Another hang up I have about starting my column again is how comic books are seen in the mainstream press. The revolving door of "comics aren't for kids anymore" articles and such. This time it is more about Marvel's movies. What's my hang up about it? Just how to sidestep the issue like Chun in Remo Williams dodging bullets. I mean, I don't have to write about mainstream comics. Maybe it was judging the Eisners this year. I just never want to participate in a convo about mainstream comics ever again in my lifetime. Luckily, Beto shows me how it's done.
Gilbert Hernandez recently answered a question for a "mainstream" interview that made me think of this revolving door - it's not good or bad - it just is how "alternative"comics makers have to deal with questions about comics in general in 2013.
Interviewer: What's your take on mainstream comics now? Is there generally more diversity of characters and how they are portrayed?
Hernandez: Well, there can be - but I'm not interested because it ends up being more dazzling superhroics and stuff and I'm not interested in that, I've outgrown it. I mean, I'll go see Iron Man 3 or something just like everybody else but I'm not really interested in what's going on in mainstream comics - with just the storytelling, their concerns in the story just aren't interesting to me. I'm more a, y'know -
Interviewer: Are they interesting to kids? Comics are now an adult niche market - a fact noted in the afterword in your book - that stands in contrast to ten year old Huey in this book, in your book Marble Season. Comics are a common language for him and the kids in his neighborhood - we get this, I'm a little younger [than you] but I remember the same thing - that's the way it was with you and your friends growing up. What is your take on that? Do you think comics are still meaningful for kids today?
Hernandez: Hardly. Except for the characters that are [associated] with them - like I said before - video games, cartoons, y'know, the movies, y'know, I think for kids they're more interested in Captain America in the movies or in the cartoons than reading a Captain America comic book. That's what it seems like to me. My daughter, she's 12, and she has absolutely no interest to read comic books except for a few indy comics, some manga and she likes to go see the superhero movies with me, y'know, but she has no interest at all in comic books.
Here is the interview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3CHXk5CCY - it happens around the 14 minute mark. taken from cbc's Q - http://www.cbc.ca/q/
