5 Reasons You Hate Comics Now

Part One of One

In the Golden and Silver Ages, comic books would commonly include multiple stories. Books would be shared by multiple characters, too, so you€™d get a good amount of material per issue. Now, you can read a single issue in less than five minutes, they almost never offer a beginning, middle and ending and are always part blank of six. Back then, each issue was potentially someone€™s first. If you read those old issues, you€™ll see a huge emphasis on explaining how things operate in the fictional universe. Sure, this can get kind of annoying if you€™re sitting down reading them all back to back, but that€™s not how anyone intended them to be consumed. They were meant to be devoured monthly and by young people without access to the internet. Stories had to be simple. If you wanted to pick up a new Spider-Man book because you saw the cartoon, you wouldn€™t want to land in the middle of some storyline that is hot on the heels of the last major crossover and currently setting up the next obscene cash-grab event. Instead of making the characters accessible to new readers, creators have resulted to meandering storylines that keep longtime fans returning for just that little taste of how things used to feel. Drug dealers use a similar tactic - they start you on the good stuff and gradually wean you onto the crap. But by then you€™re addicted and you have to keep coming back or you€™ll die.
 
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Stephen Trevor is a writer from America. He agrees that the 'h' in 'herbs' should not be silent and that 'maths' makes way more sense than 'math' if you think about it. Most days, you can find him wandering the streets of Manhattan, frightening tourists while ranting about the philosophical implications of Saved By the Bell. You can follow him on Twitter here (https://twitter.com/#!/WhileIWatchSBTB).