Over in LiveJournal land, I’ve been reading a bunch of posts about superhero stories, mostly in the form of forty-odd years of comic books on DVD (mentioned in locked posts on a pseudonymous LJ, so no link for you). I end up reading these posts with a sort of detached interst, because I don’t really get the whole superhero thing, particularly in comic form. I think the last time I regularly followed superhero stuff was when the “Superfriends” show was on tv on Saturday mornings.
It’s a little weird, because I like some stories that riff off the idea of superheroes (Watchmen), and I’ve enjoyed some of the recent crop of superhero movies. I look at the shelves of the “graphic novel” section of the local chain store, groaning under the weight of umpty-zillion superhero books, though, and I invariably decide I have better things to do with my time.
I think the main problem is one of time scale: Watchmen is a complete story, told in a finite number of pages, whereas something like Spiderman or X-Men seems to require a willingness to put up with thirty years of backstory and numerous re-launches, and I’m just not willing to make that committment, particulary at the rate of twenty bucks for an hour of entertainment.
It’s not just attention span, though: a large part of it is that I just don’t quite see the attraction of superhero stories in general. They work fine as Summer Movies, but I go to those for the spectacle, not the literary qualities. Superhero comics just seem kind of… dopey to me. And yet, there are smart people whose tastes I otherwise respect who spend an awful lot of time reading these. So, there’s got to be something I’m not seeing, here.
So here’s the question: If you were going to try to convince me that there’s some merit to the whole genre, what one book would you recommend that I read?