The Four Color Media Monitor

The Baltimore Sun's brought up the local comics convention, decidedly exaggerating the recognizability of superheroes in pop culture, or at least how much the public pays attention to them:

Face it, comic-book superheroes are our civilization’s modern mythology, and we can’t seem to get enough of them. Every time characters from the Marvel Universe appear onscreen, it seems, movie studios can count on raking in a cool $1 billion or so: of the top-10 worldwide box-office hits of all time, four are “Avengers” movies, topped by the $2.8 billion “Avengers: Endgame” brought in (“Black Panther” just missed hitting the top-10, holding down spot No. 11 with $1.35 billion). And they aren’t all Marvel movies, either: “Aquaman” is No. 22, at $1.15 billion. Have any doubts about the pervasive cultural presence of superheroes these days? Try counting the number of Spider-Men, Wonder Women, Batmen and Hulks that show up on Halloween night.

Yep, superheroes are everywhere. And nearly all of them trace their real-life origins to a medium that got its start right here in the good old U.S. of A., back in the 1930s, when Superman made his debut (1938, to be exact).

I'm afraid that's an awfully superficial way of putting it, since, while they may be recognizable as merchandise and films, they're not widely read as comics. That's huge letdown, one today's industrialists make no attempt to modify.

Besides, as I've noted before, with story and art merit in such horrible decline over the years, that's why the audience is abandoning the genre. But again, this is but an example of a mainstream press outlet with no interest in stressing these facts in depth. And then, if the medium collapses, they'll probably wonder why without providing satisfactory answers, before quickly dropping everything.

Labels: conventions, msm propaganda