This might be a bit off-topic but I’ll take the shot and post it. When I was a kid I didn’t have a lot of books (my parents had cabinets filled with them, but they were all old novellas and novels of local writers, very few classics, leagues above my age bracket, and I’d very often find something for me) I learned to like reading over big tomes of Mythology and American capecomics (reprints or whatever new releases I’d randomly find here in my country). The last few years I’ve taken to reading far more books besides my technical textbooks, from all kinds of genres. But even still, I daily think of those comicbook heroes of my youth and hate to see what they’ve become. A book can change my way of thinking or reinforce and idea, but when push comes to shove, when I’m at my lowest, it’s those characters I turn to. I say the Green Lantern Oath wear a little plastic GL ring. I say that back in the 80s Tony Stark stopped drinking even if he was bankrupt, homeless, and dying from drink. I think of how Doom is such an insane LARPer he marched to Hell and God to live up to his own story. And these characters help me. These stories help me. I look at pic related and I get it. It’s an mage shot into me. The same way an except from a book, or a passage would stay with me, this does too.My thing here is, I can recognise that they’re not as well written as even the base genrebook. But they used to be real and true. They used to have pathos. And for me, that counts as literature, however on the lower ladder it may be. And it’s what irks me about the new “fans” who are just poseurs, unable to look for something real unless it’s layered under irony and horniness and whatever else. But the thing here is, these characters are being ruined, but they have been around for so many decades getting different writers and stories and still persevering, even in this sorry state. Whereas characters from novels and books finish their arcs, these ones go on forever, and even if you don’t like their current looks, they’re constant companions to the very end. I just wanted to get it off my chest, and I don’t want to go to /co/ because they’re all just tumblrwhales, redditfugees and twittertrannies.
