If you really want to add something to the mix, include some navel lint, an orange peel, and a small piece of duct tape, and you can also open up portals into alternate universes!

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Hugh you forgot to add the puppy dog tails !!!!!

If the tone had stayed as it was in the Forties and Fifties? Well -- perhaps comics would still be selling to kids, those 6-70-12 year olds (Yes, Joe Quesada -- they existed. I was one of them.) Perhaps stories like the Death of Gwen Stacy, the Dark Phoenix Saga, the "revelation" of Spider-Man as the latest in a line of Phantom rip-offs --- perhaps these would never have happened. But perhaps we'd be selling a whole lot more of these books, to their originally intended audience.

QUOTE: Hugh you forgot to add the puppy dog tails !!!!!

No, that creates artificial life. And we don't want to go there.

I ain't wasting valuable duct tape on no interdimensional portal!

What if I run out? What else am I gonna tape my ducts with? Ham? I don't THINK SO...

QUOTE: But perhaps we'd be selling a whole lot more of these books, to their originally intended audience.

Do you think there would still be such a huge adult reading audience for comics if things didn't change? If comics had remained the way they were, pre-Stan's reinvention, do you think folks would have "outgrown" the material, and moved on to other things, or was there already a sizeable base of fans that were beyond that age range at that time?

It seems like the process is feeding itself. A generation of fans read the current books, then they become the pros, and they make changes in style, and story content, etc, to fit their desires/world view, then the generation of fans that read THOSE books grow up, and do likewise. Eventually, we go from something good, like what Stan Lee did with early Marvel (making books accessable to different levels of readers), to the drek we have today (for the most part-like the Spider Totem, the Gwen Stacy  thing, deconstruction (taken to the nth degree), the crazy Batman, etc) catering to those older fans who don't want to let go.

Eventually it seems (like you've been saying for a while now) the "system" will burn itself out and crash, since things are getting worse on each go round.

If people come to a point where they say, "you know, I'm getting older now, and as much fun as these comics are, I need something more my level." and then move on, thing might not be as they are now.

Does that make sense? Or am I just rambling?

Is this the kind of story folks on this board tend to like, or dislike?
Does it remind people of 'simpler times' that you'd like to get back
to, or is something like this appreciated for its nostalgic value--but
you would never want to see this in a comic today?
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These types of stories always felt hokey to me, even as a child. It's like something you might see on the "Batman" TV show or something - just too far-fetched and silly to have any dramatic value.

On the other hand, too many comics today go way too far toward so-called "realism" for my tastes. They seem to forget that comics are, after all, heroic fantasy and not intended to be reflections of real life.

But I think there definitely is a workable balance here. Most comics in the 1960s, '70s and '80s found it - and you still can see it today. These stories are credible enough to allow the reader to suspend disbelief. On the other hand, they don't apologize for being super hero stories.

Put it this way: I have no problem accepting the idea that Dr. Doom or Reed Richards can build a time machine. But I wouldn't be able to swallow that they could build one with a radio and a bottle of aspirin.