| Posted: 05 August 2007 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | 1
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Basically, the "Fun" from another thread in superhero comics has always centered around "the Punch", at least for me. The world we live in frowns on the kind of violence that was pretty commonplace in most fiction mediums, from Popeye cartoons to television detective thrillers to Rock'm Sock'm Robots. The 1970s began a downward spiral for the good old-fashioned "harmless" adventure violence (harmless, as in exciting, cathartic, melodramatic, rather than the disturbing reality), and slowly the culture changed toward grim nasty representations of violence that were all too real, in fiction and movies. Television and comics kept up a proud tradition of the knock-down drag-out that never broke fists, or faces, or kneecaps. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK brought back the "fun" fight, while giving Just Enough indicator of the results, with a couple of bruises and busted lips.
Eventually, though, "The Art of the Punch" has found itself rendered moot, as television censors have gradually enabled the creators to get explicit with violence, audiences have "gotten sophisticated", and stuntmen have been replaced with CGI models. Asian martial arts has returned some of the whimsy of battle, but in American culture this is a "fad". Mixed martial arts is in, Chinese martial arts out, which replaced Karate, which replaced Judo, and so on...
Comics have not been spared the "realistic" approach to the fight scene, to the point where the fight is now moot in most superhero comics, rendered to a disappointing afterthought, along with the dynamism and adventure once found and perhaps depended on TOO much in the 1970s...still, the point was to keep the story moving, and battle in superhero comics has always been the bass line of the genre. Without the battle, the Art of what could be termed "senseless violence", there is no bottom, no dependable iconic moment to anticipate. One can only watch superheroes happily backlit by the sun with hands on their hips, or grimly sloughing through some murky underworld, before we wonder where the Punch will take place. The comic is the ring, these are the warriors...they look like fighters, smell like fighters, and speak like fighters. And that is the core of the superhero...the battle for good is timeless, yet only as long as the fighter's arm, for the reader.
At any rate, I was curious if anyone is interested in a pure "Art of the Punch" thread. Post the best punches you can find, if only to get that old blood pumping again, to remember what so many great artists excelled at, and some who have carried on the legacy (damn few it feels like).
Punchy knows what time it is...
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Topic Closed)
