Anyone else think that comics as a medium have real trouble dealing with "adult content"?

Anyone else think that comics as a medium have real trouble dealing with "adult content"?

More often than not comics aimed at adults just go full grimdark edgy mode and end up way more childish than the comics that are actually aimed at children. Even some of the really good ones like Saga, Watchmen or Fables tend to go a little over the top with the sex/violence/drugs aspects. It's like the same problem HBO shows have. Why does it seem so hard for comic authors to write an adult story without trying too hard or going overboard?

Well you can chalk a lot of that up to writers but also maybe there's a factor of it being a comic book. Like animation, why do this unless you could find a reason it needs to be drawn and scene rather than written as prose.
Comics were made for over the top concepts.

I'd say Watchmen is the least guilty of this, with the exception of Rorschach's heavier moments.

A lot of times, people think that being highly explicit means that their writing's good, or that it's good because such intense content has never been done before. What they don't understand is that it's not been done before because sometimes you need to have a bit more finesse or be more nuanced to have content like that.

anime/manga has the same problem. I think live-action as a medium makes grim/dark come across better (something to do with real humans being the characters? idk)

I kinda disagree. I think most artists just work with the medium that they're experienced in. There are plenty of manga about down to earth concepts that don't need to be drawn. Monster, for example, would work equally well as a novel or a live action television series.

I think that relegating comics to only include extreme or over the top things would be a disservice to the medium.

I agree that there is a lot of shitty manga with the same problem, but not nearly to the same extent as comics. It might just be because a wider range of manga is produced, but I've found that manga offers a larger number of well written adult oriented series than western comics.

I'm not trying to insult comics here - I think western comics are good in their own right, and I have certainly read a lot of good comics and a lot of shit manga. However, holistically, manga isn't nearly as bad at dealing with these kind of themes.

Not really. There are plenty of serious adult comics that don't go heavily over the top.

>Anyone else think that comics as a medium have real trouble dealing with "adult content"?
Relatively? No. I mean I can name like 5 movies series that are basically torture porn, and I can name a few dozen dramas that are just an excuse to get famous people naked.

I kind of dislike when people use Crossed as an example for this. Because at its core, Crossed is a deconstruction of zombie fiction as it existed in the early 2000's or thereabouts. You know, people focusing exclusively on that sequence in Dawn of the Dead where they have secured the mall and are "shopping". Telling themselves they'd be the cool killers and headtakers during the zombie apocalypse. With stuff like Zombieland, World War Z, and other "cool" takes on the zombie apocalypse.

Crossed is there to tell you, no, that's not what it would be like. And because of that, the gore has a function. It's over the top, but it's so because it needs to live up to the decades of cheapening zombie gore.

It's too bad some writers just didn't get the memo, and take it at face value. It's also too bad American artists are shit at drawing gore, making it all look like strawberry jam.

I think that the overall message of Crossed concerning zombies, is that it would take a certain kind of person to be able to survive. You'd have to switch of your humanity and in doing so, leaves you no better than the zombies.

In a way, yes. It's certainly about adapting to the situation, and one of the core themes is often a certain hopelessness. Like in the infamous page that right off the bat says that there's no cure, no secret, this shitshow is here to stay.

Honestly, it's kind of funny how people accuse it of immature gore on the one hand, but on the other keep bringing up how shocking that page was. Because that's exactly what it was supposed to be.

This. I've seen enough torture porn films and nazi sex films to say no. Crossed is just more famous because it has Ennis' name attached to it, who happens to be one of the biggest names in mainstream comics.

There's too many comics for it to be like anything.

I mean you still got plenty of adult comics like Isle of 1000 corpses or Revolver or A History of Violence or A Tale of Sand or even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Too much of all kinds.
So much from slice of life normal to balls to the cosmic walls crazy.
Too much to say any genre is too much like ____ in comics.

Cape comics and genreshit, maybe.
"Mature" comics reflecting the full gamut of emotional human experience are doing just fine, thanks.

We got us a Wilson!

Indeed.

Doesn't have to be aimed just at adults, capeshit is a fascinating mess of delving into the "finer" points of sexuality to serve as soapboxing for its writers but every political matter is discussed in shades of black and white and good vs evil and you get stuff like Sentry ripping off Ares and his organs flying in a spreadpage for a major event, but nudity or cusswords is GOING TOO FAR.

