There has been no natural progression or actual improvement in the actual structure , art , quality, style etc. since marxists have taken over. It has been stagnant for a long time similar to western art and music in general. What do you think the american comic book industry could improve(outside of the obvious getting rid of woke stuff)?
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Get rid of capeshit and open comics up to multiple genres, like back before the CCA. The quality of storytelling and art will improve when creators who don't want to soil their reputation with capeshit see that they can make good work that will be taken seriously as literature.
Try to get comics back into grocery stores, convenience stores, local places. Comics have become so niche that the only way to really get them is by going direct market. You're never going to get anyone aside from the enthusiast audience that way, and you want more than emotionally stunted, middle-aged men to read your work. Or at least I do.
Social Media Influencers. You may hate the idea, but as a marketing tool, they work.
It would take a lot of work and probably decades of good stories and sound business management to resurrect not only the medium of comic books, but its reputation and cultural cache as well. While I think Hashbrown Comics Gate is kinda silly, I will say that I'm far more interested in what that crowd is putting out than anything Marvel, DC, or Image have put out in at least a decade. At this point, I'm wondering when the indies will figure out that they can make their own labels and get the cultural ball rolling on the resurrection of comics.
What's the CCA? The Comics Code? Hell, even when it was a thing, there were horror and war comics, sci-fi/UFO stuff, Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, Scamp; westerns, and even the occasional Weird West tales (not to mention Weird War Tales itself ... speaking of which, I find it kind of gross that they mashed Sgt Rock in with the Monstrous Regiment; those were two VERY different comics, with Rock always leaning heavily towards, you know, historical realism and weight.) Dark Shadows, Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery, Cain and Abel's comics, etc. Basically, "Gold Key" was my childhood.
I read all kinds of comics as a kid, and the superhero ones were my least favourite.
Kind of a shame to hear that the superhero shit is all that's left.
The Comic Code Authority and Hays Code weren't the inherent evil that people make it to be. Movies and comics were almost entirely dedicated to porn at the time they were created.
Not true and also CCA stifled artistic freedom and creativity and banned literally everything adult. That's why everything turned in to "just for kids" (including decimating the horror genre and making one dimensional heroes and villains)
I'm not saying they were inherently good, but there is a tendency to downplay the very real concerns people had. Cuties is a return to form for the film industry.
BUT the point stands, that there were still multiple genres available under the Code. The horror ones often doubled as crime comics, where a ne'er-do-well would get some horrible supernatural come-uppance.
And you are forgetting one major thing - up until my generation, comics WERE considered "for kids". Exclusively. But my generation never fucking grew the fuck up, because we're a bunch of fucking slackers. :P
Also, the Hayes and Comics Codes weren't meant to make everything "for kids" (in the sense of, say, Sesame Street or Saturday Morning Cartoons, it was meant to make everything "one size fits all", that is, appealing to adults as well as safe for kids. Which actually forced writers to be clever and use their brains a bit, rather than just spewing out blatant sex, gore, and fart jokes, because it's easy.
Hell, one of the funniest moments in FAMILY television is one of the dirtiest jokes ever - the "Finger Prints" joke in original Animaniacs ... TOTALLY flew over the heads of my own children as I sat there laughing my butt off ... after a beat or two while I processed what they had just said.
Hey, you want a "for kids" story, told under the Comics Code? It was a story of the OSS in one of the World War 2 anthologies I mentioned, can't remember which one now, or the title of the story, but it went like this (more or less, it's been at least 40 years, you see):
It wasn't even about an OSS agent, it was about Hitler's own favourite spy, whom funny mustache man himself dispatches to spy on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. During his (the spy's) tenure, he winds up getting close to some family, and "goes native", converting to Judaism as he is sent to Auschwitz. While he's there, he's given a chance to get out - by, yes, Hitler himself, who found out about the spy's treachery. The last time you see the spy is when he gets on his knees and prays in Yiddish.
