Comics and graphic novels: Is anyone pushing the edge of sequential art?
“Comicbook heroes are mainstream and big screen. They are the giant myths written across our lives. Run through with commercial hooks they would carry us blindly from purchase to purchase given half a pound. With an equal choice between two similar products who wouldn’t choose the one branded with greatness, the super product?
The once niche spandex-clad archetypes of Marvel and DC comics now function as central myths in Western society. Perhaps not as clearly as Churchill or Hitler but they are tools through which we work over our moralities, guiding principles, our societal trajectories. They comfort us with the idea of absolutes and the power of choice and, in doing so, infantilise us by appealing to our lowest and most servile instincts. They’re also damn good fun and allow us to break away from the lowest and most servile realities of contemporary life. An escape into the machine-language binaries of our reacting chimp and hungry reptile, emotional safe spaces of need-as-nobility (I need this for the good of humanity) and reward-as-satisfaction (closure achieved!).”