Because superhero comics are inherently childish fantasy, and in execution were simplistic and brainless. So when you're allowed by laxing moral barriers to explore more adult themes, but your base is on something so silly, inevitably you'll end up with simple and brainless subversions of old tropes. You can't seriously contemplate the ethics of superheroes or the inner turmoil one might experience because the premise is too ludicrous in the first place.

And this isn't even factoring in the nature of writing itself. A competent writer could mask the above issues with the strength of their writing, but very few writers are actually competent AND blessed with complete creative freedom. Hacks are a dime a dozen and the mindset of these regards is more blood and sex and drama, the more mature it is.

Go on.

In comics, you are limited by the magazine type.
So a author going from JUMP to a Seinen or Josei magazine tends to go full derp, and then tone it down to what he actually likes once he gets bored of the EXTREME.
Now, because there is several core genre magazines, going to another means the author will go full derp in some way.
I.E Josei has more abuse and cannibalism
Shounen has more light hearted bloody murder
Shoujo has a lot of abuse and anorexia
Seinen has a lot more gore. But not as much abuse as either of the female genres

Comics?
When there was a gigantic "no go line" because of Comic Code, and the trends that followed, what do you think happens when authors gets to try without any reins?
So either its over the line, and the author goes completely derp, or it isn't.

i mean there's stuff like this that deal with adult issues, and are closer with lit fic than comics. i think Crossed and the like are aimed for older teenagers

>You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a "graphic novel," but comic books are still incredibly stupid.”

>In comics, you are limited by the magazine type.
No you aren't

Successful artists are ful of self-validating opinions.

This looks to me like its aimed at older teens as well, just different older teens.

not this again...

>looks
so you haven't read it?

no, just the american ones

japan, france and england are all real good with their adult orientated comics

Didn't the crossed get some pretty thick ass plot armor like being able to run around near nude in the dead of winter for hours on end?

The problem comes with identifying what is adult content, because different people consider different things to be adult.

Some think sex, blood and gore is adult because it's inclusion usually raises the age rating of the media it's in. Some consider a lifetime movie adult. Some consider a movie about foods fucking each up up the ass adult. So on and so on.

Wow you clearly doesn't know much about comics. Maybe try to look outside of mainstream geek shit aimed towards "adults" and check out publishers like fantagraphics, drawn & quarterly, last gasp, jonathan cape, top shelf, nobrow, breakdown press, adhouse, koyama press etc for adult oeiented comics in all sorts of genres.

I'm a huge Garth Ennis fan.

He does have a history of straddling this line I'll admit but unlike the like of say - Mark Millar - he uses it as a vehicle for other things.

Ennis is at his core a "blue collar" writer.
Shock, gore, blood sex and violence are part of that.

Fucker grew up right outside Belfast in the 70s and 80s and spent his 20s during the brunt of the troubles of the 1990s.

It was bound to have an impact on his world view and writing.

But he also understands humanity, how theres dignity in struggle, fighting to live a decent life as the world around you goes to shit.

What Ennis lacks in tact he makes up for in characterization and character dynamics.

The first half of the current Moon Knight run manages to be serious and adult without going full edgelord.

I think it (and other adult works) are successful because they cover more emotionally or intellectually mature topics, rather than just going down the ESRB or MPAA list of "things not meant for kids", because in fact those things are often the most juvenile.

When I think of something I consider "adult", I don't imagine something my parents would try and stop me from seeing because I wasn't "ready" for it (like Crossed, which is refined edge that I'm positive would've been popular with lots of my peers back in middle school cause it's got tits and swearing)

I think of the kind of book you try reading as a kid and put down because you don't "get" it, even if you know all the words, they just don't make sense to you in their arrangement.

I also think melancholy tones are completely underrepresented in fiction. I don't mean emo edginess or whining/raging about how the world is unfair, I mean people coming to grips with the fact they might be deeply flawed or unhappy and soldiering on anyways because they don't have an alternative.

Of course it's a fine line between substance and pretension, and a lot of the time people miss the mark.

Moon Knight is good though, at least Ellis' run

These guys knows what's up