Why do we allow capeshit to dominate the medium of comics...

Why do we allow capeshit to dominate the medium of comics? Why do we never get tired of this shit and read some indie comics?

It's better than indie. If indie was truly better it'd have broken "capeshit" by now, many times.

Because we like the familiar characters

>we
theres a fucking insane amount of good non-cape comics around, you just dont care enough to find it, and would rather just complain on here
even DC has good non cape stuff, just because its published by them or even shares a universe doesnt mean its going to have superheroes or capes as MCs

What do you propose we read instead? Mystery? Horror? Fantasy?

Because Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan's Question is better than any comic from Image

I do. I only read the most recommended capeshit and just stick to indie comics and Vertigo series.

Comics require a certain degree of investment to get anything out of. This is not a cheap hobby, or a friendly one to the casual perspective. This goes even for non-franchised works, which are generally seen as parts of ongoing genre.

I think the "comics community"
and generally "nerd community" mainly consists of people that like sticking to specific things and never changing. For instance, Star Wars. No matter how bad it gets people are still going to watch it fanatically. Even though it's 2017 and we have better CGI and scenarios in nearly every sci-fi movie.

And despite all the flash and gee whiz whiz bang, Empire is still better than most of them

There's more non big two(if that's what you mean by indies) comics than big two comics, but even that's full of capeshit, LotR and Star Wars fanfiction. Finding some good and original comics nowadays is like searching for a pin in the haystack.

I like familiar things. Familiar things anchors me to reality in this world of darkness and chaos. Stories about other things scares me. Every time I see batman, I clap and cry inside knowing I am a little boy again.

I do, most of the best stuff this year was indie stuff actually.
Why didn't you, OP?

People don't read capes because they like comics. People read comics because they like capes.

The majority of people who read comics don't appreciate non-sequential art as a medium, they do it out of necessity. This is a forum for comics, so there are of course going to be connoisseurs of "comics as an artform" here. But out there in the world? MOST of those people don't read comics because they enjoy a storytelling medium that does "telling a story with words" worse than books can and "telling a story with visuals" worse than film and animation can.

They read comics because if you like capes, you can only see them in movies a couple times a year, and can only see a specific favorite character once every like three years. If you see them on TV, it's going to be a full season, but it's also going to be held back by budget and acting, and there are just some characters they can't or aren't allowed to do there. But comics? Comics gets you every cape every week.

>they enjoy a storytelling medium that does "telling a story with words" worse than books can and "telling a story with visuals" worse than film and animation can.
Who are you trying to impress

Some of us do

Except I've read comics that managed to combine visuals and writing in a unique way that no normal book or film could.
Really one of the more pretentious things I've read this week.

Given sales figures, approximately 25% of the market is non-capes. To put things in comparison, the beer market is comprised of 89% macrobrewery share.

I like reading indie comics and one-shots because they have more freedom to do what they want. I don't mean that in the way that they can explore subjects capes don't, but more the fact that things don't have to return to a status quo. An easy example would be that people die and STAY dead. Not just side characters, but main ones.

It also makes it more approachable in a way. You can pick up a single book/series and it tells an understandable story because that's all there is. It's an advantage shared with manga, which we know is selling better than capeshit. With capes you have entire universes of potential baggage to come in and fuck up a story and character you like. There's so much to have to look up and read for some stories and people don't like that shit.

>b-but muh indie!

always some fag like you bitching about the big 2, fuck off and read whatever the fuck you want. pussy

>managed to combine visuals and writing in a unique way that no normal book or film could

Sure, I have too. Problem is, "unique" isn't synonymous with "better".

On a personal level, it's because there's almost nothing else besides what amounts to speculative fiction in comics. Detective stories are basically the last types of the stories in comics that might not have spec fic elements, and they're played out, IMO.

And there's the Archie lineup, but that's just slice-of-life and teen drama shit, which is hardly worth a read, either.

And that's *literally* fucking it. Every other goddamn comic is spec fic. Every single one.

You can like both.

capes created comics
capes popularized comics
capes are comics
literally every depiction of comics in media is a fucking superhero.
if ya wanna read something else go read the back of a candy wrapper, faggots.

...that actually makes sense. If capeshit includes a full serving of everything, then why would a market exist for anything else?

What we lack is specialized storytelling. I'm not sure what would need to be done for that to make a return, but... it's a start!

>literally every depiction of comics in media is a fucking superhero
>what are
American Splendor
Ghost World
Persepolis
Road to Perdition
Archie

indie comics is capeshits too

>MOST of those people don't read comics because they enjoy a storytelling medium that does "telling a story with words" worse than books can and "telling a story with visuals" worse than film and animation can.
>my fucking face when

all literally whos next to fucking batman and the human torch.

Human Torch? Really?

...

why not romance?

Because the comicbook industry would be dead without them

This.

