The Four Color Media Monitor

Outlook India reported on a new comics store in the Mumbai region, the first fully licensed business of its sort, but what they say in the following paragraph is absurd:

Batman, Justice League, X-Men - these comics were a vivid part of any 90s kid’s memory. Our parents had their own, so did we. But come 2000s and we got caught up in the mire of social media, relegating the beautiful pages of these fictional worlds to the back of our minds. A part of our childhood was believed to be lost, until the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) came out with Iron Man and our fictional worlds came alive on screen.

Oh, for heaven's sake. Our childhood is not lost if it's collected in archive books, both paperback and hardcover. Or, how does a movie replace what was lost back in comicdom for the past 2 decades or more? Stuff like that's never really dwelled upon in articles like these.

“India lacks a centre where all these ‘nerds’ can find their solace. People long for comic books and with the boom of the MCU, they want this now more than ever. Movie buffs want to find out how the movie actually differentiates from its comic counterpart,” says Sayed. [...]

On this, finding solace in mainstream depends what era we're talking about. If it's up to the early 2000s, the Marvel/DC comics from that time are mostly worth it (with the downright exception of the 3rd Green Lantern volume, and even X-Force wasn't very good). But much of the mainstream output coming after that is worthless. I wonder if, after all these years, anybody who was defending J. Michael Straczynski's overrated Spider-Man run is willing to reevaluate, and realize it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on? Mainstream superhero comics tragically went downhill since the turn of the century, and even before that, in the 1990s, comicdom was sadly deteriorating under political correctness that's accelerated in the past decade. The company wide crossovers were just the beginning. Where to look now is the creator-owned titles, where merit is thankfully valued as it's vital.

Also, despite what's told here, comics are not so in demand by most film audiences stateside, seeing as the sales are dismal. I'm sure there'll be some gems available at the new store in India, but not whatever's totally brand new, coming post-2000. What's bothersome about this article is that it goes by a perception everyone'll literally jump into the hobby based on the movies, and even Marvel's are already slipping into a PC mess, as are DC's. But if it's not happening stateside, chances are very slim the new products will do any better in a foreign country.

Labels: dc comics, Europe and Asia, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales