Things We're Tired of Seeing in Comics

Reading comics today, one can still see their humble pulp origins peering out from between the halftone dots. Comics have a history, a proud history, of exploiting every cliché in the book, inventing some, and in rare cases, inverting them to our pleasant surprise. To some degree, you could say that cliché is the medium in which traditional comics work. Just as when you go to the movies or crack open a novel, one expects a certain kind of experience from illustrated fiction.

Listen: it’s okay to try and deliver this experience but, by God, it’s okay to deliver more than this experience.

Even great stories are filled with tropes and idioms, and there's a reason for that: they work. Sometimes. When they fail or fall flat, they do so catastrophically—we’ve all seen a movie where we’ve been able to call the twists, predict the turns, guess the plot within the first twenty minutes. Comic books can be even more subject to these failings, the resolutions often predictable with prophetic accuracy.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for tried-and-true formulas or appeals to nostalgia, but the great writers use these elements as the spice rather than as the substance. We're past the point where a comic can get by on action alone. It is time to man up, and embrace characterization. Comics are and always have been about escapism: we want to buy into the world, we want to feel sympathy, we want to get caught up with the excitement. One of the worst things that can happen is give the reader cause to say “Oh, this again.” 

So here is a list of plots I recommend putting an embargo on for a couple years...

Type: "Oh, this again..."

Heroes going evil.

• One of the stand-by tropes, you can count on any and all heroes to go evil (often possessed by some powerful, dark force) every few years or so. This is different than ethically ambiguous characters making poor choices or struggling with what ends justify what means. We are talking about out-and-out flip-flop to evil, circumventing the need for characterization all together.
  

• See the Dark Phoenix saga, the Parallax arc, the Villain Eclipso. 

Heroes disagree, decide violence and infighting is the answer.

•  often attributable to a misunderstanding, or a villain's psychology 101-level manipulations. As though our heroes don’t have a big enough rogues’ galleries as is, the writers decide that, periodically, their heroes need to be involved in high-school like in-fighting. When heroes have bold and explicit ideological differences it’s nice to see some friction; however, most current heroes are too developed for that. Trying to implant this by rewriting their relationships in one issue, or even one arc? We’re not going to buy it.

Hero refuses to cross "that line" 

• ...so someone less idealistic does it - and everything turns out fine. Maybe the writer was trying to show how absolutely moral a character is, but when you go ahead and show that the solution WAS violence, the star comes off as a little naive. Let's have a little more subtle grasp of morality, shall we?

Plots steeped in ancient, boring continuity.

• Yes, seeing our characters work through issues and plots that have long since been carefully constructed, cunningly positioned, and artfully explored is wonderful. What is not, however, is seeing narratives composed of the exhumed and rotting remains of passé plots (Final Crisis comes to mind). I am willing to forgive this if it is an interesting attempt at explaining or repairing ridiculous, vestigial elements that still hinder the development of a character or strain credulity. The introduction of Parallax in the Green Lantern titles is a good example of doing this well (for the most part): an entertaining explanation as to why the most powerful weapon in the universe won’t work on yellow has been in order for quite some time now.

Type: Sloppy Writing

As with cooking, the ingredients aren't the only thing that make a dish: presentation counts. The way a story is told can be just as important as the substance. Given the protracted and cyclical nature of comic plots, we are bound to see some of the same errors again and again. So, cliche aside, here are a couple common blunders in presentation.

Authors apologetically (or fearfully) clicking an “undo” button 

• Sometimes authors take bold steps, experiment, have a little fun. The All-Star series are excellent examples of what can happen if you just throw continuity out the window. Sadly, authors of main-line titles feel seem bound at the hip to the status quo. Occasionally we see authors try something new, do a little mythology building, but all too frequently, this is redacted before it can establish itself firmly as part of the greater myth. Sadly, this fear of change all too often results in sloppy reboots or stilted resolutions. Take, for example, Superman’s second Fortress of Solitude (modeled after his Secret Fortress from Superman #17) which lasted for a little over a year and made only a handful of appearances before it was destroyed and replaced by the more traditional Arctic fortress. The quickly revoked appearance of Spider-man's night vision, regenerative abilities, and admittedly strange arm-stingers also comes to mind. My complaint isn't that authors make poor choices (this time), but that the are so scared of changing that status quo that they feel these reboots and nullifications are necessary.

Dialog like this:

Yes, Lana. Yes, she did.

• This is a visual medium--you can say a lot without a single line of dialog. So when one uses a great deal of dialog that has no function other than to make the reader cringe, well...

-Reckless Enthusiasm