ÉDITIONS MATIÈRE

Superhero comics have been killed several times now, but genres are more resilient than [+]

Fight! Fight! Fight! Superhero comics have been killed several times now, but genres are more resilient than the murdered superheroes who are, in the obligations of resurrection, continually and contractually sloughing grave dirt from their capes. And because they can be killed over and over again, they can be killed in a variety of ways. Though they haven’t had any mausoleums as good as The Wild Bunch or Altman’s spin on The Long Goodbye, superhero comics have attracted their share of killers. Alan Moore, in Marvelman, killed superhero comics as extension of theology; his Watchmen killed the genre as morality play and soap opera (there are probably a half dozen other obituaries tucked in there besides). Frank Miller, without really meaning to, killed superhero comics once as fascist daydream and once as libertarian wet dream — using a sclerotic Batman both times. Dan Clowes, in “The Death Ray”, killed it as imaginative compensation for loner adolescence, a Columbine sublimated to colored tights and magical weapons. All of these killings — attempts to push the genre to apotheosis, to nudge it into an apocalyptic self-awareness, to have the last word — are really killing the superhero genre at the margins of what it does. Morality and mythology are trappings that serve to dignify something far more basic: the delight one can take from the spectacle of athletic figures harming one another. Superhero comics — even more than wrestling — are a comprehensive catalog of bodily mastery and bodily injury. The Japanese manga artist Yûichi Yokoyama, in his book Combats (or Fights), gets at superhero comics right at the root of their pleasures. He kills the superhero genre as kinetics. Combats, available in French translation from Éditions Matiere (the dialogue is sparse enough that English readers can suss most of the particulars even without a French-English dictionary), presents a series of battles. The fights start abruptly. [lire la suite en ligne.] [-]