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How to Read Superhero Comics and Why
Superhero comic books are traditionally thought to have two distinct periods, two major waves of creativity: the Golden Age and the Silver Age. In simple terms, the Golden Age was the birth of the superhero proper out of the pulp novel characters of the early 1930s, and was primarily associated with the DC Comics Group. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman are the most famous creations of this period. In the early 1960s, Marvel Comics launched a completely new line of heroes, the primary figures of the Silver Age: the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, the Avengers, Iron Man, and Daredevil.
In this book, Geoff Klock presents a study of the Third Movement of superhero comic books. He avoids, at all costs, the temptation to refer to this movement as "Postmodern," "Deconstructionist," or something equally tedious. Analyzing the works of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and Grant Morrison among others, and taking his cue from Harold Bloom, Klock unearths the birth of self-consciousness in the superhero narrative and guides us through an intricate world of traditions, influences, nostalgia and innovations - a world where comic books do indeed become literature.
In this book, Geoff Klock presents a study of the Third Movement of superhero comic books. He avoids, at all costs, the temptation to refer to this movement as "Postmodern," "Deconstructionist," or something equally tedious. Analyzing the works of Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, and Grant Morrison among others, and taking his cue from Harold Bloom, Klock unearths the birth of self-consciousness in the superhero narrative and guides us through an intricate world of traditions, influences, nostalgia and innovations - a world where comic books do indeed become literature.
216 pages, Paperback
First published October 5, 2002
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135 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 1, 2008
I read this book 4 or 5 years ago, when it first came out, and recently reread it while preparing for a research project. I was dazzled by it the first time I read it, and I was glad to discover that it had aged well, that it continued to dazzle me rereading it 4 or 5 years later.
Klock's book is perhaps misleadlingly titled. The title might lead you to think it elaborates some sweeping theory about the artistic relevance of superhero comics, or perhaps some general cultural history that documents how they reflect events of larger, world-historic signficance. My sense is that some of the critical reviews the book received were due to this misunderstanding of its goal. (As I recall, it was published around the same time that Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was getting a lot of hype, which may have contributed to this misperception.) Here is what I take Klock to be doing. Around the mid-eighties comic book writers such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller began introducing stories into mainstream superhero comics that were intended for a more adult audience--stories aimed at mature audiences not only insofar as they dealt with "darker" material (racism, drug addiction, vigilantism, US imperialism, rape, etc.) but that expressly aimed to reconfigure the history of superhero comics. This was a kind of philosophic moment in comic book history--a moment of modernism (or perhaps postmodernism?) when writers and artists began to self-consciously push the envelope, to see what they could do in and with this medium. Writers like Moore and Miller recognized that comics had been around long enough that they had evolved a rich history of tropes, narratives, aesthetics, and so forth, all of which were tangled up with issues of politics, sexuality, and morality, and they sought to tell stories that would uncover the hidden potentials of the superhero comic as a medium.
Klock's book doesn't provide a general theory about why comics matter, or a general history of them. Instead, he takes stock of what I'm calling the "philosophic moment" that occured in the mid-80's and its ongoing legacy in comics published in the 90's and early 2000's. Klock has a PHD in English, and he draws on some big names in literary criticism (Bloom and Zizek figure prominently) to analyze this tradition. In addition to chapters on Moore and Miller, he also discusses works by Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, and Kurt Busiek.
Let me confine myself to sharing two reasons why I like this book so much.
First, Klock's interpretations of the various comics he discusses are fanstastic. They are subtle and sophisticated, and they're just spot on. It never seemed to me that he overstepped himself--that he read too much into a scene or over-analyzed a particular work. Instead, his book felt like a gift. I collected comics when I was teenager but stopped collecting around the time I left for college (the early 90's). I admired Alan Moore's (to this day, I'll argue with colleagues in my university's English department that it deservers to be listed among the greatest literary works of the 20th century every bit as much as Joyce's Ulysses) but hadn't read many comics since then. Klock's book introduced me to 10 to 15 year's worth of incredible comic book storytelling. It gave me a way to connect up what I do now, as a professor, with a chldhood love.
