Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
On Being a Historian/Advocate for the
Silver Age of Comics; Carrying the Lighted
Torch To the Back of the Cave; and the Self-Destructive Cargo Cult of Modern
Comics Fandom.
Yes. I'm Afraid It's Another One of Those
Rants. 
(Part Three)
Welcome Back, My Friends, To the Show That Never Ends.
As you may well recall: we were dealing, piecemeal, with the following declaration:
"Why should I care if some little twerps out there can't understand any issue of the average comic book? If they need to be 'talked down' to, then that's their problem! I do NOT want to see ANY comics I currently read and collect become 'all ages' titles! And I refuse to apologize for wanting comic books to grow up, just as I did! Why should the loyal, long-time readers have to put up with 'baby talk' in THEIR fiction?!?"
Having decisively defenestrated the first clausal segment of said manifesto... we may, therefore, move on to the next. To wit:
B.) "If they need to be 'talked down' to, then that's their problem! I do NOT want to see ANY comics I currently read and collect become 'all ages' titles!"
As the late Jack Benny might have responded, in turn: "Well --
!"
Let's deal with the first misconception inherent, therein: that the authoring of stories decently straightforward and comprehensible enough to allow easy access on the part of any reader not old enough to have begun scraping the hairs from any given portion of their respective anatomies is (someway; somehow) analogous to "talking down" to the readers... whatever their chronological ages.
The following is a woefully incomplete listing of rather well-known (and well-regarded) works of fiction. All of these are situated (whether to greater extent, or lesser) within the realm of the fantastic.
I leave it to the readers of same to judge, in turn -- sans fanboy
agenda -- whether or not they are stories capable of being duly read; assimilated;
and appreciated by readers both adolescent and adult.
Richard Adams' WATERSHIP DOWN. Isaac Asimov's I, ROBOT. Carl Barks' nearly half a century's worth of output on both DONALD DUCK and UNCLE SCROOGE. Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451 and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. Edgar Rice Burroughs' JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN. Michael de Larrabeiti's THE BORRIBLES. Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes canon. Will Eisner's THE SPIRIT. Jules Feiffer's THE PHANTOM TOLL BOOTH. William Goldman's THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Robert A. Heinlein's HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL. George Herriman's KRAZY KAT. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Madeline L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME. C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia series. George MacDonald's THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN. Edgar Allen Poe's oeuvre, entire. Kenneth Robeson's Doc Savage thrillers. E.C. Segar's THIMBLE THEATRE.
That list took me all of five minutes to cobble up. Tops.
I'm not even winded yet, people.
Notice, if you will, that there isn't so much as a single, blessed entry amongst the foregoing which cannot (and has not, in many instances, for several successive generations) be admired and assimilated by child and codger alike.
(Notice, too, that I have -- oh, cunning, calculating
plush toy! -- included several examples from within the comic book and comic
strip fields. Just to stave off the otherwise inevitable stammerings of: "... well... yeah, but... but... those are all, like, books.
REAL books, I mean." In order to outwit the enemy... one must learn to
think like the enemy.)
One might readily be forgiven, therefore, for leaping to the assumption (actually, it's rather more of a merry little skip than an actual, hold-onto- your-hats-fellahs leap) that -- if the men and women referenced previously could accomplish such (apparently; to hear some folks natter on about it, at any rate) all-but-unheard-of feats of storytelling legerdemain (i.e., Telling Cracking Good Yarns Without "Writing Down" To Their Audience), sans the helpful accompaniment of, y'know, pictures and whatnot...
... then it ought to be equally possible for the comics scribes of today to do so, in turn.
I'm just sayin', is all.
C.) "I do NOT want to see ANY comics I currently read and collect become 'all ages' titles!"
The grasping
and selfishness inherent in such a bald-faced statement should, I think,
be well and truly manifest.
However: for those few (no regular visitors to this establishment, surely)
who still might not "get it" -- the following, by way of parable:
Imagine that you are ten years old, once more.
It's another pleasant Saturday morning. You've just hunkered comfortably down in front of the television set in your family's living room, preparatory to enjoying a frenetic hour or so of your most favorite thing in the whooooole, wide world: Bugs Bunny cartoons.
You switch on the kidvid box...
... and are horrified to discover that -- dammit! -- The Really Big Kids (i.e., those damnable, thrice-accursed "grown-ups") have managed to louse up yet another pre-adolescent pursuit that was (by all rights) yours.
Whenever Elmer Fudd levels a double-barreled shotgun blast at Bugs Bunny's insouciant smile... Bugs' brains go flying out from the fist-sized hole in the back of his skull.
Whenever Sylvester the Cat manages to gulp down a shrilly-pleading Tweetie Bird... blood and gore jet from between his razored teeth.
... and, trust me: you don't even wanna know what Pepe LePew
is up to. Seriously.
"What have you all done to my freakin' carTOOOOOOOOONS -- ?!?" you demand of them.
"We've improved them," comes the (almost) patient reply. "They're more adult, now. That makes them better. You'll grow to love them, this way. Eventually."
"But I loved them the way they already were." you protest. "And they were originally meant for me in the first place... so: change them back, already!"
"Ahhhhh," they chuckle, with ill-feigned tolerance. "But we, on the other hand, grew up with these very same characters... and we demand that they 'grow up' with us. Don't be so selfish, for pity's sake!"
"Well, then," you implore, sensing that -- being, essentially, powerless -- you've already lost this battle, right from the git-go. "Can't I at least have cartoons of these characters that are mine, and mine alone? That way, we can both still be happy."
"Certainly not!" they hiss, all pretense at easy amiability vanishing like ground mists come morningtime, by this point. "That would require some cartoons to be written for children! And Cartoons Aren't Meant For Children Any More! That's the old way of thinking! You... you reactionary, you!"
The above scenario may well strike you as being a wholly ludicrous one.
Good. You've caught on, then.
If you are over the age of, say, thirty, or thirty-five -- and are still reading mainstream adventure comics (a fairly safe assumption, given that you're visiting this site; reading these words) -- then it's the safest bet imaginable: you were first seduced into the world of super-heroes and spandex through the magic agency of all-ages titles.
Imagine how different things would have been for you, had the readers of the day taken a similarly piggish stance: ""We do NOT want to see ANY comics we currently read and collect become 'all ages' titles!"
We'll be wrapping up all of the preceding, on the following (and final) page.
"Shouting At the Loons": PAGE ONE
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
The DC Comics Sub-Directory
The Marvel Comics Sub-Directory
The Miscellaneous Comics Sub-Directory
The "Gotta Find That DC Character" Menu
The "Gotta Find That Marvel/Miscellaneous
Character" Menu