The Superpower of Comics
Close your eyes and imagine holding a fresh new comic in your hands. Even better if you actually go get one right now and just sit with it. What do you feel? What emotions are rushing through your brain?
Are you priming yourself for the next issue of your favorite series? Maybe you have a brand new to you title and you really have no idea what to expect. The excitement of either can overwhelm. The anticipation of flipping open that front cover is a rush all of its own.
Run your fingers over the cover, flip the pages stealing glances of panels yet to come. Smell the crispness of the ink & paper. Time to dive in.
Everyone reads comics in their own way. Myself, I like to take my time on each page and panel. Even the interior front cover. Read the credits, take in the small details that some comics will build into even those mundane pages. Look over the panel layout and flow. Notice the background characters and the little bits that just barely made it inside the page cuts.
Now for the fun part. Every turn of the page is another limitless dreamscape. There are no constraints here. If you can dream it up it can be put onto those glossy pages. A writer weaving a tale with dialogue and narration. An artist creating worlds and characters that capture us, leave us speechless. Colorists bringing life, sparkle, and daring us not to blink. Letterers who can put that extra dash of emotion with how they craft their text.
Dear Reader, there is no limit to what can be done in this medium. If someone can imagine it, it can come to life on these pages and in your mind. The stories live inside of us after that. You and I play an integral part in creating each comic. It is up to us to interpret action between panels, to add in life between the margins. In that space we become part of the creative team. We all spin our own stories in the space left for us. This makes every single comic printed unique, even if it’s a copy of the same issue. No two people will read a comic the same. Hell, go and re-read something you originally picked up five years ago and it’ll be brand new to you again. As we change over the years so does how we see each story.
Here is where you find the true genius of comics. Not just words on a page where you have to second guess if you’re imagining what the author saw as they wrote. More depth of story than just pictures leaping frame to frame. The marriage of prose and picture allows a creative team to grab us by the collar and whip us around the room. We can be wrapped in a collective embrace felt through the pages. Pain can be transmuted across space and time as we feel the gut punch, the broken hearts, the loss that is imprinted on that pulp. Joy and unexpected victory washes over us as the hero saves the day and we’re saved from our own internal demons. Anger and hate seep into our souls at the injustices of imagined worlds reflecting the real one. Most importantly love and humor enrich us. We are reminded that we are all one people sharing a common struggle, always striving for something better. Moving onward and upward!
To us, comics are the ultimate storytelling medium. They are a childhood fascination and an adulthood passion. They reach across all ages, races, genders, nationalities, sexual orientations, all identities. Comics are that special something that can be enjoyed by all people everywhere. They have the power to present stories that can teach us more about our world and ourselves. Comics are superpowers in and of themselves. We feel that power, and we feel the symbiotic responsibility.
Happy reading!
#ComicsDoingGood