Second, Klock's use of literary theory is exemplary. He draws on some extremely difficult, obscure thinkers: Zizek, Bloom, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida. As a philosopher, one who works on so-called "continental philosophy," I find myself regularly gnashing my teeth when I see the awkward use of these philosophers' ideas in literary theory. But I found Klock's use of them to be exemplary. His prose is clear, free from jargon, and his use of literary theory is accessible to non-specialist audiences. (To give just one example, I took classes for a time with the postcolonial literary critic, Homi Bhabha, and for the life of me I can't recall ever hearing as good of a description, in any of my classes, of Althusser's idea of interpollation as the one Klock gives in his chapter on the film, Unbreakable.)
I give this book five stars because of how much I enjoyed it, but I should warn that it's not for everyone. If you did not grow up on superhero comics, or have no interest in them, then I can imagine that the book will not be as rewarding for you. (As much as I like it, it does read to me as a book on comics by an extremely articulate, well-educated fanboy.) I can also imagine that book being off-putting for someone lacking any interest in recent literary theory. If, however, like me, you share either of these interests, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
Klock's book is perhaps misleadlingly titled. The title might lead you to think it elaborates some sweeping theory about the artistic relevance of superhero comics, or perhaps some general cultural history that documents how they reflect events of larger, world-historic signficance. My sense is that some of the critical reviews the book received were due to this misunderstanding of its goal. (As I recall, it was published around the same time that Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics was getting a lot of hype, which may have contributed to this misperception.) Here is what I take Klock to be doing. Around the mid-eighties comic book writers such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller began introducing stories into mainstream superhero comics that were intended for a more adult audience--stories aimed at mature audiences not only insofar as they dealt with "darker" material (racism, drug addiction, vigilantism, US imperialism, rape, etc.) but that expressly aimed to reconfigure the history of superhero comics. This was a kind of philosophic moment in comic book history--a moment of modernism (or perhaps postmodernism?) when writers and artists began to self-consciously push the envelope, to see what they could do in and with this medium. Writers like Moore and Miller recognized that comics had been around long enough that they had evolved a rich history of tropes, narratives, aesthetics, and so forth, all of which were tangled up with issues of politics, sexuality, and morality, and they sought to tell stories that would uncover the hidden potentials of the superhero comic as a medium.
Klock's book doesn't provide a general theory about why comics matter, or a general history of them. Instead, he takes stock of what I'm calling the "philosophic moment" that occured in the mid-80's and its ongoing legacy in comics published in the 90's and early 2000's. Klock has a PHD in English, and he draws on some big names in literary criticism (Bloom and Zizek figure prominently) to analyze this tradition. In addition to chapters on Moore and Miller, he also discusses works by Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, and Kurt Busiek.
Let me confine myself to sharing two reasons why I like this book so much.
First, Klock's interpretations of the various comics he discusses are fanstastic. They are subtle and sophisticated, and they're just spot on. It never seemed to me that he overstepped himself--that he read too much into a scene or over-analyzed a particular work. Instead, his book felt like a gift. I collected comics when I was teenager but stopped collecting around the time I left for college (the early 90's). I admired Alan Moore's (to this day, I'll argue with colleagues in my university's English department that it deservers to be listed among the greatest literary works of the 20th century every bit as much as Joyce's Ulysses) but hadn't read many comics since then. Klock's book introduced me to 10 to 15 year's worth of incredible comic book storytelling. It gave me a way to connect up what I do now, as a professor, with a chldhood love.
