As the comic book culture expands at the speed of hype, we
see signs of life and new horizons. No longer do teenage kids have to hide away
in the “Comic Book / Guilt Free” area of their basement. Modern society has
embraced the double-edged sword with the laser handgrip that shoots small
missiles and also comes equipped with a flip out chainsaw and a... you get the
picture.
Imagination and fantasy; a cure for a sole not satisfied
with the day-to-day race for the finish line. There were monuments in time from
a colorful human history of not knowing and it created tails, myths and quests.
There were times of great courage
in the face of evil. If you take into consideration how far back some of these
monsters go well it spans five thousand years. With such a deep pool of fantasy
and folklore to choose from, the history of unawareness is full of great bits
and pieces.
Comics can arguably be traced to the 1500th century to the clergy
that painstakingly craved into a block of wood and then put ink on that wood, then
they press the wood onto a sheet of sheet of paper. The process ended up bringing
faith to the faithful illiterates, with a picture bible. When they placed a
scroll coming out of the person’s mouth to make a comment, the modern comic
strip was born.
Comic Book Culture is a reflection of the sum of all that is
adventure, action, suspense, drama, danger, tension, and terror with near death
“OH NO” watch out for that building…
The above is something we will never face in our lives, but
to escape is the key. Comic Book Culture is the history of young imagination based
on the “Anywhere Else But Here” theory
of entertainment!
I was five years old, I remember watching Superman jump into
a broom closet then jump out the window. I always wondered; if I am walking down the hallway of a
newspaper office in 1960 and I saw a guy that looks like one of the reporters
jump out the window, what the hell? You mean no one ever saw that? I guess I
was logical as a boy, kids… go figure.
The spin-offs are countless. It began; when a man in china five
thousand years ago, told the story of the dragon that he saw in the local river
but then we spin forward past the sea monsters to the bible where it talks of
the dragon being cast from heaven forward past to the spotting and slaying of
dragons in the middle ages and of course bypassing the Greeks and Vikings, over
to Merlin and King Arthur days fast forward to the countless tails of quests
and treasures and the monsters that hoard them.
1903 baseball trading card game is release, 1938 sees the release
of Superman and the super hero business explodes into today. The Wall-to-Wall
creativity keeps spinning its web and the public can’t get enought.
With a rocket suit here and a set of blades in your Swiss
Army knuckles there, long overdue attention is being focused on the pioneers
and the players that gave birth to generation now suffering from “Collect-O-Comic-Eye-Test”.
It turns out this is a common
condition brought on by the refusal to let go of some of your early experiences…
and there is the winning part to. Enter Magic, the gathering. This is billed as
“Your weekly destination”. And this destination is about to explode.
More about Magic next time…
Wayne Dorey
DorVal Films
