say.

 

The truth is that manga is great because it is the same size as a normal novel but it’s a comic book! That means the same number of pictures fit into an even smaller space for less detail! You didn’t need it anyway.

 

Speaking of print, lastly, we have the newspaper comic strip. Ha! Like anyone reads a newspaper anymore.

 

That leaves us with comic books themselves. If serialized art formats were different foods, then the comic book would be your weekly trip to the sushi bar. You get little bite size pieces of raw fish wrapped in rice, just like a comic book…or…whatever.

 

So let’s look at the comic book for a while. “What do I get out of it,” you ask?

 

There are the chicks for one. While the real-life chicks may not flock to you like seagulls to a refuse barge, at least you can bask in the 2-D glory of some of the most anatomically correct (and impressive) women around, anytime you want. These girls don’t whine, at least not to you, and they only cost 2.99 a month.

Ok, that may be more or less creepier than the refuse barge, but the main point is that comic books are no longer a stigma among girls. The success of mainstream comic book movies has made superheroes cool again. That, and all females are happier to have a comic book nerd as a boyfriend than a ‘World of Warcraft’ addict any day. WoW has made the rest of our nerdy activities look reasonable in comparison.

Also, the actual literary talent pool has grown to the point that quality writing now lines the shelves. Casual readers don’t have to sift through countless issues of crap to get to the ‘good stuff’. Of course it isn’t all good, but hey, comics are hitting a higher percentage than
Hollywood right now, although that was never a hard feat.

 

Going hand-in-hand with quality is the large, GI-NORMOUS selection of different genres or styles. No longer split between the mainstream superhero fare and the indy (read: artsy fartsy) stuff, the industry now has a wide gamut of comics and graphic novels—horror, fantasy, crime noir, teen drama, historical fiction, weird abstract artsy shit that only people on mescaline would enjoy, or even some manga Hentai porn (see the paragraph about chicks). Hell, I think there’s even a book that has all of those things in it.

I think I’ve made my point abundantly clear and proved my point and shown my point to be true and generally had a point at one point in this column that not reading comic books will give you testicular cancer or hemorrhoids, I’m not sure. But for your sake, I’d read a comic book!