Second, Klock's use of literary theory is exemplary. He draws on some extremely difficult, obscure thinkers: Zizek, Bloom, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida. As a philosopher, one who works on so-called "continental philosophy," I find myself regularly gnashing my teeth when I see the awkward use of these philosophers' ideas in literary theory. But I found Klock's use of them to be exemplary. His prose is clear, free from jargon, and his use of literary theory is accessible to non-specialist audiences. (To give just one example, I took classes for a time with the postcolonial literary critic, Homi Bhabha, and for the life of me I can't recall ever hearing as good of a description, in any of my classes, of Althusser's idea of interpollation as the one Klock gives in his chapter on the film, Unbreakable.)
I give this book five stars because of how much I enjoyed it, but I should warn that it's not for everyone. If you did not grow up on superhero comics, or have no interest in them, then I can imagine that the book will not be as rewarding for you. (As much as I like it, it does read to me as a book on comics by an extremely articulate, well-educated fanboy.) I can also imagine that book being off-putting for someone lacking any interest in recent literary theory. If, however, like me, you share either of these interests, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
Read
October 12, 2008From my blog:
Superhero comics constitute an overwhelming majority of the comics market, they are, for most people, the most familiar face of the whole medium. Yet, the burgeoning academic interest in comics mostly seems to pass them by. Although superheros and more specifically their readers have been a subject of analysis from sociological and psychological perspectives, superhero comics themselves are probably perceived as still being a bit vulgar and shallow to merit any literary analysis.
Geoff Klock's How to Read Superhero Comics and Why (2003) aims to counter this perception and offers an interesting look at some of the most important works in the genre through literary perspective.
Klock specifies his object of analysis as the revisionary comics, a trend that started to evolve in the last two decades of the 20th Century. As a mark of maturity that has clearly identifiable beginnings, revisionary comic books have fundamentally recast the way comic book artists and audiences perceive the genre since their appereance.
Although Klock extends his analysis onto many works that follow them, his insights are arguably at their most incisive during his analysis of the two monumental works that has given birth to the revisionist trend in superhero comics. These two works are of course, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's . By carefully identifying the way these seminal works relate themselves to the rest of the comic book history, Klock illustrates his argument that these works are indeed the first examples of a revisionist attitude in comic book artist.
Klock's rich and detailed reading of these important works are very illustrative, both in understanding the depth of Miller and Moore's significance but also in grasping the importance of the revisionist movement within the comic book history.
Although not as comprehensive as some other book I have covered so far, How to Read Superhero Comics is very enlightening and precise where it delivers its analytical perspective on some of the most important comic books ever written and for that measure, it is a work of unique value.
Superhero comics constitute an overwhelming majority of the comics market, they are, for most people, the most familiar face of the whole medium. Yet, the burgeoning academic interest in comics mostly seems to pass them by. Although superheros and more specifically their readers have been a subject of analysis from sociological and psychological perspectives, superhero comics themselves are probably perceived as still being a bit vulgar and shallow to merit any literary analysis.
Geoff Klock's How to Read Superhero Comics and Why (2003) aims to counter this perception and offers an interesting look at some of the most important works in the genre through literary perspective.
Klock specifies his object of analysis as the revisionary comics, a trend that started to evolve in the last two decades of the 20th Century. As a mark of maturity that has clearly identifiable beginnings, revisionary comic books have fundamentally recast the way comic book artists and audiences perceive the genre since their appereance.
Although Klock extends his analysis onto many works that follow them, his insights are arguably at their most incisive during his analysis of the two monumental works that has given birth to the revisionist trend in superhero comics. These two works are of course, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's . By carefully identifying the way these seminal works relate themselves to the rest of the comic book history, Klock illustrates his argument that these works are indeed the first examples of a revisionist attitude in comic book artist.
Klock's rich and detailed reading of these important works are very illustrative, both in understanding the depth of Miller and Moore's significance but also in grasping the importance of the revisionist movement within the comic book history.
Although not as comprehensive as some other book I have covered so far, How to Read Superhero Comics is very enlightening and precise where it delivers its analytical perspective on some of the most important comic books ever written and for that measure, it is a work of unique value.