>capes created comics
Wrong
>capes popularized comics
Only in America.
>literally every depiction of comics in media is a fucking superhero.
Wrong

...

>Americans generally dominate global media from the mid 1900s on
>America goes full retard and effectively bans pretty much everything but capes
>most comics and comics secondary media becomes cape
Fairly cut and dry OP.
Even then, Euro and Asian (I'll admit I don't know much outside of the Japs) have different traditions of their own. On top of everything else there's enough great non cape to keep you busy until you die. If you haven't read Cerebus before making this thread you deserve a fucking paddling.

Did he just rage shit his pants?

Yes, it's also connected because he uses free comic book day to get free comics as toilet paper

Superior European comics

the fuck ups of capes being the dominate medium is a problem that started long before most of Sup Forums was born
all comes back to the Comic Code Authority
Before then Horror and Romance dominated the medium, but once the CCA came in defacto censorship made it so only goofy superhero comics could last
super heroes did begin to mature, and branch out to become sub mediums but other problems started to occur
shit like comics only being sold in specialty stores that fed off super fans and gullible scalpers
but things just kept getting worse, manga becoming mainstream for various reasons, many beyond comic company control
and now people being a lot stingier with their money. not a lot of people want to spend money on a random character they never heard of every month, and would rather put their time and money towards manga, the capes, video games, etc...

tl;dr - american comics have been dying for over half a century

>now comic companies jacking up their price to nearly 300% of their equivalent in the 60s
FTFY.

I'm only somewhat familiar with 90s HK manhua, but capes weren't the predominant thing. The big ones were slice of life/slapstick (Old Man Q), triad (Teddy Boy/Young and Dangerous), romance (Feel 100), swords-n-sorcery (Fun Wan/Storm Riders). Oriental Heroes/Dragon Tiger Gate was martial arts based, and along with Storm Riders, and Blood Sword/A Man Named Hero would be the cape equivalents.

This. Projecting your inability to branch out onto others is stupid.

Why not? I'd honestly love to see a revival of tacky pulp anthology comics and schmaltzy romance books cluttering up grocery store racks and news stands. That'd be fucking awesome.

This medium won't survive if it continues depending on a niche genre full of egregiously convoluted continuity bullshit that repels new readers like the plague. At the very least, capeshit should at least consider adopting a more compressed/one-shot format, and establish character bibles so no new writers can shit things up with "their" unprompted self-insert characterizations. And it wouldn't hurt either if they released at least certain books elsewhere besides comic book shops, not that I don't support LCS when I can but they can be a bitch to get to unless you just happen to live within the immediate vicinity of one.

thats a factor, though i imagine a reason why they're more expensive could be because artists get more credit now

>I'd honestly love to see a revival of tacky pulp anthology comics and schmaltzy romance books cluttering up grocery store racks and news stands.

Who will buy them? "The audience HAS to exist, they just don't know where to look!" is such a weird assumption to make in a world where most of the mainstream won't even consume media unless it can be done via an electronic screen or headphones. Maybe it's time to start admitting maybe Diamond and capes are symptoms, not the disease.

>Who will buy them?
I think it might be worth the gamble to assume an audience can still exist for cheaper, accessible funny books if the alternative is clinging to a terminally broken system that vainly depends on perpetually unsatisfied fanbases and "movie synergy" to break even on a bi-weekly-to-monthly basis.

If you were a CEO of some comic book publishing company, which option would you prefer? The industry standard that barely makes any money that panders to penniless NEET's/SJW's, or a system that thrived in the 50's before some extremely dated moral crisis came out of left field snuffed it out?

>won't consume media unless it can be done via an electronic screen
Then we need higher-quality webcomics? With teams that are paid real money and have reliable schedules?

I could roll with that.

Indies are universally shit though. Nothing but a bunch of retarded, pretentious morons desperately trying to tell you how DEEP they are while blighting the world with their godawful grease-stained "art".

And even if their were any indies worth a shit, this ain't like video games where anyone can just make their own game, and there's an okay chance of some rando belting out a decent product. Comics just don't have any kind of infrastructure in place to facilitate quality independent efforts. This industry doesn't have a ton of engines and programs that allow the rare few good creators to make their story, nor does it have any platforms from which these creators can distribute their product without being chained to a publisher. Comics as an industry have no ability whatsoever to grow, as the medium itself is basically under the total control of publishers, specifically the Big Two.

Comics are fucking dead. Just leave it already.

>penniless NEET
A good chuck of comic readers look like Peter David's long lost brother. Middle aged men with a stable income.

With the exception of anime/manga, romance is a women's genre. You have to convince women to read comics, while competing with other accessible mediums.

