I Loves Me Some Torture Porn!

Well, not really. Not like that.

So via Journalista, I've learned that Nightwing #146 (There's been that many issues of Nightwing? Dang) is a depraved cesspool of "torture porn", featuring the death, both illusory and real (as real as anything in a comic is, of course) of some woman character Nightwing was trying to protect. Don't read the title, don't really care. However, the ancillary discussion brings back the old canard about comics and how they should grow up, and by grow up, (some) people mean become more mature, more meaningful (as opposed to sexy and violent, goshdurnit), and not only that, comics fans should learn to discern quality from crap (goshdurnit!), and stop telling everyone else they really thought Infinite Fanboy Bloodorgy #666 was right up there on a par with Gravity's Rainbow.

It occurs to me that those who critique comics and bemoan the lack of maturity in modern superhero comics are looking at this thing completely ass-backwards.

What a lot of folks seem to be doing is setting a high bar, expecting certain standards of literary quality to be delivered to them, and then bitching and moaning whenever what is thrust into their mitts does not meet that standard. Whatever it is.

But if you picked up Nightwing #146 expecting something more profound than "Nightwing beats the bad guy" or "Nightwing fails to beat the bad guy", if you weren't prepared for "torture porn", I contend that you are quite probably a fool.

Seriously.

For one thing, this measuring current comics by the standards of 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s comics and so forth, comparing them to the innocent, pure days of yore, it's just nostalgia. It's your dad or grandpa grumbling "why, back in my day the heroes were heroes!" Superhero comics have this kind of shock content in them now. Deal with the present, for good or ill. This mumming of outrage at each new desecration of your childhood is passé, don't you know this is how comics are by now?

Also: Thomas Pynchon was reviewed for the Pulitzer Prize; the people considering the novel probably were never within fifty yards of whatever the current Mack Bolan book at the time was, let alone cracked it open, let alone entertained the slightest notion of voting for some Destroyer book to win the Pulitzer, not that it would ever have been nominated except maybe as someone's joke. "Very funny, Jim, now let's get to the real nominations."

Greater literary expectations brings a certain amount of filtering to it; dropping pulp and schlock and things below a certain benchmark from the radar entirely.

If you're going to be elitist, be god-damned elitist. Serious art-film critics don't even bother with the question of whether American Pie 8 lives up to the potential of the artform; it is beneath their notice.

Look: there have been serious, artful, friggin' deep, oblique comics around for quite a while now, so maybe there's not as many as some people would like, but they're there. But if you're worried that the medium of comics isn't going to be taken seriously because of all the juvenile blood and boobs, I counter with: how can the medium be taken seriously when supposedly serious people are inflicting themselves with this stuff and then bawling about it? When Mr. Serious Art Critic dignifies the crap by responding to it, instead of just chucking it in the trash? Yeah, the Lester Bangs-inspired review style of snarking That Which Does Not Measure Up apart into its component particles is soul-satisfying, and even fun to read for others (up until the point the reviewer begins to run out of clever new ways to snark the same ol' crap and descends into spiteful unintended self-parody), but what that in no way does is suggest to the reader that These Comics, Hmm, There's Some Potential For Great Works There, no, all it says is Here's Some Guy Bitchin' About Crap.

Other media are NOT repeat NOT deemed "mature" or "worthwhile" on the basis of whether the mass of it measures up to some rarefied ideal. Pick any other supposedly mature media you like: is it not as a whole dominated by crap? Does not Sturgeon's Law apply to any and all? And is not crap consumed in great quantities by the public at large, regardless? The difference is that if I'm getting opinions from some source with a supposedly more highbrow bent like, say, NPR musical reviews on the radio, I can be pretty sure I'm not going to hear a soft but intent voice whining about how Paris Hilton's album is some form of Pop Leprosy, even if it is.

Here's how, for example, Greg Burgas' review of Nightwing #146 should have gone, if the true purpose and intent of his column's POV is that "comics should be good":

VERSION 1: [Actually, you never know that he ever got a copy of the book, because he tosses it away upon seeing the splash page and types not a single character regarding it.]

VERSION 2: This is dreadful and I'm throwing it in the trash.

EASY.