One of the problems with the overreliance on the superhero genre (other than the general stagnation that comes from limited any medium to any single genre) is that superhero comics appeal greatly to morons.
One of the problems with appealing to morons, is that morons buy lots of superhero comics, so superhero comics try to appeal to morons even more, to get a larger chunk of the moron market share.
The result: comics today. Have you ever read Infinite Crisis? I mean really sat down and read that thing? (if you're a Marvel fan, you can replace "Infinite Crisis" with "the recent Spiderman stuff")
This picture was boss before Blogger got ahold of it. Click for proof.
That said, Thunderbolts is everything that's being done right with comics today. It's like a shining paragon of the genre. I could make this entire post about the degree to which Thunderbolts rocks, but I won't. Despite the objective perfection of Thunderbolts, I know a lot of comic-fans dislike the title. These are the enemies. The aforementioned morons.
These gibbering, mouth-breathing simpletons don't like complex motivations for characters, (they consider character development to be the sole pervue of Soap Operas) they don't want surprise or novelty (they feel change is inherently wrong) and they despise morally grey situations ("Heroes should be heroes" they'll tell you). What they want is an exact recreation of a half-remembered issue of Justice League they read when they were 7.
And they have more say in what ends up on the comic shelf than you ever will. But at least we have a good way of identifying them.
You: Hey, I see you're reading The Green Lantern. You into Thunderbolts at all?
Judgeee: No, I think superheroes should be heroes.
You: Oh I get it. You're one of those religious fanatics.
As you can see, you just avoided a potentially trivial conversation with some jerk who thinks his opinion matters, when we all know only my opinion matters.
Tune in next week when I'll tell you what to think about Superman.
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