I really couldn't agree less. There are any number of great comics outside the superhero genre (which is itself a fairly small chunk of what's being published, globally) which are far, far superior to virtually anything being published in that genre. Watchmen is one of the few superhero comics that really are great. Born Again certainly isn't, in my opinion. It's a good superhero story, but it's not up there with the likes of Maus or Charley's War or Gaiman's Sandman.

So of the nine comics you have read these four superhero comics are the best?

First page of this thread

Can you be more specific? I don't even see anyone rating it 10/10 in the first page.

Just because I don't think anyone REALLY needs this, but just in case, lemme outline the (honestly fairly obvious) reasons why the "superhero comics are the best" argument is flawed.

1) The publishers or superhero comics (DC, Marvel) are more concerned with profit than art. The publishers of the best non-superhero comics (Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, hell even Image right now) publish material that they believe with advance the medium.

2) Superhero comics are inherently juvenille... They are power fantasies of being bigger, stronger, more attractive to the opposite sex, and there are very few that have subverted this. There's a reason the median age of superhero fans is eight - eight year olds are the people who feel least powerful and need power fantasies the most. And most of the books that aren't about feeling tougher are parodies, have satirical elements, or are pure comedy. (Superhduperman, Ambush Bug, Cynicalman.) Even Watchmen, much to Alan Moore's horror, had a lot of readers who felt that Roscharch was a bad ass and made them feel big. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head that are (A) superhero books, (B) not power fantasies, and (C) not primarily comedic are Enigma and the Death Ray - and you can certainly argue that Engima is a comedy!

You can't do something like Maus/Big Questions/Three Fingers with superheroes because there's no room to make the audience feel all ruff 'n tuff. Superhero comics only deal with questions of power, and only do so in a superficial, juvenile, and simplistic way. (Although this might change in the future.) And this is a huge limitation of the topics they can handle intelligently and sensitively.

3) Except for the stuff written by Alan Moore (and Enigma again) superhero books have extremely straightforward, simplistic (Event A follows Event B) plots. There's nothing like Fun Home's thematic grouping of non-linear events or Ice Haven's Puzzle Mystery that moves through time, genres, and styles. And they're not touching the sprawling, complex world building of something like Gilbert Hernandez Palomar simply because superhero creators don't do the same work for hire assignment for decades. Let alone something like Duncan the Wonder Dog which is eight orders of magnitude more structurally complex than Watchmen.

(D) There's no Elvis Road or Building Stories experiments with the shape and form of the stories in corporate superhero comics. (I've seen it done in self published superhero minis.) There's also no room in superheroes for Michael Deforge style surrealism or Gary Panter style gallery inspired fine art.

(E) Most superhero books are published under relentless deadlines with little room to fix stuff that doesn't work. Occasionally this leads to a visceral punk rock energy - but overall the book that Chester Brown worked on for two years are gonna be better than the 500 pages of Spider-man that are crapped out to meet monthly deadlines. (Although Jason, Gilbert Hernandez and James Kockalka are as prolific as anyone working in the mainstream.)

(F) There's simply not the personal involvement and creativity with work for hire stuff that you're going to get with the best creator owned work.

There's ALSO less pretension and bizarre elfsex in superhero books (The worst indy comics are faaaaaarrrr worse than the worse mainstream books) but there's nothing as creative as Michael Deforge, King City, or Beanworld in superheroes, nothing as heartfelt as Lynda Barry's work, and nothing as smart/formally inventive as Duncan. The best superhero comics can be as exciting, well-drawn and sociologically valuable as reflections of the culture that produced him, but they're not going to be as smart and meaningful as books that don't have steroid freaks in incredibly thin costumes beating the crap out of each other.

Mostly agree but with point D : there is experimenation in corporate superhero comics, of course there is, maybe just not at the level you expect, but Rucka and JH Williams III's Batwoman recently had experimentation in form, and there's been many many short batman stories that had experimentation.Also with F, i tend to disagree : as a musician, I believe some of my very best and most creative work has been the work for hire. And I see that trend with other musicians. I believe that is because deep down, we know this is outside our comfort zone (audience) work, and we have to deliver the best of us if we want to make it count. I believe that Peter Bagge's Marvel Work is amongst his very best.That being said, I suscribe to the rest of your stance, as much as I enjoy good superhero comics :)BTW, I read Maus years before I even read Watchmen or any other superhero comics, because there's a bigger world than the newstand one, thank god that dislexic dog! Enigma might very well be the first superhero comic I bought off the racks though.

Four comics (Watchmen, Born Again, Year One and TDKR) don't represent a a genre, not by a long shot.

You'd better summon the "link to post" option, in the menu you get when pressing next to the small wheel, in the top right corner of every post, because I still don't see it.