The final scene shows Hitler reading in his study, a little wry smile on his face, by the light of a lamp, the shade of which is kinda pinkish and has a number tattooed on it ....
That just sounds like old traditional fairy tales plot twist ending for kids when kids were tougher. Similar to The Brothers Grimm stories. Also these things were made despite of the code, not because of. And many genres were destroyed and many things got dumbed down because the code stifled creativity so much. And if you look at many anime and manga that are timeless masterpieces and cult classics a lot could not have been made under the CCA .
That would help a ton. Even when I was a kid in the 90s comics didn't seem to be a thing and was already a niche. I had a few, but it wasn't something where my friends would all have and read, talk about them, etc. I'm not sure I would have loved anyway since I don't care for superhero stories that much, but still could have tried. Manga was a bit of a thing but by the time it started going I was in that phase or trying to not look like a nerd and they were very niche, especially amongst guys strangely enough.
While I enjoy variety in any art, I don't think capeshit is even a critical problem in and of itself: two of the most popular manga to have come out in recent years are One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia, both of which are explicitly inspired by and feature classic Western-style superheroes doing superhero things (OPM's a parody, MHA plays it more seriously). They've both sold like hotcakes, I think MHA sold like 5 million copies last year while the most popular Western comics are lucky to break 300,000 and it's 'only' the 6th best-selling manga around, and they're equally beloved by Western and Japanese audiences alike.
There's clearly still demand for that stuff, it's just that nobody (quite justifiably) wants androgynous-melted-wax-figure Carol Danvers or Starfire's ridiculous self-insert daughter.
I have nothing against superheroes as a concept. One of my favourite anime is Tiger & Bunny, which deals with how people handle double identities, the commercialization of heroes, turning a noble pursuit into something fake, etc..
But yeah, Tiger & Bunny, MHA and OPM understand that to be a superhero you have to be super and heroic. I don't want superheroes to make me feel good about myself. SJW types don't understand the concept of a superhero. I want them to be amazing. No, not pudgy, neurotic losers.
Of course they can have flaws and such, but why would you call it a superhero when it's virtually identical to some bitchy librarian you can meet anywhere?
Superheroes can have flaws, "kryptonite" is practically a commonplace term for "a significant weakness". They can have weak points, flaws, they can make errors. But I must draw upon Anime to make a point. Specifically, Fate/ZERO. On the speech Iskander makes on the concept of being a King.
This applies to Heroes in general. A Hero isn't someone paid to save people. A Hero isn't even someone who saves people out of the goodness of their heart when presented with the opportunity to do so. A Hero is a Greater Person. Not a great person, greater. They are defined from tabula rasa as "more than".
Superman is Faster than a speeding bullet, stronger than a locomotive. But morally, too, he is gooder. By definition, a Hero cannot be reached. They embody what the feminists call "unrealistic portrayal" of humans. The most we can do is aspire to approach them. Villains, too, are Greater Persons. More evil, more cunning, even in some cases more petty than any human could aspire to, showcasing the worst, something to shy from.
That is the baseline of a Greater Person, they are beyond us in some unreachable way, but which either draws or repels us in that aspect. Real World Examples: If you say "I want to be like Nikola Tesla", you probably mean "I want to be creative, insightful, and intelligent", not "I want to be a dying-young virgin with only feral pigeons for friends". And on villainy, if you don't want to be like Hitler, you're probably thinking of the systematic murder of millions, not his belief that recycling is important for long-term societal stability. (At least, I hope you aren't viciously throwing a coke can into a compost bin with a knowing smile that you won't support Hitler's recycling ideals, but are fine with the other one.) In writing, likewise, there is infinite room for creativity in those secondary aspects and building the character, but line one of their description should be that Greater aspect that one must wish to approach, or fear.
But this is antithesis to modern western writing, where everyone must be "human". They focus on the flaws and lesser aspects. No one wants to read a story about Batman's struggles with changes to the tax code. He obviously deals with them, it's implicitly known by all of us, but no one cares, it's not his Greater aspect: World's Greatest Detective.