>Howcome you don't read some indie and not capeshit!
>okay
>depressing stories
>ugly unlikable characters
>amateur artwork disguised as "style"
>tumblr non binary queer autism for characters
>"this is nothing like cape comics, now, this is about a girl who is death's daughter and has the power to-"
>"this aint the big 2 so get ready for lost of SEX!"
>Gun Zombies 2: The Gun Zombinoning!

no thanks.

>convince women to read comics
Pffft. As if it's just women. Try convincing ANYONE who isn't a sad, addicted bastard to read comics. Comic fans are battered spouses, we only read this trash because it's familiar and new things are scary.

Like you said, fact of the matter is that comics are not at all accessible. And it's not just the continuity, it's that trade writing is a cancer that has killed done-in-ones for the foreseeable future. You can't pick up this month's issue of a book and be satisfied with your purchase, because it is only one part of a story, and the vast majority of people have neither the time, money, of patience to wait around for months or years for a single tale to be completed. Certainly not when they could just get a Netflix subscription and watch an entire series at their leisure instead.

What if the big 2 published only comics about pirates since the beggining.

pretty fun, and true but i don't care, i don't fucking collect pops or that shit, i just wanna read some superman and batman and wonder woman and im good.

I'll confess to looking like this.
And I have a very stable income.
Also, maybe 10% of my hardcover shelf is Cape books.

this honestly, when we all die, so will comics. MARVEL tried to capture a new audience but they don't care about comics they care about diversity hires and feel the world is a troubled place in need of fixing. They don't want the art to imitate life they want the life to dictate the art. The characters will definitely live on in some way shape or form though, as movie or tv properties or books or who knows.

Empire get away with way too much lame as hell shit. Who cares about the Millennium Falcon hiding from a star destroyer?

Why do we allow whiny fags make shitty threads? Why don't we report them?

Capes came to dominate the industry because Fredric Wertham and the Comics Code killed the then popular crime and horror genres. We're still dealing with the aftermath, there are very good comics outside of capeshit at the moment, but the supers still hold the most popular audience.

Because capeshit is fucking awesome.

>With teams that are paid real money and have reliable schedules?

Who would paid them? Who would bankroll this?

>, this ain't like video games where anyone can just make their own game, and there's an okay chance of some rando belting out a decent product.

This is literally comics. Anyone can make a comic and it just might be good.

>killed the then popular crime and horror genres
Hooray for Comics Code

There's nothing wrong with old EC horror comics. They had good art and a sense of fun and their death was a real shame.

I wish a con equivalent to comiket was a thing in the west

Because i don't fucking care, i read both and i not "le community" like you no-life-fags are

If we try to fix the market, the results will only show after my death

This is a stupid argument without any substance. How is one better then the other in any way. You might as well compare directly books with movies.

I would appreciate some concrete points on how there is a way to tell a story better by one medium than any other.

If anything, comics as a form it's much more efficient then either books or movies. It can tell a lot with one panel and a few words of dialogue/narration, something a movie would need a scene for, a book would need a paragraph.

>Archie
>Literally who
>Especially when compared to the fucking Human Torch
Nigga, what the fuck kind of faggot are you?
You HAVE to be underage to legitimately believe the Human Torch is more recognizable and popular than god damn Archie Comics.

>Anyone can make a comic
Wrong. But keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night.

I don't understand user, your argument was that anyone could make a game which is thousand times harder than making a comic.

Having to code,make music,and all the game tech related stuff. Comic are easy compared to that. It's just pictures and words, they don't even have to be well drawn or written.

Post cerebus american here. I want to see more modern comics on the market that arent capeshit. Cerebus, bone, tintin, ducktales, and other assorted classics are appreciated, but

American fans of the medium are not content with entertaining themselves with outdated hand me downs, high quality or not.

Capeshit is cancer.

But it's true you cocksucking faggot.
Just because your average John Doe and his friends can't make a Big 2-quality book doesn't mean they CAN'T make a comic book period.
Anyone with imagination and an ability to draw people have the most basic tools required to make a comic if they felt like it.

>an ability to draw
And there's the issue. Your average rando fuck can't draw worth shit. Let me know when comics have an equivalent to Unity, Cryengine, etc. Until then, you can shut up and stop deluding yourself into thinking one can just do things without infrastructure.

>Just because your average John Doe and his friends can't make a Big 2-quality book
Your write, they might make something good on accident!

I've seen MANY, and I do mean MANY unemployed artists that can draw 10 times better than most professional Big 2 artists.

Indie is hardly better, user. I really did try to give them a chance, but they are as bad as cape with the exception of few comics.

That ain't saying much, since any given Big 2 artist would sooner kill themselves than draw different looking faces or bodies. Either way, it doesn't really matter, as the vast majority of people simply cannot draw, at all. Nor do they have the resources to hire someone, or enact a marketing campaign, or set up a website, or even get the basic materials to start.