December 27, 2022
Klock's turn of the century review of the superhero genre manages to be simultaneously both insightful and irritating which is no mean achievement. This is lit crit taking on popular culture and giving us a lot of unnecessary theorisation along the way.
The author has a model of the American superhero comic book as being engaged in a game of tropes over many decades, constantly referring back to itself and re-inventing aspects of what has become (or is being turned into) some sort of canon.
The argument is not a foolish one although Klock is trying to create something out of the chaos of the commercial business of selling comics that looks damn like an attempt to seduce the superhero comic into the grand literary tradition.
Klock has his pet literary theorist to hand in Harold Bloom, the great conservative canoniser, although he seems equally interested in the obfuscatory Lacan-Zizek double act. The result is the chunky interpolation into the book of obscurity and jargon of interest only to the parasitical Academy.
We get the impression of an earnest young intellectual making sure that the evidence fits his theory of 'auteurs' and poetics and rather missing the point that, just as Kracauer pointed out that the cinematic could be defined as not being literary, so the graphic is not literary either.
The graphic novel tradition (at least at the level of the major production houses and their superhero spin-offs) is Wagner without the music, a fusion of popular art and story-telling in which the 'auteurs' may refer constantly to literary memes but only as a magpie grabs shiny things to claw.
Klock also largely ignores Marvel which is absurd in any work on the superhero genre and concentrates on DC and on independent auteurs like Alan Moore. The highly selective choices of what to consider important are top-down, a little sinister and thoroughly Bloomian.
Still, pushing these irritations aside (which include trying to replace the doubtful Jung-Campbell intellectualisation of superheroes in favour of an equally doubtful Bloom-Lacan one), Klock cannot hide his love for the genre. Once the academic lit crit side is jettisoned he remains well worth reading.
Although out-of-date insofar as he tells us a story that ends at the turn of our century, he provides a useful framework for understanding how at least key DC narratives flow over time in order to renew themselves for each generation by reacting to what went before and to changes in the market.
A lot of what he claims to explain arises because, unlike Marvel where the iron fist in the velvet glove of Stan Lee maintained a base line of continuity from which narratives could flow, DC continuities are a mess. Multiverse narratives serve a very different function.
The Marvel multiverse flows naturally out of the expansion of itself into new territory so that it becomes its own self-defining canon. We are talking here about such a large proportion of the comic book universe that it is absurd to ignore it and wrong to diminish it.
The DC multiverse is a series of plasters on a wound creating the opportunity for individual auteurs to engage in a dialogue with themselves, their contemporaries and the past and then to 'go independent' and express their own psychological, intellectual and even emotional preoccupations.
What Klock is thus writing about is not the creation of a canon by a well organised corporation that cares about its own legacy without any necessary reference to literature but the incursion of artists and storytellers into a relatively new medium to make it their own.
While Klock's narrative is neat and useful, it is not always convincing because like all intellectually created canons, his choices rely on exclusion of sub-genres, much of the commercial creation even of DC, of almost the entire Marvel corpus and much besides.
The comparison with cinema is instructive because the comic book is also a relatively new artistic creation. Ally Sloper turned up in the late 1860s and Melies in the late 1880s. Both suffer when they are overwritten or a purely artistic intention takes over. Both are centred on their audiences.
The authenticity of cinema lies in it being true to its essential nature - an oneiric medium that mimics reality through moving images rather than words. The authenticity of comic books lies in their being a fantastic medium where words and images cohere to express the fantastic.
Graphic novels that simply tell a literary story are redundancies, just picture books, like cinematic versions of theatre are rarely cinematic or only briefly so. Design-led comic books are indulgences at worst or art works for the cognoscenti at best. Poetics are irrelevant to both film and Superman.
Nevertheless, Klock's judgements on actual texts in the superhero books are nearly always excellent. There is no reason to doubt that he has identified deliberate and fully aware relations between 'auteurs', their histories and each other even if direct evidence is sometimes lacking.
