Thar be comics in dem waters….

While a horribly inaccurate moniker these days, comic books (serialized graphic stories is a bit wordy) are still alive and kicking today. Heck even comic character based games and movies don’t all universally suck. Some are even quite excellent! While movies like Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Marvel’s The Avengers and even Scott Pilgrim vs. The World push the “comic” to a wider section of society the books themselves still seem relegated to being only for “hardcore geeks”. Being an admitted and proud of it geek, I suppose it is of no surprise that I am a purveyor, reader, advocate and collector of these little artistic endeavors. While mainly a capes (super hero) reader and collector, comics of today and the past do step into many more arenas. There are horror comics, drama comics (though almost all cape comics are also dramas), sci-fi comics, comic adaptions of novels and tie ins to lots of other media.

Now my point isn’t that comics are for everyone. Much like any form of entertainment, there are people they will resonate with, and those they don’t. My point is that in all forms of entertainment, there is more out there than may first be apparent, and even those that are into the media may miss it. I almost exclusivity read capes books. Not because I didn’t know the others existed, or even that I found them totally lacking. It was partly financial and partly habit. I didn’t only read super hero books, I read only Marvel super hero books. It was the universe I was established and invested in, and just had the luck of having my favorite super hero – Spider-Man. So when a little book called Saga form Image comics came into my sights I almost dismissed it immediately as a cool looking thing, but I wasn’t interested.

Avengers_vs_JLA

Now granted, Saga is a sci-fi epic, and would probably be lumped together with super heroes by many, but for me it was a very different thing. There was some controversy about the book because the cover of issue 1 showed a mother breast feeding. Didn’t really phase me, but that wasn’t my bag. Not gonna get it. Then one of our friends over at Omega-Level started talking about the book and how awesome the author was. He specifically called me out and challenged me to pick up an issue and not like it. My defenses wavered, but still I was unswayed. It didn’t fit into my box.

Eventually the fated day of the books release came. I hadn’t asked for a copy to be pulled at my local shop, and I didn’t really expect there to be any copies on the shelf. It was an image published book, so that generally meant not a lot of copies. But when I walked in there it was. Staring at me. Challenging me. After a brief endorsement of the book by the good shopkeep, I finally caved, and oh man oh man am I ever so glad that I did. It is a mature comic, of that there is no doubt. And some of the content honestly still takes me by surprise, but it is a wonderfully told story with an art style that wouldn’t readily fit a super story, but works here perfectly. And while it is sci-fi, like most things it is really about relationships.

Now I plan on doing comic book pieces, hopefully, weekly. Sometimes they may be reviews. Sometimes they may be rants. Other times they may be nearly pointless ramblings such as this. If you have a subject you would like me to cover, or questions about anything comic related in general, add a comment below and I will get cracking on it. Till next time, remember to occasionally step out of your box…

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