Again, with comics, you can't just download Unity, buy some assets, and put that shit up on Steam. The industry just doesn't have that kind of system in place. And you could argue that this means utter garbage isn't saturating the market, but let's be real here, none of the major publishers are putting out anything good.

>I'd honestly love to see
But the real question is
Would you put your money where your mouth is?

I like what I like and it's nobody's business what I read but me.

Choke to death.

Thanks for finishing up for me, you said it better than I would have.

>If anything, comics as a form it's much more efficient then either books or movies. It can tell a lot with one panel and a few words of dialogue/narration, something a movie would need a scene for, a book would need a paragraph.

I think Cooke's Parker adaptations are proof positive of this.

user you're not shifting away from saying making a game is easier and more accessible than making a comic.

it simply is not. Let alone a decent one.

At least say that was a dumb statement if you plan on going forward with your terrible points.

This. If you appreciated the medium you'd be reading manga instead

>I want to see more modern comics on the market that arent capeshit
You don't go to a comic book store ever do you? Or do you (correctly I'd add) consider stuff like Shirtless Bear Wrestler or Hell Boy to be capeshit as well?

Because there's literally entire companies of non-capeshit.

There are more good comics than good Manga though.

This. Dialogue is just as piss poor if not worse and most of them don't employ enough techniques to differentiate themselves artistically. Other than having people not wear capes and maybe adding a bit more lumpy body-styles.

Where are the indie books that can even say they do as much as arcs like Born Again with technique? Most people that complain about big two and wish there were more indies are basically just looking for different plots. Not "better" writing,. not "better" are just different plots. And they think a slice of life comic is better than a capeshit issue, SOL or not. Though they likely love shit like King's recent date night issue simply because it makes a mockery of the idea of superheroes.

And can they be read on their own or do they require a wiki at your side to follow along? Is it all cape with the same tired characters that never really change beyond industry trends?

I love caoeshit but I've read it for 20 years now and most of the comics I buy these days are from Image or smaller pubs. Great comics exist outside the Big 2. Just go in to a store and take a risk.

Name one indie comic that has the incredibly intricate paneling, plotting and scene construction of Born Again.

Fuck you and your "capeshitters don't care about comics as a medium shit". I could just as easily, and just as accurately, say that indiefags are just fat chicks who don't like seeing physical activity in media and want to see fat characters.

This post might as well be bait. The sad thing is you likely believe this.

Most of the autists that post here never leave their house. These inane arguments are the only way they get any attention from other "humans". Of course that faggot doesnt just go to the store. It would destroy his point.

>making a game is easier and more accessible than making a comic
It absolutely is. Again, there are programs and public storefronts that facilitate the creation and distribution of independent games. Comics do not have such things. But please, keep living in your delusional candyland where indies are just something you can do, without resources or infrastructure. Moron.

If they don't change then why do you need a wiki? Your own bullshit points don't even square with each other. Just be honest, you started reading comics in in the last 5 years and can't be assed to go back and read the old ones.

So you read Paper Girls or Saga or someshit.

Because indie is also capeshit, just with more sex and swearing.

desu I thought it was bait so I didn't reply directly to him.

His first paragraph has some merit though.
Most readers don't go too deep into the form of a comic book, they just want cool pictures of a cool character, and if the story is cool thats a bonus.
But it's a problem of any medium, most of those consuming it don't understand or appreciate it's basic rules, and can't tell if the creators actually know what they're doing or putting an effort.
(why do the guy supplying the pencils is called an artist but the writer isn't i have no idea)

>Again, there are programs and public storefronts that facilitate the creation and distribution of independent games.
If you think they're in any way more accessible than the same shit for comics you're wrong or lying.

I've been gaming for 20 years, only thing I know that casuals MIGHT remember is like RPG Maker. There are a plethora of programs and apps that a casual fuck could use to make a comic. Krita has default comic layouts. There's shit like that Marvel app they've been shilling here. There's fucking powerpoint for anyone that wants to use it.

And you can make a comic with a pencil/pen, a pad of paper, and a phone to take pictures. You're seriously going to choose "it's easier to make a decent video game than it is to make a decent comic" as the hill to die on?

You seem to think Unity and Cryengine are known quantities off of Sup Forums.

I've literally never heard of either. You wont believe me, because of course you won't, but why do you think those are household names?

Beside that, you've also switched the focus from creation to distribution.

>(why do the guy supplying the pencils is called an artist but the writer isn't i have no idea)
as someone who'd never dare call myself an artist it's because the comic couldn't exist without them. I have literally hundreds of ideas for storylines and characters and titles. But I can't find an artist (well, more I'm broke so couldn't pay them). So I mull over making a novel or short stories. Because without someone on pencils I'm just a writer.

>Why do we Allow
>Implying we have some say over what is produced over the masses who are the large customer pool