He just overplays his hand, that is all. Yes, Alan Moore definitely responds to the history of the superhero both in 'The Watchmen' and through America's Best Comics but he is equally interested in radical systems of thought, notably magickal, that are part of no mainstream canon.
Much the same seems to apply to Grant Morrison. These are not one trick ponies but highly creative individuals playing with what is to hand - not only a newly invented Bloomian canon but also external influences from literature elsewhere, from magic and the fantastic more generally.
In the effort to make its point (that comic books should be 'read'), Klock consistently neglects the other side of the equation - the artistic presentation, the imagery, of the comic book which at least stops him making the alternative error of making this genre part of Art with a capital 'A'.
The visual language of comic books is as unique to it (even more so in the specific rules within Japanese Manga) as its rat-a-tat and often melodramatic story telling, declamatory and more often than not like Victorian melodrama. It too has its references to the past and external resources.
The master of this radical eclecticism is, of course, Alan Moore in his work with Kevin O'Neal in 'The League of Extraordinary Gentleman' which could be seen as post-modern satire on canonical thinking with the radical appropriation of canonical figures for pure fantasy with a hard edge added.
There is not much more to be said. The book is well worth reading for its insights into (say) DC's attempts to find the coherence that Marvel has, into the Batman mythos, into how auteurs (even at Marvel) reinvigorated superhero narratives before they got tired and how superheroes went 'dark'.
Perhaps I have overdone the irritation but any attempt to appropriate comic books (I feel the same about the cinema) for literature and poetics by the massively expanding and self-referential academic empire strikes this reader as wholly unnecessary, even diversionary.
The best of this book could have been written and appreciated without a single distracting intellectual reference to any thinker outside the auteurs of the comic books themselves. Klock's insights when they come are good enough to stand without his intellectual props.
July 28, 2013
This book has a number of very interesting things to say about superhero comics. However, in this work, Klock had his head stuck significantly up Harold Bloom's arse, and fails to stray far from Bloom's theoretical framework.
August 8, 2017
This is an openly Bloomian comic-book analysis, focused on the relationships between stories and subgenres, and how one thing develops into another. The title is a bit misleading, but it’s not “why to read superhero comics" or a presentation of a new analytical method, it’s “here’s a way of comprehending superhero comics and why you should do it this way," applying Bloom's critical techniques to a pop culture genre.
Looking at comics in this way, focused on the heritage and metatextual statements of each work, Klock is able to tease out what these books are saying about themselves, each other, and their own genres. It's a very different tone from the usual types of analysis that focus in on specific works or authors to talk about symbols and politics. Superhero comics emerge as a genre tortured by continuity, constantly reinterpreting itself and struggling for its definitive meaning.
The marketing is really a shame, because Klock doesn't bring in at ground level and almost never explains Bloom's specialized terms, but if you're willing to put in some effort and extra googling, it's a worthwhile analysis. I'd be very interested in an updated version, because Klock has Wildstorm as a kind of peak in his narrative, so I'd like to know what he thinks of Wildstorm being folded into DC, and he was also writing in the earliest days of superhero movies when they weren't entirely mainstream yet, so I'd like to hear his thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the defining element of an era.
I wrote about this book in comparison to Bloom's here: .
Looking at comics in this way, focused on the heritage and metatextual statements of each work, Klock is able to tease out what these books are saying about themselves, each other, and their own genres. It's a very different tone from the usual types of analysis that focus in on specific works or authors to talk about symbols and politics. Superhero comics emerge as a genre tortured by continuity, constantly reinterpreting itself and struggling for its definitive meaning.
The marketing is really a shame, because Klock doesn't bring in at ground level and almost never explains Bloom's specialized terms, but if you're willing to put in some effort and extra googling, it's a worthwhile analysis. I'd be very interested in an updated version, because Klock has Wildstorm as a kind of peak in his narrative, so I'd like to know what he thinks of Wildstorm being folded into DC, and he was also writing in the earliest days of superhero movies when they weren't entirely mainstream yet, so I'd like to hear his thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the defining element of an era.
