Font
In any discussion of religion and fiction (perhaps especially comic book fiction) there is naturally an attraction to mysticism and metaphysics over some rationalist perspective. Not that the free thinkers never get a look in, just that the fantasy world of comics thrives on the magical and mysterious.

This could lead into a discussion on Romanticism, only I want to hold that over till we get talking about literature and the way that literary movements and literary criticism impact on the graphic medium. So instead, let me remark that the mystic traditions of Christianity such as the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar; and Judaism, in the form of the Kabbalah, run as a very interesting undercurrent to comics mythology. And the freemasons will always be good for a spot of intrigue.
If you want, you can pile in the Illuminati and Club of Rome.

Just as our legends bear the ring of truth in all the hyperbole, so too do comics serve a dramatic need by drawing directly on a real sense of the unknown and the yet to be discovered. Their exaggerated stance illuminating something buried within us.

Baptismal
Religion has come up a number of times in our discussion. While characters with cosmic powers would seem to be a challenge to the omnipotence of any big 'G' God, the moral standpoint works as a good reference point for all but the callous and ambivalent anti-heroes thus we see:

• Christianity
  
• Judaism
  
• Islam
  
• Buddhism
  
• Hinduism
  
• Confucianism
  
• Taoism
  
• Japanese golf religion (contents may vary)
• Rastafarianism
  
• Baha'i
  
• Zoroastrianism and Mithraism
  Sikhism
  
• satanism
  
• shintoism
  
• paganism
  
• vodun
  
• gnosticism
  
• theism
  
• universism (an umbrella term I hadn't heard)
  
• Deism (for the little reference to 'the Deists who founded America')
  
• atheism
  
• agnosticism
  scientology
  sects
  nihilism
  
  Posted by berko_wills at 2:11 PM EADT

  Updated: Wednesday, 23 November 2005 9:02 PM EADT

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Choke
For a comics primer that has run through nearly all the genres and many of the aspects of the medium, surprising we have yet to investigate a dominant strain: humour. It has been touched on a number of times and there have been inadvertently humorous moments, but funny animal is the only area in this broader category that I have looked at thusfar.

Certainly it is appropriate to treat funny animals separately as they are as much a force in comics as the long underwear characters; especially when you add animated forays into the mix.
But humour is so broad that I may have been subconsiously putting it off.

The trouble with 'humour' though is that even picturing the act of fending off humour is funny (if you're in the right mood) and so you never quite manage it. The endless reductive circles you could find yourself in as a result of trying to ascertain the point at which the idea has lost all trace of humour is another matter.

But I digress like a standup comedian, humour at least pops up at times in:

• satire: under no obligation to be funny but often is. Though I do wonder if Swiftian satire can be absorbed under the large banner of black humour
  
• parody of both the form and within the form looking out or glancing across.
  
• lampoon
  
• pisstake or send-up
  
• whimsy: while the link here refers to whimsy, it's more of a rant against pc considerations in looking at the worth of stories, so here's a better example
  
• slapstick
  
• irony
  
  

The references get increasingly dodgy. I couldn't even find one for farce, which is farcical in itself. But you get the general idea. The fact is that you don't need this primer for a subject like humour (with or without a second u)or even to explain the difference between humour and comedy

Double
The industry is so plastic that there has been much borrowing. This isn't unique to comics as any fan of the blues or Shakespearean theatre can tell you.

Apart from recycled plot lines and 'surprise' endings, even the names of characters and the powers they possess have been given regular reworkings.

Much of this is, as we have seen, as a result of the Silver Age retooling of Golden Age characters. This applies to both Marvel and DC and is handled differently according to the status of the character but also considered is their origin, their costume, their powers or traits. Changing the character from an alien to an android may reflect changes in times and technology as much as a desire to make the character 'better'.

The iconic characters had to be brought across whole while the characters further down the totem underwent more radical changes to their identity.

I suppose when Stan Lee was borrowing from the past, he was just as happy to snaffle up something from some other company to use as his own as he was to draw from Timely sources. But the appropriation of licensed companies by DC has seen them also offering different treatments to the Archie/Red Circle group of superheroes (who are undervalued in my opinion)and Charlton as well

Certain names recur quite separate from straight revamps. We have a couple of unrelated characters named Catman and there's obviously something irresistible about the name Captain Marvel:

• the Big Red Cheese
  
• the gruesome character whose power is for his limbs to fly off
  
• Mar-Vell at the uses of Rick Jones
  (One of the iterations of Captain Marvel was a black woman...)

(or if that's too disparate and confusing, there's a scholarly take that looks at all CM manifestations)

and the other name to remember is Power Man

• Rip Regan
  
• the Down Under Power Man
  
• Power Man (UK)
  
• the Marvel villain
  
• Luke Cage
  
• Powerman/Powerbolt (Nigeria)

Classic
What makes a comic classic?

It can't coast on the coat tails of some existing more established form as the chances are that there is no adaptation of Everyman or any attempt would fall short of what was required.

