Comic Books - Not Just for Grownups Anymore?

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Laura Hudson considers "breaking up" with mainstream superhero comics this week at Comics Foundry, citing the growing juvenility of superhero comics versus the independent comics she reads.

I can, I believe, relate. The remarkably silly (and pitifully sexually gratuitous) take on marriage we saw in Green Arrow/Black Canary: Road to the Altar is only one in a string of examples I could list of places where I feel embarrassed for superhero comics (which I overall love, and read, comics-wise, almost exclusively).

Sometimes, reading Blue Beetle or Checkmate, for instance, I'm amazed at a writer's characterization and insight; reading Hawkgirl or the offending chapter of Green Arrow/Black Canary, I can't help but wonder: Are the writer and I on the same planet? When the writer came up with this, did they expect it to be taken seriously? I don't think I'd "break up" with superhero comics as Laura posits, but sometimes I feel more connected than others.

This feeling of juvenility is--bringing this back to trade paperbacks--one of the reasons I became a wait-for-trader. When I read a magazine, I don't mind advertisements for cars or food or the like, but wouldn't it be strange to open the latest Jhumpa Lahiri novel and find a magazine advertisement every fourth page?

As I read comics, I became increasingly tired of increasingly more childish video game and candy advertisements interrupting my comics reading--my book-reading, that is. In a way, monthly comics are a strange hybrid form of book/magazine--you read them like a story (like a book), but they have advertisements and letters (once upon a time) like a magazine. But more and more, monthly comics felt like a magazine not meant for me--and so I switched to trades.

That's only one of a couple reasons, but I thought Laura expressed her frustration very well.

What might cause you to "break up" with superhero comics?

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