I wrote about this book in comparison to Bloom's here: .
Read
September 19, 2020I purchased a copy of this book for cheap at a local bookstore as I had recently begun reading superhero comic books. I was hoping to understand comic books more deeply and was enticed by the 'literary criticism'-angle this book appeared to take when considering comics and graphic novels. However, while this book does draw upon the work of many theorists (Žižek, Lacan, Freud, etc.), it is very focused on Harold Bloom's theory of the "anxiety of influence," which postulates that superhero comic books are a kind of poetic medium.
Klock goes deep into the history of comic books and the tradition: he outlines the specific ages (gold, silver, bronze, dark, modern) and what sort of tropes are characteristic to these ages. This is all very interesting, but as he explores few titles in a proper "less is more" fashion and opts out of discussing the visual art itself, the reader is left with wanting more.
I believe this book fulfils its titular promise of teaching one how to read superhero comics, within their specific time period and considering a title's place within its established history, but comes short of answering why, other than for general amusement and how certain titles play off other's norms. Never mind, I guess it does answer the 'why.'
Klock goes deep into the history of comic books and the tradition: he outlines the specific ages (gold, silver, bronze, dark, modern) and what sort of tropes are characteristic to these ages. This is all very interesting, but as he explores few titles in a proper "less is more" fashion and opts out of discussing the visual art itself, the reader is left with wanting more.
I believe this book fulfils its titular promise of teaching one how to read superhero comics, within their specific time period and considering a title's place within its established history, but comes short of answering why, other than for general amusement and how certain titles play off other's norms. Never mind, I guess it does answer the 'why.'
August 15, 2024
This was an interesting read, but also disappointing. The title is misleading, as the book is not about "how to read" superhero comics and "why". In fact, I don't necessarily get the impression that the author enjoys traditional superhero comics as such. This book is only about a small handful of the most well-known deconstructionist super-hero comic books of the "new age", i.e. post Silver Age (he doesn't seem to acknowledge the existence of a Bronze Age as most comic book fans do), titles/lines such as The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, America's Best Comics, and those set in the Planetary universe. There are some shorter chapters on Kingdom Come and Marvels and a bit about Grant Morrison's turn on Justice League of America. As knowledgeable comic book readers may have noticed, he leans heavily into the British writers of American comics, and he doesn't seem to think Marvel has contributed much to the "modern age".
Still, what is here is very interesting, even for someone like myself who has already read most of these titles. It also leads me to believe I should catch up on the ones I haven't, like Planetary, Morrison's JLA, and Marvel Boy.
Still, what is here is very interesting, even for someone like myself who has already read most of these titles. It also leads me to believe I should catch up on the ones I haven't, like Planetary, Morrison's JLA, and Marvel Boy.
December 1, 2017
While I can appreciate the amount of analysis Klock includes in this book, I found the title to be a misnomer. He doesn't really address the ideas expressed in the title, and mainly focuses on post-Silver Age works. This text can be helpful, however, if people want to read literary criticism of certain comics such as Batman and Watchmen.
June 2, 2012
How To Read Superhero Comics And Why is not a book that spoonfeeds you anything. But when you try and look at the end of the Silver Age of comic books through the lens of the literary theory of Harold Bloom, the philosophy of Jung and Zizek, and other intellectual luminaries, you’re going to need to be running to the dictionary every so often. So despite the rough go I had during the introduction, I stuck it out, and when it got time to get to the heart of the book I was really impressed.
Most books on superhero comics are just a narrative history of the medium and the creators; the Golden Age, Wertham and the decline of the superhero, Marvel and the birth of the Silver Age, and so on. Some look at recurring themes of particular eras or creators. But this one looks at the textual elements of important works and describes them, not in terms of their place in the history of the medium, but their relationship to earlier works and their attempts to sublimate, destroy, validate, or subsume those works. I’m not overexaggerating when I say I’ve never read a book like this before.
