Does Anyone Love Comic Books Anymore?

 Some times I am convinced that the reduction in readers of comic books has to do with the increased cost of the individual books.  As someone who remembers comics costing 60 cents I am not the ancient one, but I do have a feeling for what old fans must think when they pick up a three dollar comic at five times that old price.  Then I realize that with inflation the cost has not risen all that much, but the numbers of people reading are still falling.  Either their popularity is spent or their is no room for analysis and contemporary criticism of this much maligned artistic format.

I love comic books as they turned me onto writing.  Currently pursuing a career as an author of commercial fiction, I find the lessons of comic books inform all of my artistic decisions.  I have an English degree from a good school so I know how to tear a piece of writing apart and discover what holds the story together and what elements I could implement in my own writing. The more I analyze my style the more I see that the energy, pace, and cinematic qualities of comic books are everywhere in my prose.

Learning how to write reviews of every type of book under the sun taught me a few key words that I can use when focusing on plot, theme, character, metaphor, and tone, but the biggest help at understanding the work of another writer is trying to write oneself.  This is where my experience perhaps moves away from the pack: to date I have authored fourteen novels in three years, and while I have yet to find an agent or publisher for any of them I am proud of them each for different reasons.  Sometimes I write using superheroes in the post modern literary form and I love these books as they are so entertaining to read, (at least for me...).  To really improve one's writing the same English 101 rule applies, practice, practice, practice, revise, revise, revise, again, and again, and again.  Not the easiest art form to get excited about as the books take two months to write and sometimes go nowhere, just sit cold on my hard drive, but I think I am finding out more and more about what people want to read.  This is the secret of writing commercial fiction: write for an audience, not only for personal enjoyment.

So these practices, (creative writing, literary criticism), are ingrained in my experience of any work of art.  When I called some of the entries in these hubs "high brow"  or "low brow" I was trying to be ironic but I think it sounds too serious.  I am learning a lot about the reading public from writing here and I thank those who have responded to my hubs.  Hopefully the ride will be a good one through the rest of the month as I return to the Greatest Comic Books of all Time tomorrow.

Blessed Be.