Why comics?

It's a pretty straight forward question. Why comics?

With all the different ways and mediums for people to be entertained, why comics?

Maybe it the fact that comics haven't really changed all that much since their start decades ago. Some forms of home entertainment such as music and movies come out with new ways of distribution all the time. It seems like as soon as you dedicate yourself to a format a new one lays right on the horizon. Meanwhile a comic book from today will look almost exactly like a comic book from the 40's.

There's also a complex simplicity to it. A man much smarter than me once said that comics are "words and pictures, and whats better than that?".

Coming soon to a theatre to you: something nothing like this

People have been telling stories with words for a long time, and people have been telling stories with pictures a helluva lot longer. A good comic will have the perfect harmony of writing and art, but a great comic will make each stand out even more on their own.

It wasn't until I got back into comics a few years ago that I realized that they were actually written and drawn by somebody. Moreso than that but there were people whose JOB this was. Soon I started taking note of which writers and artists I liked. Who else have they worked with? What title did they leave their mark on? It's quite similar to how movie fans will follow certain actors or directors career from film to film. Comic fans will follow writers and artists from book to book or story to story.

Speaking of, there are so many stories to tell too. Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that: COMICS = SUPERHEROES. When someone asks you if you watch tv, they usually aren't referring to one particular genre. So why should it be the same for comics? That would be like flipping the television channels and seeing nothing but gritty court room drama on every station. It would get old REAL fast.

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Bored yet?

The darkly religious black humor of Preacher, the tongue in cheek politcal mayhem of Transmetropolitan.

The beautiful hauntingness of The Sandman, the comedic sci-fi tragedy of Y: The Last Man.

The familiarity and fun of Fables, the cryptic revolving ambiguity of 100 Bullets.

All of the above are fantastic books and not one of them has superheroes in it. They also all disprove one of the other biggest comic misconceptions: Comics are for kids. While some comics can just be read, enjoyed and put back down, many are complex and layered stories that need to be played out over time. It's not continuity, it's depth. Also just for content sake, while there are lots of all ages friendly books out there, there's lots of stuff out there that would be rated PG-13 and up.

What's he doing to Sue Dibny?

So why comics? I think a better question would be why not comics?