The Wider Horizon

By Regie Rigby

Well, my school’s next big comics project is nearing completion – several pages already reside in the depth of my hard drive and I am promised that there will be more on my desk by the final deadline of Monday evening. It’s an interesting mix of stuff, but continues to revolve mostly around the twin axis of Superheroes and Humour. I have no problem with this. I like superheroes (there you go – I finally said it) and I like stuff that makes me laugh. There isn’t a bad strip in the whole issue (if I do say so myself) and I’m rather proud of it so far.

That said, I do worry about the grip the superhero genre has on comics. Y’know what my favourite comic is at the moment? Gotham Central. If you aren’t reading this, then you really should – it’s utterly fantastic. I don’t think there’s a police/crime series to match it in comics or any other medium – I’m certainly enjoying it more than I enjoyed NYPD Blue Homicide: Life on the Street or Hill Street Blues (my previous pinnacles of police perfection).

So, what makes it so good? Well, there’s the wonderful characterisation for a start – the book features an ensemble cast which features characters you can believe in. These are not two dimensional cut and paste people who behave however it is convenient for the writer to have them behave. There are things you can believe they’d do, and things you can’t believe they’d do and things they do that surprise you. Just like real people.

The characterisation in the book is so solid in fact that even when the writers do mess with a character and contradict attitudes and behaviours that character has previously exhibited elsewhere (as they did recently with Renee Montoya) you find yourself not caring. Indeed, the Montoya story in question, Half a Life was so well plotted and precisely executed that I am more than prepared to accept that interpretation of Montoya as the definitive one. Anything that happened before which doesn’t fit that interpretation of Renee I am prepared to write off as her past denials and avoidances of who she really is.

(If you’ve read Half a Life, then you know what I’m talking about and don’t need me to explain. If you haven’t read it then I insist you do so at the earliest opportunity and I’m not going to spoil it for you.)

Then there’s the sheer force of the story telling. It’s little short of perfect – exquisitely paced with plot points spinning on a dime and sprinting off in wholly unexpected directions. Or the art. Not cartoony, but not over realistic either. Devoid of smooth lines and bright hues the gritty feel and muted palette give the whole book a truly noiresque feel which fits the feel of the book like a much worn Wellington boot.

Oh, and there are hardly any superheroes.

Think about that for a second. This book is set in Gotham, home of the Bat, the Robin, the other Bat, The Huntress, The Oracle (not a Superhero in the conventional sense I grant you, but I can’t talk about Gotham and not mention Babs, now can I?) not to mention Nightwing (who spends so much time in the clock tower these days he surely can’t have time to maintain his beat over in Bludhaven in either of those blue uniforms he wears these days) and Azrael.

Oh, and Tommy Monaghan (OK, so he’s dead, but when did that ever stop anyone in the DCU?). And all of those rogues in the rogues gallery. And Arkham Asylum and everything it stands for.

Can you imagine trying to make a show like NYPD Blue or Homicide against that backdrop and making it seem natural? Detective Munch running into Mr Freeze? Don’t think so. Just wouldn’t work. (Mind you, he was in an episode of The X-Files once…)

Gotham Central manages to function in that world. It doesn’t ignore it, it just gets on with being a normal Police Precinct in a big, bad city.

This is nothing short of genius.

There are other examples of this kind of thing. C.S.I. has its own comics spin off, and the unutterably fabulous Queen and Country does the spy thing better than any comic I’ve ever read. Indeed, if you discount the seventies TV series The Sandbaggers (which has been cited as an influence on Queen and Country) Q & C may well be the best take on espionage ever.

But what other genres do we have in Western Comics? There’s Science Fiction of course, and Horror (after a fashion) but in many cases both of these genre are treated by comics as Superheroics in a slightly different frock. What about Sport? There are countless stories about sport in other media, from Bull Durham and All the Right Moves in the movies, to Fever Pitch and When Saturday Comes in novels (I’m not mentioning either of the film versions of these books because they’re both rubbish). In comics the stalwart of British Football Roy Race (of The Rovers) hung up his boots years ago and the recent arrival of the CGI monstrosity that is Striker hasn’t made much of an impact yet.

(It pains me to say this about any comic, but I really can’t stand Striker and I actually find myself hoping that it fails – at least in its current form.)

I can’t think of a single other current example. Hell, I can’t think of a single other past example except The Tough of the Track, about a runner, and I don’t think he’s seen print for more than twenty years.

In the US, I’m not aware of any sports based comics. (Please do correct me if I’m wrong – the boards are open) Why? Looking at them from this side of the big pond the Americans seem to be sports mad, with their NFL, their NBA, their NHL and their Major League Baseball. (And I’m not going to bother with the traditional jibes about how nobody else plays these games – not only are they not entirely true they’re a bit trite these days.) Why so few comics about them? I don’t get it.

Then there’s Romance. Romance Comics used to be massive. Where are they now? Off the top of my head the only comic I can think of to revolve around a genuine Romance is Strangers in Paradise and I think we can agree that Terry Moore’s magnum opus is significantly more than just a romance.

Or Westerns? I can think of two major Western comics in recent years - Jonah Hex and Rawhide Kid. Or war? There used to be several tons of War Comics, from Sergeant Rock and GI Joe in the States to Battle and Victor in the UK. We still have war movies and war stories on TV, (and many of them are excellent – Enemy at the Gates and Band of Brothers both spring to mind) where are the comics? The only one I can think of that comics out regularly is the digest sized Commando which has been running unchanged fro as long as I can remember and is often remarkably good.

Politics? TV has The West Wing, and any number of movies and novels cover political themes and intrigues - from Primary Colors to An American President. Hell, I could probably even squeeze Love Actually in here, but I won’t because it’s crap. The only overtly political comic I can think of from recent history is Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan. Other than that I find myself reaching into the dim and distant past of the early nineties boom for back issues of the worthy but dull Crisis.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when one genre comes to so thoroughly dominate a medium which has such potential for diversity and richness. Superheroes have their place but they’re not the only thing we should be doing. The diversity is out there (as evidenced by almost every edition of The Real Mainstream but the comics buying public (and that means you and me) seem to consistently pass over it to get to ever more tales of spandex clad behemoths.

Stop it.

Buy your spandex books by all means, but try cutting a couple of the poorer ones and using the cash to try something else. I’ll maybe make a few suggestions in the next few columns (and of course I’ve made many in the past so check the archive) but for some more top tips you can always rely on Glen to have some examples of the good stuff out there.

Go on, broaden your horizons – I promise you the view gets better as it expands.