ORIGIN STORIES<\/strong>: How do people get into comics? That\u2019s the question that was on my mind after reading Journalista!\u2019s rant\/essay <\/a>about (what he views as) the rotten state of the industry. <\/p>\n Because ultimately, that\u2019s what I think J! is calling for\u2013more people with more kinds of tastes shaping the industry. And when I think about it that way, Dirk\u2019s pessimism or somewhat desperate edge seems pretty persuasive to me, even though I agree with Sean Collins<\/a> (if it was him?) that hosts of awesome comics are coming out right now.<\/p>\n The first problem here is that people think comics are something you need to \u201cbe into.\u201d It\u2019s weird to go to comic shops and browse, and cart comic books around and read them on the bus and in the coffeeshop line, in a way that it\u2019s not weird at all to check out the latest movie reviews or browse the new releases at Borders. The medium is associated with a genre, and a genre that gets significantly less respect than it deserves. I\u2019d say the best superhero comics are better than the best mysteries, for example, but get a lot less respect than The Long Goodbye<\/em>, and even less respect than Agatha Christie (who herself is held in undeserved contempt).<\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s why, even though I\u2019d read comics all my life, I never thought of reading comics as a thing I do. I read ElfQuest <\/em>as a kid, and loved <\/em>it. I\u2019d stay up after my bedtime re-reading ElfQuest <\/em>by the light from the streetlamps streaming in through my window. (Mom, if you\u2019re reading this, please don\u2019t kill me!) I think I read Maus <\/em>in junior high, or maybe early high school? In high school I got into Love and Rockets<\/em>. But all this time I never even considered figuring out whether there were other comics out there that I might like. When I started getting into movies, or punk music, I just assumed that I would find all kinds of cool stuff out there if I looked; but I didn\u2019t even think of the comics I loved as comics. They were just\u2026 you know, ElfQuest <\/em>and Maus <\/em>and L&R;<\/em>. Oh and Ernie Pook\u2019s Comeek<\/em>. Sui generis, and not really sharing a medium. (Admittedly, EPC <\/em>really is pretty different from the other three, but still, sequential art and all that.) I\u2019d be interested to find out whether this is how most people who read Persepolis<\/em>, say, think about it. If it is how they think, Persepolis\u2019<\/em>s popularity won\u2019t spill out onto other really good comics.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2000, I needed a quick, \u201cintellectual coating over a candy center\u201d-type article for my college\u2019s right-wing monthly<\/a>. Figured I\u2019d go see the most intriguing of the summer\u2019s blockbuster pix, \u201cX-Men.\u201d Had fun; wrote a piece about the implications of genetic engineering for that Glenn Loury tagline about how conservatism is \u201cthe belief that human nature has no history.\u201d Forgot about it.<\/p>\n This past summer, the \u201cX2\u201d hype started, along with the \u201cMatrix: Reloaded\u201d (bleah) hype. It\u2019s more fun to be excited about two movies than one, so I figured, what the hey, I liked the first one; I\u2019ll see the second.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t like it<\/a>. Or so I thought. But something about it nagged at me, and I ended up seeing it several times<\/a>. I think the main attractions were a) I never see new big-budget action pictures, because most of them are guaranteed crapathons, so \u201cX2\u201d is one of my only exposures to all those spectacular SFX and sleek designs; and b) the acting is really excellent. Nobody gets enough to do, but they (almost) all make their mark. Famke Janssen has this one thing she does with her hand, twice in the movie, that\u2019s just perfect<\/em>.<\/p>\n Anyway, for whatever reason, I was interested. Started reading other people\u2019s reviews of the movie. This led to descriptions of various X-Men comics. Some of them sounded good. Hmm<\/em>, I thought. Wonder if I\u2019d like any of these.<\/em> It was around this time that I started having bad insomnia, so I\u2019d stay up late reading review sites and trying to get together a list of comics that sounded cool, basically in order to kill time. Ended up getting some okay stuff (X-Force<\/em>; eh) and some stuff I still think is really good (New X-Men<\/em>). The report is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n I asked for recommendations, got \u2019em, and spent lots more up-all-night hours trawling review sites. Read the first Alias <\/em>book and was just blown away<\/a>. Started trying to figure out what I liked about it.<\/p>\n I think some of it is that I\u2019m naturally oriented much <\/em>more toward words than toward pictures. Even in discussing painting <\/a>or photography, it\u2019s easier for me to pick up on the symbolism of the objects or poses in the work than on the composition elements and the way they advance the picture\u2019s meaning. I love comics because, like movies, they have enough \u201cwords\u201d (dialogue, but also characters and plots) to make the work the composition does obvious to me. So they make me think visually, basically opening up a whole new way of approaching art. I can walk away from a comic, as with a movie, looking at the whole world differently. I love Alias <\/em>in large part because every inch of every page advances the point of the comic\u2013nothing\u2019s wasted. It\u2019s tight<\/em>. And so when I ask myself, \u201cOK, why did this page have such a big impact on me?\u201d, I learn how to think visually. Comics stretch my abilities to read, intuit, and convey meaning\u2013while also, like any medium, providing everything from dumb fun (Ultimate X-Men<\/em>) to genuinely powerful art (A Small Killing<\/em>).<\/a><\/p>\n