Geek is chic

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Christopher Anderson⁄The Star Comics MD employee Brian Samms (left) helps customer Andree Grinnage find some collectible comic books at the Accokeek store. Adults have become a major part of the market for comic book and graphic novel publishers. Click here to enlarge this photo Photos by Christopher Anderson⁄The Star Cousins Harshdeep Goraya (left), 9, and Mantaj Singh, 5, both of Accokeek, read comic books at Comics MD in Accokeek.

Standing at the counter of Comics MD in Accokeek on a hot summer afternoon, one realizes these people do indeed have a common interest:

Comic books.

Since the early days of these brightly-colored story books, there has been a kind of stigma attached to the reading and collecting of comic books. Deemed a distraction that contributes to the delinquency of a minor, or a plaything of childhood by those who have never read one — or at least, haven’t picked one up in a while — the comic book, or graphic novel, has lately undergone a transformation in public opinion.

‘‘It’s not so much a kid thing,” according to Jill Sears, who has entered the shop to buy a pair of long, white cardboard boxes to store part of her husband Chris Stergiou’s massive collection.

Finally, after all these years of hiding boxes full of bagged and boarded comics in their parents’ basements, the ‘‘fanboys” — here used in the most affectionate sense — are now more free to come out of hiding.

Brian Samms, a four-year employee at Comics MD, described the stigma that used to come with the comic book hobby.

‘‘When you said, ‘I collect comic books,’ to someone in the ‘80s, they thought, ‘Oh, you live in your parents’ basement,’” he said. ‘‘It was OK when you were age 7 to about 13. If you kept reading after that, you were pretty much a geek.”

Not so, anymore.

‘‘Nowadays, you see it has drastically changed,” Samms said, and named several celebrities who have come to embrace the books as a hobby, and in some cases, a career: Nicolas Cage, Kevin Smith and Tobey Maguire, who Samms said came to enjoy comics while making the Spider-Man movies.

Something for everyone

New markets Comic book publishers have made efforts to expand their markets by including minorities. Here are some of the characters introduced with that goal in mind: Blacks The first African-American to be featured as a title character in a comic series was Lobo, published by Dell in Dec. 1965. Soon after, a character named T’Challa, known as the ‘‘Black Panther,” debuted in ‘‘Fantastic Four” in July 1966. In the X-Men, Ororo Monroe, or ‘‘Storm,” has been a regular Marvel character since the 1970s, and has been a popular character since. An Internet search of black superheros turns up several familiar names, including Blade and Orpheus. Latinos⁄GLBT Latinos have not had much representation in comic books; far less than even those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or trangender. In fact, two of the major Latino characters also belong to the GLBT category: Renee Montoya, a character in the Batman universe, is Kate Kane’s (Batwoman) lesbian lover; and Hilde Morales, also known as ‘‘Lord Fanny” from ‘‘The Invisibles” books, is a male-to-female Brazilian transgender woman. Asians Asian characters have been very well represented in comics for quite some time in the form of Japanese manga.

Part of this broadening interest in the format may be the broadening of the format itself.

It used to be that shops refused to sell comics without the Comics Code Authority (CCA) seal of approval. This indicated the book had been submitted by the publisher to the CCA, and had hence been approved by the organization as adhering to a set of voluntary censorship rules. Essentially, comic books had to follow the same decency guidelines the average Disney animated movie would follow, which meant there were strict codes to follow regarding the depiction of violence, sex and profanity.

Several years ago, the face of comics began to change.

‘‘In the mid ‘80s and early ‘90s, a lot of comics were more able to address drug issues, and women were shown more scantily-clad,” Samms said. ‘‘Fights had more blood.”

Publishers began releasing more adult-oriented storylines under offshoot labels, such as DC’s Vertigo, which put out a series called ‘‘Hellblazer,” the still-continuing saga of John Constantine. The ‘‘Constantine” movie that was released a few years ago was based on the characters in that series, but readers of the series would know that the ‘‘real” John Constantine is a blonde Englishman, who looks nothing like Keanu Reeves. However, the subject matter remained the same: a neutral ‘‘hero” — neither good nor bad, who finds himself in the midst of sometimes very grisly and scary adventures.

As the importance of the CCA label declined, storylines were now free to mature with their audience and their interests, rendering the ‘‘comics are for kids” viewpoint a bit outdated.