Of course a book can have a significance particular to its medium that makes a comics adaptation superfluous; it isn't the strength of the story or the way it is told that gives it its status.

So, staying within the medium, how can we recognize the classics of the form? Given the age of literary classics, are comics in their current from too recent for us to discern which are, or will be, classics? It isn't age alone that determines a classic or Dollman would automatically be accorded that honour.

I think, under a loose definition, that Eisner and Fine's creation does fit the bill. But here I am doing so without having read the stories but having considered the impact and the longevity of the series. Add in a level of expectation encouraged by the creators involved and it is easy to see how the title is applied. It carries more credence than Disney Entertainment labelling of every release, regardless of vintage or audience acceptance, as a 'classic' but sticklers may still want further proof.

I'm not even sure the best story or the earliest example qualify a work as being classic unless they have lasting resonance. A cartoonist may be revered but one would have to see a sample of their work to know whether it was classic. Perhaps.

Though I don't suppose we can brush off consensus in gauging a work's bid to be considered classic, picking sales figures or readership as the criterion seems also misplaced. It's more likely that the verve that was brought to Daredevil make it a classic, rather than the number of readers it had in its day.

Depth
The mature comic takes roughly the same guidelines as it does for the movies: no reading unless fifteen years or over and accompanied by an adult.

The distinction is important for horror as the bloody excesses of EC inspire black and white depictions for an older readership in the form of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. But the science fiction and fantasy communities have a use for the mature readers tag too as is evidenced by the French comics magazine Metal Hurlant and its English language equivalent Heavy Metal

Mature is not quite the same thing as adult and so we see nudity but not with pubic hair and orifices, coarse language but of a certain stripe and not constant, violence more muted than R but harsh enough to give you the picture.
An extra step in differentiating comics for the mature reader is to not keep them in comic form but create them as a graphic novel or have them bound as a trade paperback. Or you can just offer them for sale in a special section of the shop.

Oak eh
Just as no plumber would want to read a comic book exclusively about his profession, of course adolescents aren't primed to read only in their age group, or exclusively about characters who are going through the selfsame torments and triumphs.

While there may be room for the coming of age and first love in a comic book story, the younger reader is as likely to be captivated by saucers and sorcerers and so forth. If the comic reader (certainly the comic collector) has aged, then it is also true that publishers did once note the audience drop off as their readers bought their first car or started dating and so, the fact that characters and storylines range across the divide, suggests that this has not been an issue for teen readers. At various times they would have read and enjoyed:

• Lost in Space
  
• Tomahawk
  
• Valiant
  
• The Vision
  

and snuck furtively into big sister or brother's room to peruse their copy of Omaha the Cat Dancer

Not fully matured
Was the targetted audience for comics ever teenagers? Wasn't a book called Teen Titans as likely to have been created for sidekicks who were no longer boys and girls rather than as a point of identification? And didn't that whole comics company devoted to teens - Archie Comics - only stumble on the formula by accident?

Was the School for Gifted Youngsters an appeal to youngsters who wish they were so gifted, or is just a good place to start the story of superheroes born with their powers? And were the teens of the future: Legion of Superheroes playmates for Superboy? Or did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles accurately parody the prevailing trends with teenagers deliberately at the centre of stories?

I have a feeling that if the comics industry is catching the eye of teenagers, it is guys who were teenagers the first time a character called The Angel appeared (only they weren't called teenagers in them days) Today's teenagers have plenty of other distractions, not least video games and other instant media like cheap DVDs and MP3

Refreshments available
Consider this an intermission

• "No one loves a fat girl"
  
• Questionable content
  
• the girlie comic
  
• Borges in a comic
  
• Fantomen
  
• Comics2Film

Making a splash
It's not just the large scale battle scenes that are harder to enact on stage. The feature that modern comics share with the modern feature film is the close-up, the changed perspective. Stage whispers denote closeness to the audience in the round and that is a different experience again.

But note this picture. It's just Thor striding through the halls of Asgard





Now the problematic aspect to capturing this scene on stage is not any prohibition against depicting a god, since theatre and, indeed, all the arts have devoted an inordinate amount of energy to depictions of the Divine.

[Stan Lee notes in his 'Origin of Marvel Comics' that his first idea of having 'Super God' in a comic book would offend sensibilities but he could readily take from a dead religion (though he got the mythology wrong as the Thunder God is the one Asgardian who cannot cross the rainbow bridge to Midgard)]

Nor would a deft playwright worry about getting the narrator to intone the purple prose in the caption boxes.

The real difficulty is in capturing the impression we get from that panel. You literally cannot reproduce it on stage since only a percentage of the audience will see this profile. Perhaps there is no sensitivity about audience in the round seeing the back of this god but it changes the experience significantly. The same is true of those theatregoers seated in the balcony, where the actor playing a Norse god is reduced in scale.

Perhaps the narrative is necessary! "The Lord of Lightning is grim-visaged is he dear?" "Well I can't really see past this guy's boof head!"