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[Rintintin]

I find them dumber. First of all, my biggest gripe... decompression. This is the idea that you should spend as much time on a panel as it would take for it to happen in real time. I was on board with "real time pacing" when I was reading Paul Pope comics in the 90s at 150-200 pages per issue you could flip through. I never considered PP a great writer so I imagined this could work with a better author. It felt like it had potential. Now I realize boy, there's not a single modern, drawn out comic published in the past 2 decades that I remember fondly.

Despite the Code being abolished, not many books seem to actually bother tackling much politics from fear of alienating readers. And risque topics are not being developed either. I guess I am just baffled every time I read an article about a modern comic with nothing going on in it, that claims nowadays readers are more sophisticated. Yet they are happy reading poorly researched stories about nothing. Are there hidden messages?

Minority representation, sure some are openly gay now but they get jack to say or do. Skin color variation seems less varied too. This is objective but I don't remember dark skinned characters being miss colored white so often back in the days.
Don't get me wrong, I think there was a lot of crap published pre nowadays but I think there's a new "invisible" CCA toning down everything as dumb as possible. Where are the hard to read comics?

[Rintintin]

?

[paw broon]

First of all, I'm unfamiliar with Paul Pope, perhaps because I don't read many "modern" comics. So, a bit of a learning curve here to catch up.  As an old geezer, I do think that many American comics nowadays seem full of big, flashy, fighty panels, where "flash" covers up a paucity of content.  And as for politics, there seems more of that in Archie comics than in other mainstream titles.  But do readers actually want politics?  When I pick up a comic, I want to be entertained and a Dell Gene Autry will do that better than most DC or Marvel current issues.  There is enough politics and nasty stuff on the news, imo. 
As for the depiction of minorities in comics, I hadn't really thought about it.  However I have a concern that with sexuality, the reader seems to be being continually reminded of a character's leanings.  I bought DC's Bombshells and immediately had the intimate relationship of 2 of the characters shoved in my face.  Not why I bought the comic! And not something I need to know.  So perhaps no "invisible" CCA input there.
You say that some characters are openly gay, but, again, why does the reader have to know that to enjoy a superhero story?  Should comics then tell us about the dietary requirements of these folk, or did that go out with Popeye? Or how some heroes and villains have given up sugar/artificial sweeteners laden sodas - I think that's what Americans call carbonated soft drinks - because they're seriously bad for health?
Tell you what, though, I don't think we need to go back to the time of depiction of coloured people that we had in British comics decades ago.  Spadger's Isle being a classic example.
Food for thought Rintintin.  Thanks for posting.

[Rintintin]

Obviously, there were some "dehumanized" yessah nossah sidekicks and there were some sexist jokes. I am not denying that. But I don't think that much as changed or that those negative portrayals were all there was. Nowadays creators are simply less overt, they still manage to write plenty of negative stereotypes and pass it up to the readers.

Take for example the women in Fantastic Four, they had agency and they saved the guys' lives several times. Romance comics are rife with women making their own decisions, telling the bad apples to go get bent. But that's not what people remember. All they remember are the few bad stories. That's what gets all the focus. Everything else is taken for granted.

I was not strictly speaking of super heroes. I agree that the most important thing should be the action when it comes to that genre. Speaking of which, where is the action? The fight scenes? That's what I am arguing. They've been replaced with empty intellectual content while the action is relegated to a few splash pages with minimal sound effects: Bif! Bam! Pow! "oh god!" "haaargh!".

[bminor]

Dumber.
I have given up on new books years ago, except for the Don Rosa Duck books he was making, until he retired.
Snif, snif...
B.

[betaraybdw]

neither, comics now are the same as they ever were. only difference is that there are new techniques for doing art now and the sexual / violence content can go up to X-rated levels in some cases, depending on publisher, etc. Society HAS changed and content thus reflects that change.

I'd say we are in a new golden age since it is like , "Hey Wertham!, Look! No Code!!!"  I know some of you cats don't like the "in your face-ness" of some things in comics now, but lets face it the comic artists of yore would have published things very much like today's comics if they had been allowed to by their publishers/editors.

look carefully at all these comics on here. Lets face it, most of the stories are really dumb as a box of rocks. and the same applies to comics of ALL eras. Giant Size X-Men #1 is important because of what characters in introduces and the era of X-Men comics it starts, but the story is actually pretty stupid, ditto for Hulk #181, etc. Very few comic stories, of any era, really make you sit back and say hmmmmm... to yourself as you contemplate the story afterwards. Let's face it, comics usually are not "deep".

For me it is about the art. Stories are secondary.

However there is some compelling story telling out there. Walking Dead, Letter 44 & Uber come to mind. And the comic adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is fantastic.

For some light, fun story telling with some nice but PG GGA, DC's new Starfire series is worth a look.  Red One with art by Terry Dodson is another fun read.

One thing the Gold & Silver age books have so much of that I like a lot though is the short 5-12 page type stories that do not tie into an overarching story arc. I do think too many Bronze and later era comics try too hard to patch together these multi-issue narratives. I would like more one-shots myself and some of the publishers are starting to do that.

And believe it or not Archie Comics has become relevant again. Their jump back into the horror genre has been fantastic, they are going back into Superheroes (darker moodier versions than their past versions) and they have also done some hilarious crossovers. Archie Vs Sharknado & Archie vs Predator just make you belly laugh from cover to cover even though all those lovable characters (drawn in the classic DeCarlo-esque style) are literally and graphically being torn to pieces. 1994's Archie meets the Punisher is one my favorite comics ever.

anyhoo, lets not bash one one era of comics over the other. we are truly luck that we can now read comics from all of them, easily. In the last couple days I read :

JLA/Avengers #1 (2003)

Harley Quinn Road Trip Special (2015)

Captain Marvel Adventures #11 (1942)

Young Love #20 (1960)

Maco toys (1959)

Suzie #50 (1945)

For Lovers Only #72 (1972)

Falling in Love #85 (1966)

that's my 2 cents and I'll shut up now