Marvel also includes ratings on their covers, much like television shows: ‘‘All ages”; ‘‘A,” which is for ages 8 and older; ‘‘T+ Teens and up”; ‘‘Parental advisory,” which is for ages 15 years and older; and ‘‘Max: Explicit content,” which is not marketed to younger readers.

This is not to say that there isn’t anything suitable for children anymore. Kim Green wandered the shop while her son, Austin Green, 11, searched for issues of ‘‘Iron Man,” which is rated ‘‘A.” Other kid-friendly titles from Marvel follow the stories of Silver Surfer, Spider-Man and Spider-Girl. On the DC Comics side, the titles printed under the label DC Kids or Johnny DC are fine for younger audiences, as well. In fact, some of those books are still submitted to the CCA for the seal of approval.

On the screen

The transformation in the public’s perception in comics has been well underway for some time. The movie adaptations of classic comics storylines have been making insane amounts of money for years. Sequels featuring Superman, the X-Men, Spider-Man and other classic superheros abound. Some movies feature characters that may not be so well-known to the general populace, such as ‘‘V” in the recent movie ‘‘V for Vendetta.”

The last logical step is the actual purchase of the book, to get the whole story behind the screenplay. Comics shops love to hear about new movies based on comics, because that could mean an upswing in sales.

‘‘There’s a noticeable difference,” Samms said, noting that when the movies come out, the related books fly off the shelves. ‘‘With the Internet, fans can hear about a movie that’s coming out, and by reading the books, they can find out the plotline of the story beforehand.”

For instance, anyone who may have been a little confused about the plot of the most recent X-Men movie, ‘‘X-Men: Last Stand”, should go back and read the ‘‘Phoenix Saga” and the ‘‘Dark Phoenix Saga,” which ran from roughly 1976 to 1980. The stories, known as arcs, are available in trade paperback — a collection of comic books that usually follows a specific story. This is fortunate, because it would be a considerable investment to purchase every book in those series today.

Japan’s influence

Another contributing factor may be the rising popularity of anime, or Japanese-style animation, in the United States. Adaptations of Japanese comic books, or ‘‘manga,” have found its way onto American channels.

‘‘Most loyalists and completists love anime and manga,” Samms said, explaining that often a manga title is often much more in-depth than its anime counterpart, and often lasts for many more volumes than the cartoon version.

Manga does not always come first, however. The popular anime ‘‘Cowboy Bebop” spawned a manga series, and alternatively, ‘‘InuYasha” was a manga series first, written by Rumiko Takahashi, who also wrote and illustrated ‘‘Ranma 1⁄2,” another popular manga adapted into an anime.

Regardless of what came first, children and teens have been very receptive of the Japanese style on the whole. For evidence of this, just visit the local bookstore when school is out. One can find throngs of teens — especially girls — hovering around the shelves of small paperbacks. Or, just try to purchase tickets to Otakon — think a Star Trek convention for anime and manga fans — in Baltimore by just showing up at the door. It just won’t happen.

Comics as literature

Graphic novels have been slowly gaining recognition as valid and serious literary works. One oft-mentioned example is the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, ‘‘Maus,” by Art Spiegelman, which deals with the subject of the Holocaust, illustrated by portraying Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

Some Maryland teachers and college professors have brought the comic book into use in their lessons. It was big news a few years ago when some local elementary school teachers decided to include comic books as a reading assignment in class.

Spiegelman himself, in a 2002 NPR interview, touted the method as ‘‘awesomely effective,” and Carlos Schröder, a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, who until recently taught at the University of Maryland in College Park, has put the method to use in his college classrooms.

‘‘I do use comic books as texts in the literary courses I teach,” he said. ‘‘Occasionally, I have structured entire courses around comic books and graphic novels.”

As far as how comic books compare to more conventional literature, Schröder considers the format to be ‘‘yet another genre.”

‘‘There are novels, and novellas, and poetry and essays, and graphic novels⁄comics⁄cartoons. All are texts, some may be better suited for certain topics at certain times, but they are all worth of inquiry and study,” he said.

But the real litmus test is not acceptance among the fanboys (that’s a given), or among the literati (it was bound to happen eventually). No, the real proof will come when children and adults alike, no matter their other interests, will freely admit to reading comic books.