The SUPER-READER ... is ALIVE!!!

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Great piece by Mr. Wolk from The Boston Phoenix about the topic mentioned in the thread title, referring to folks (like us) that have an above-average working knowledge of the history & "rules" in books. The entire article is great (the state-of-the-comic-book discussion is enfolded into talk about the goodness of both Birds of Prey and Daredevil), but here's the bit on the SUPER-READER:

There’s also been a trend in the last 20 years or so toward tweaking the conventions of superhero comics — inverting them, questioning them, toying with their meanings and their limitations. Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen was the first great metacomic, in the mid ’80s, and they’ve kept coming: Kurt Busiek & Brent Anderson’s Astro City (which imagines how the presence of superheroes would change urban life), Warren Ellis & John Cassaday’s Planetary (the 20th century’s pulp-hero archetypes as members of a grand conspiracy), Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’s Sleeper (superhero joins the villains’ team as a double agent and becomes so morally compromised that he no longer knows what side he’s on).
But the side effect of metacomics’ rise is that they’ve become the province of "super-readers," those who are so conversant in the minutiae of genre conventions and comics lore that it’s possible to make allusions to those minutiae the whole point of a story. There are series in which almost every major character is meant to be understood as a thinly disguised allusion to another comics character. Super-readers would have recognized a group of characters called the Elite in a recent Superman story line as conceptual stand-ins for the cast of The Authority — one of whom is, in turn, a stand-in for Superman. If at this point your brain is exploding like Krypton, that’s understandable.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 16:05 (twenty years ago)

aww--thank you! glad you liked it.

― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 16:21 (twenty years ago)

That's what Sleeper is about? Cool.
I'll add that to my list of must-read. Oh, and I'll have to read the article.

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 4 May 2005 16:44 (twenty years ago)

Wow. Great article.

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 4 May 2005 16:50 (twenty years ago)

I almost want to say the spate of continuity revision / rejiggering of late is a result of the rise of the "metacomic" Douglas talks about - that is, the preponderenceof & popularity of & widespread press given to books catering / pandering to the intellectual (shitty word choice) leanings of the "super-reader" lead to a paradigm where the Big Two successfully pander to the nostalgic fanboy leanings of the "super-reader" (cf. COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS, Bendis' Avengers disassembly & also, most pointedly, Marvel's Ultimate Universe) by couching the superheroics in the superficial trappings of the original "metacomics" (cf. Watchmen, DKR, etc etc etc).

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:08 (twenty years ago)

DaveR OTM

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)

And in a way, I'm part of the problem, because I eat that shit up with an adamantium spoon. Or I have been.

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

Do you think the All-Star line will address this? Or will it merely indulge in even greater audience-winkery, since all bets are off.
I mean, how long can GM go without having Superman chow down on Kryptonite snacks?

― Huk-L, Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:25 (twenty years ago)

Is the super-reader, as a construct, really that necessary though? Because I kind of don't consider myself well-learnèd enough to be classified as a super-reader, yet (and here's where my argument gets sticky) I can enjoy stuff like The Authority without "OH! Midnighter = Bats and Apollo = Supes AND THEY'RE GHEI MOG!!1!" popping into my head. Then again, there's a LOT of stuff that Doug cites which I don't like in the least, but I'm loathe to attribute this distaste of such comics to my relative ignorance of the history of spandex. (Caveat: I haven't read the whole article, yet.)

― Unexplained Bacon (Leee), Wednesday, 4 May 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

has the specific analogue between those two and those OTHER two ever actually been used for anything? it's a nice hook for the stormwatch arc but i dunno how critical it is.

i have a feeling the re-examination of the superhero thing (i dislike metacomic, bcz it seems to dismiss comics not about superheroes as not-proper-comics) ought to have some examples prior to watchmen but can't think of them. when did love and rockets start? it's weird how all the ironised sci-fi filler / superhero content in the first few issues of that isn't a hundred miles from some of the tone of actual mainstream superhero comics these past few years..

"super-reader" seems a bit of a conflation between "informed reader" and "fanboy": of course i'm reacting like this to the concept bcz i'm IMPLICATED i guess, wanting to be in the first camp and not dragged into the latter

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 5 May 2005 02:56 (twenty years ago)

Well, right, exactly--I wanted a term that could be sort of vaguely pejorative w/r/t the aim of the stories themselves, but not say anything uncomplimentary about their _readers_--you know, comics and pop music are the only fields where knowing a lot is considered not entirely a good thing...

Love & Rockets started in '81 or so.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 5 May 2005 16:41 (twenty years ago)

I thought this was going to be about a sequel to Al Ewing's The Reader.

― Leon Federline (Ex Leon), Thursday, 5 May 2005 16:53 (twenty years ago)

has the specific analogue between those two and those OTHER two ever actually been used for anything? it's a nice hook for the stormwatch arc but i dunno how critical it is.

Well, in terms of Stormwatch, I don't think it matters that Appolo & the Midnighter are analogues for Supes & Bats - it's obvious to the informed fan, but a novice can (I'd like to think) come in & enjoy the story w/out knowing that. Also, their analogous nature doesn't really come into play (as far as I know). They're character's first, and stand-ins second (or last). The same w/ Watchmen & Planetary (tho, w/ Planetary, this referential trick is more apparent, and can kinda get in the way, if you're spending more time figuring out who / what WE is riffing on, rather than focusing on what's actually happening in the story).

