The End to Comics

Once upon a time, I fell in love with comic books.  Sometimes it seems like so very long ago, but I still remember those days quite fondly.  There are many pros and cons with comics these days, and I’m so very happy to see them getting big screen recognition, along with the great video games.  But in all honesty, I’m glad I no longer read them.

First off, there’s something to be said about an ending.  I know I’m one to talk, since the Emerald Bard series seems like it can go on forever, but someday her story will end.  Whether nor not its passed on, or what, I don’t know, but an ending is inevitable.



But Batman doesn’t.  Superman should have ended with his death.  It should have gotten passed on to the others that rose up after his fall, but instead he ‘recharged’ and came back and his comics turned into nothing but a soap opera.

If something goes on long enough, it will eventually run out of stories, and the stuff they make up will end up destroying the character.  Wolverine is the prime example.  He started out as this loner, who didn’t know where he fit in.  He always wanted to do the right thing, taking the hard road to get there.  He was a mystery, even to himself, and he strove, every day, to be a better person than his memories told him he was.

He was a tortured character, yet easily relatable.  I could relate to his loneliness.  I could relate to his loss.  I could relate to all the lies he was told, and his want to just escape, but how he was always drawn back in.  He loved and lost, but kept on going.  I related to every inch of that.

But, then they killed him off, not literally, but they gave him a backstory.  Then they gave him a son who hated him.  He evolved into something I can in no way relate to.  He clings to all the loss and stuff that happened in the past, and deals with what is going on, but what made him a great character is lost in the sands of time.

So many wonderful characters can be described this way.  There’s only so many stories you can tell about one person, before you start having to get outlandish.  And outlandish so many things have gotten....

I stopped reading the comic books because I couldn’t handle losing the memories I had, having the replaced with the craziness they keep trying to push out....

But in the end, I see their point, its their title characters, they have to keep going, or the company would perish.  New characters come and go, quite often, yet the old ones linger.  Sometimes the movies get it all right, sometimes the movies get it all wrong, but at least the movies are going in different directions.

The problems with the movies?  Yeah, we’ll get into that in another post, because there are some serious lessons they need to learn there as well....