Klock spends the absolute minimum amount of time necessary to discuss Crisis on Infinite Earths, then forges ahead into Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which to his thesis are more important and more interesting. One of the coolest ideas presented in this book was that those two works might not be the start of a new age (the Modern/Dark age) like so many think, but the last phase of the Silver Age, setting the stage for a new age to come. And he’s so incisive and thoughtful that he started to convince me, too. I really liked the analysis of Busiek’s works, Astro City and Kingdom Come especially, as well as Alan Moore’s Americas Best Comics experiment. And if you pick Planetary as the start of a new Modern Age you’ve already got a foot in the door as far as I’m concerned.
The best thing about this book, aside from creating a completely new lens through which to observe superhero comics, was the analysis of the works that I had *thought* I’d understood but had apparently only scratched the surface of. The subtext becoming text in Dark Knight Returns, the Silver Age stretching its muscles in Astro City, How Warren Ellis took the metatextual idea of new stories destroying old stories and turned it into a story in Planetary. With so many new levels of interpretation introduced to me, Klock’s book cracked open the top of my brain and expanded my mind.
It bears repeating that this is not an easy read. Klock’s writing this for an academically-slanted audience, and there were times I felt my mind wandering away because I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the analysis. I’m not a student of literary theory but I did my best to keep up and looked up terms and people I didn’t know as I went along. Oblique references to literary and philosophical theories aside, though, Klock does his best to explain where he’s coming from, and I muddled through some of the more esoteric bits until I got a solid foothold again.
I’ve heard some people get hung up on the title. “How to Read Superhero Comics And Why� doesn’t explitly explain how you’re supposed to read them, and it never says why you should read them at all. But like I said before: Klock doesn’t spoonfeed you anything, so the first part of that shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. It’s not spelled out, it’s implied in the text: read them not only as stories featuring your favourite technicolour marvels, but look at the secret highways between them and other stories, and see if they’re thematically treading water, reacting against old stories, or blazing their own trail. And I interpret the “Why� of the title not as “Why You Should Read Superhero Stories� but “Why You Should Read Superhero Stories In This Manner.� And I feel that Klock’s entire thesis, even though some of it has not borne fruit in the six years since it was first published (e.g., WildStorm, far from being the start of a new age of comics, has been subsumed into the DC universe proper), is that you read deeply into them to see what they have to say about the stories that have come before and examine the creators� point of view. And to me, that’s plenty interesting.
(It also occurs to me that I would really like to read a sequel to this book, or perhaps an addendum like Aldous Huxley did for Brave New World (How To Read Superhero Comics And Why Revisited?) to address the changes in the past few years. But that’s not for me to do.)
Most books on superhero comics are just a narrative history of the medium and the creators; the Golden Age, Wertham and the decline of the superhero, Marvel and the birth of the Silver Age, and so on. Some look at recurring themes of particular eras or creators. But this one looks at the textual elements of important works and describes them, not in terms of their place in the history of the medium, but their relationship to earlier works and their attempts to sublimate, destroy, validate, or subsume those works. I’m not overexaggerating when I say I’ve never read a book like this before.
Klock spends the absolute minimum amount of time necessary to discuss Crisis on Infinite Earths, then forges ahead into Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which to his thesis are more important and more interesting. One of the coolest ideas presented in this book was that those two works might not be the start of a new age (the Modern/Dark age) like so many think, but the last phase of the Silver Age, setting the stage for a new age to come. And he’s so incisive and thoughtful that he started to convince me, too. I really liked the analysis of Busiek’s works, Astro City and Kingdom Come especially, as well as Alan Moore’s Americas Best Comics experiment. And if you pick Planetary as the start of a new Modern Age you’ve already got a foot in the door as far as I’m concerned.