Contrast that w/ my favorite dead horse, Millar's Wanted, where he was CLEARLY trying to riff on / parody established superfolk from both sides, simply to goof on them. They're just there to be a Bizzaro version of the charcter they represent, and nothing more than that. (I wonder if Millar treated A&M in a similar disrespectful fashion when he was writing The Authority.)

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 5 May 2005 17:06 (twenty years ago)

Planetary can certainly be read without the references, since that was my experience reading it directly after getting back into comics with the Invisibles. I didn't get the references or didn't think to look for them and it was enjoyable anyway, but now I'm realizing that I should go back and read them again with my SUPER-READER BRANE.

― Jordan (Jordan), Thursday, 5 May 2005 17:18 (twenty years ago)

planetary's refs go outside of superhero comics. (the way forward! or not.) & i don't think apollo and the midnighter are a sop to "informed readers": c'mon, everyone knows who superman and batman are

douglas: what about (forexample) the some-of-the-corpses-are-amusing level of tv history? to be honest i don't think knowing about anything gets 'nuff respect at the moment, be it philosophy or classical music or the sorta trash we're discussing here: in fact with the uh lethemisation of things comics maybe moreso than other things

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 5 May 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

If anything, Batman and Superman have become A & M analogues in Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman with whole "you complete me" int. mono device.

― Huk-L, Thursday, 5 May 2005 19:29 (twenty years ago)

"some of the corpses are amusing"?

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 5 May 2005 21:43 (twenty years ago)

as in "comedy is dead but": it's a website for and by people who care what happened about the twelve seconds cut from the fourth episode of 'do not adjust your set' in the 1982 rerun, which was of course only the second rerun of the program in bbc history etc etc.

good job i didn't just go with "SOTCAA" i guess.

― tom west (thomp), Thursday, 5 May 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/sotcaa/

― kit brash (kit brash), Thursday, 5 May 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

the title is mainly a joke about comedians cracking up on camera, obvs, Pete and Dud-stylee, than it is to be taken on face value

― kit brash (kit brash), Thursday, 5 May 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

Interesting point Paul O' Brien makes re: DC Countdown/super-reading -- i.e. what's the point of making all these obscure continuity references, just to ignore and ret-con them straight afterwards?

I'm a continuity geek fer sure, but I find Simone and Johns both oppressively heavy on the references (specially seeing as I missed DC continuity from 'round 1995 to 2000.)

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Friday, 6 May 2005 18:16 (twenty years ago)

Simone? Really? How so, Chuck?

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 6 May 2005 18:21 (twenty years ago)

To expound on my previous comment (& also because mucking with data structures in my real job gives me hives):

Invariably, if you're mucking about w/ a set of characters that have some sort of history, there's going to be some referencing of that past in some way. The only instances I can recall GS doing such referencing (in Birds of Prey) is in regards to either bringing in other characters, or alluding to situations that, for instance, Canary & Oracle experienced. In this light, I think GS is one of the BETTER writers @ alluding to past details w/out making the novice reader feel stoopid for not knowing the reference - as someone that never really gave a squirtle about BoP prior to the arrival of GS, I can get the gist of the references to previous cases w/out needing to know what actually happened.

GJ, on the other hand, seems to ASSUME that the readers are up-to-speed when he pulls a rabbit out of his brim-filled reference hat. When GS brought Lady Blackhawk into the BoP fold, for example, there was a very brief up-to-speed story where she was reintroduced, setting her up as an out-of-step type of person, and off we go. Even references to non-BoP happenings that impact the characters - for instance, the Oracle / Nightwing love-on-the-rocks thing - it's dealt w/ on a level that both the hardcore geek & the drive-by reader can understand.

Whenever GJ dredges up some semi-obscure Golden Age character, however, he seems to really lean on the reader knowing the significance of the character, and their history - he trades in the sort of minutae that most casual readers (or readers that once loved the minutae) don't care about, and expects said minutae to bear the brunt of the character's raison d'etre (or "reason for being used", more specifically). His Hawkman run was FULL of this sort of stuff - numerous references to all the mythology behind Hawkman & Hawkwoman (nth metal, reincarnation, numerous villains), but nothing to really hang your hat on storywise aside from those details.

The line between these two approaches seems to be the same (tenuous?) line that separates fanfic from "real" fiction.

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 9 May 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

Simone? Really? How so, Chuck?

Ha, I guess reading a DC comic and not understanding all the continuity gives me geek-feelings-of-inadequacy. (Help me if I get neurotic for being not enough of a geek.)

I'd like to try Simone's stuff again, tho'. Any good place to start?

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Monday, 9 May 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

Villains United is pretty fun, but, um, pretty heavily steeped in continuity pizzazz, like Catman writing a letter to Oliver Queen, and stuff like that. But at face value, it's till, "Hey, hey we're the Villains, and people say we Villain around, but we're too busy singing, to steal two tonnes of multi-coloured Kryptonite from Blue Beetle's warehouse!"

― Huk-L, Monday, 9 May 2005 20:01 (twenty years ago)

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