Unpopular Opinions About Comic Books -

[Flaming Carrot]

I thought the Howard The Duck comics were funny, but I think I might be the only one since people like to associate that with the movie that failed to reach bigger audiences.

I genuinely love the Steve Gerber era of Howard the Duck, and since Marvel occasionally reprints it, I assume other people do too. But you're right, the movie has definitely overshadowed the comic.

 

[Bastard_Call]

Black Mask used to be a very good and somewhat complicated character. Any and all previous iterations of his character have been usurped either by some shitty OC like Hush, or appropriated to characters like the Penguin. Initially, he was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne who demonstrated what Batman could have ended up as if he were less empathetic and had less resolve to overcome suffering . Roman Sionis was a spoiled child and he grew into a selfish and controlling adult. He was very much the ultimate black mirror to Batman in his time, with his secret mask-based society even mirroring Batman's reclusive alter ego. He even killed his own parents. Nowadays it seems that every villain BUT Black Mask is somehow an analogue to Batman. I also like his appearance in Under the Red Hood, but for different reasons.

Superheros as a concept are inherently fascistic and Miller despite being edgy as fuck is one of the few who understands that.

This is the sort of shallow deconstructive take I'd expect to see in a Jack Saint video.

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On A Serious Earth is the worst Batman story I've ever read. The artwork made it unreadable. I'd love to see it redone with a different artist.

I hate to rag on an artist simply experimenting, especially in an industry as shitty to artists as the comic book industry, but there's a reason conventional comic art is based in visual clarity over all else. Limited colour pallets and ink-only rendering aren't just a result of printing limitations, they also make sequential art a million times more readable. What I think a lot of these avant garde types forget is that when you ask questions about the conventions of a medium, you can't get mad when you're given an answer. If your experiment doesn't revolutionise the way people think about the medium, then it usually serves as an example of what not to do.

The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes have taught me more life long, inspirational messages than any Marvel or DC Comics strip could ever do.

This goes for basically any medium traditionally seen as childish. The more you want to be seen as adult and mature, the more childish you're bound to be. Take a look at literally any adult oriented cartoon for example. I hate when I watch something like Bojak Horseman and I can feel the writers trying to cram in as much "adult" issues as humanly possible.

 

[AtheistWestonChandler]

The whole point of a comic is that I'm supposed to be able to read it.
If I can't because of shitty artwork then it's a terrible comic.
Would people like Citizen Kane if the movie was a blank white screen or a screen saver of a ball bouncing around all the way through?