The best thing about this book, aside from creating a completely new lens through which to observe superhero comics, was the analysis of the works that I had *thought* I’d understood but had apparently only scratched the surface of. The subtext becoming text in Dark Knight Returns, the Silver Age stretching its muscles in Astro City, How Warren Ellis took the metatextual idea of new stories destroying old stories and turned it into a story in Planetary. With so many new levels of interpretation introduced to me, Klock’s book cracked open the top of my brain and expanded my mind.
It bears repeating that this is not an easy read. Klock’s writing this for an academically-slanted audience, and there were times I felt my mind wandering away because I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the analysis. I’m not a student of literary theory but I did my best to keep up and looked up terms and people I didn’t know as I went along. Oblique references to literary and philosophical theories aside, though, Klock does his best to explain where he’s coming from, and I muddled through some of the more esoteric bits until I got a solid foothold again.
I’ve heard some people get hung up on the title. “How to Read Superhero Comics And Why� doesn’t explitly explain how you’re supposed to read them, and it never says why you should read them at all. But like I said before: Klock doesn’t spoonfeed you anything, so the first part of that shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. It’s not spelled out, it’s implied in the text: read them not only as stories featuring your favourite technicolour marvels, but look at the secret highways between them and other stories, and see if they’re thematically treading water, reacting against old stories, or blazing their own trail. And I interpret the “Why� of the title not as “Why You Should Read Superhero Stories� but “Why You Should Read Superhero Stories In This Manner.� And I feel that Klock’s entire thesis, even though some of it has not borne fruit in the six years since it was first published (e.g., WildStorm, far from being the start of a new age of comics, has been subsumed into the DC universe proper), is that you read deeply into them to see what they have to say about the stories that have come before and examine the creators� point of view. And to me, that’s plenty interesting.
(It also occurs to me that I would really like to read a sequel to this book, or perhaps an addendum like Aldous Huxley did for Brave New World (How To Read Superhero Comics And Why Revisited?) to address the changes in the past few years. But that’s not for me to do.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 7, 2008
Well, if you ever wonder what combining some basic tenets of literary theory and some of the best of of the last 25 years (ish) of comics would get, you have this particular book. Not surprisingly, at least half the book is devoted to the more canonical works of Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Nothing wrong with that, of course, there's a reason those guys are generally held up as the Twin Towers of modern comics. And there certainly were a lot of cogent points to be made about their works. Personally, my favorite parts were about, admittedly, writers I personally prefer such as Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Joe Casey. I was glad to see those guys in particular acknowledged for managing to transcend so many of the self-imposed so many writers have been putting on themselves since, oh, 1986 or so.
My only real point of discontent with the book would be with the (to me, at least) really heavy reliance on quotes. Granted, it was somewhat necessary, as a primer for the uninitiated. But there were certainly some times this bogged down the overall flow. Overall, this is a really thoughtful read for sure.
I would, in fact, LOVE to see a sequel to this book. Having cut off sometime in 2001, there is a LOT of new stuff one could delve into. Comics in a post-9/11 world (though there are certainly some examples of that out there already), a comparison of "compressed" vs. "decompressed" storytelling, so on and so forth. Here's hoping...
My only real point of discontent with the book would be with the (to me, at least) really heavy reliance on quotes. Granted, it was somewhat necessary, as a primer for the uninitiated. But there were certainly some times this bogged down the overall flow. Overall, this is a really thoughtful read for sure.
I would, in fact, LOVE to see a sequel to this book. Having cut off sometime in 2001, there is a LOT of new stuff one could delve into. Comics in a post-9/11 world (though there are certainly some examples of that out there already), a comparison of "compressed" vs. "decompressed" storytelling, so on and so forth. Here's hoping...
July 10, 2009
This Bloomian reading of the superhero tradition in terms of the anxiety of influence makes an interesting narrative, though I doubt the only cogent one. I'll have to engage in agonistics to suggest alternatives. Good readings of Moore and Miller, though. I need to read more Ennis now.
October 23, 2008
a trully fantastic book with great insight in to some of the best superhero comics that have been made in the last 20 years.
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