Published: May 02, 2008 11:04 am            

Youths today want more excitement than comic books can offer

I used to love reading comic books when I was a kid. Back then, there were no comic books shops, at least in my immediate area. If you wanted to follow the exploits of Batman or The Avengers, your best bet was to go the local pharmacy.

I thought about that this week when I covered a robbery at a local pharmacy. I haven’t been to a pharmacy in years, let alone to check to see if they had any comic books. I still read comics on occasion, but just reprints from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

Getting the comics when I was a kid was great, but the trouble was that the pharmacies didn’t always carry every issue. So, if Batman was trapped by the Joker at the end of an issue, then you might get to find out how it ended next month, or you might not. Oddly enough, the pharmacies I visited had more important things to deal with, like prescriptions.

In its own way, not knowing whether you would find the comic you wanted turned it into an adventure. My brother had a huge stack of comics that I went through when I was a kid. I’d ask him why he didn’t have this comic or that one because I wanted to know what happened. It was because the pharmacy didn’t have the next issue.

Unlike the comic book shops of today, you couldn’t order a specific comic or hope to get anything other than the super-hero line. I didn’t know they made comic books that weren’t about superheroes until I was older, because I never saw them in the stores.

One of my dad’s favorite stories involves comic books. He had a collection of western comics, like Roy Rogers, when he was young, but he decided to get rid of them. Those comics in today’s market, as long as they were in mint condition, would be worth a lot of money. He traded them for a goat. It would make more sense to have the goat now in order to keep the grass down since gas prices are so high.

I’ve been to a few comic books stores, but it’s usually just to browse and see if they still sell Batman and the others I used to read. Comic books are kind of like soap operas for males because the characters change so much that if you haven’t picked one up in six months, then you’ll be lost, let alone 15 years, like me.

The last time I read a comic book, Super-man had come back from the dead, Batman had his back broken, and The Avengers were breaking up. Now Superman is married, maybe divorced by now, Batman somehow got his back fixed. And, the Captain America I read about is gone. I told you comic books are just like soap operas.

When I first started buying comics in the mid-’80s, they cost 75 cents, a far cry from a quarter and 35 cents, but cheap enough. By the time I stopped buying them a few years later, the cost had risen up to anywhere from $1.25 to $2.25 per comic. With that price, it would be difficult to buy more than a couple on just getting a weekly allowance.

That was more than 15 years ago, and the price is now up to $3 for old standbys like The Incredible Hulk and Green Lantern. Some comics even cost $5 per copy. Allowances have probably risen in the interim, however.

Comic books today don’t seem aimed at kids or teens, anyway. They’re aimed at adults who decided to never stop reading them, so now they have curse words and more gore. The comics are marked with mature labels, and those look like they’re dark and nasty. I get enough of that from watching the news and reporting on it.

Having been around today’s teens and some children, they don’t like reading the exploits of Superman or Batman anyway. If they read comics at all, they read Manga comics from Japan. Most of them are too busy with the Internet, television, their PlayStations, or any other electronic gadgets now around that take up their time.

It’s just as well, because in this day and age, comic books, like everything else, have become complicated. I suppose having Batman defeat The Riddler and go back to the Batcave is just too simple for those raised on CSI and Criminal Minds. Good thing I have my old copies.

Mark Blevins is a Princeton Times reporter. Contact him at mblevins@ptonline.net.

        

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