Anyone read this?

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/busted/

The companies churning out comics don't seem to be able to realize that kids aren't sophisticated art critics or New York Times literary critics, they're just kids who want to see adventure, action, and their favorite super-hero winning the good fight like they wish they could. The companies have forgotten that an excellent comic doesn't have to be "Art", and it doesn't have to be made of paper that could survive a nuclear blast.

Comics also do not have to be segregated into kiddie level stuff and mature reader stuff. Comics used to have good, solid stories,with love and clobbering and demons and everything, and none of it had to be explicit and the falling bad guy didn't have to splatter his brains on the street. Some of the greatest stories I know came from comics and I read them all from ages 8-17 before bailing on the unwashed 90s.

Writers like Wolfman, Byrne, Wein, Gerber, Starlin, Englehart, and Thomas (especially on CONAN) could all operate in fairly adult arenas with class while not resorting to hardcore violence and mayhem or rape or whatever. Comics today just seem rife with a pervading cynical blahness stemming from the 90s, and no one seems to want to get over it. The worst thing that happened to comics? Turning the Punisher and Wolverine into household names, while every writer post-Frank Miller (and thank Burton's movies too) turned Batman into a colorless, blank, boring sociopath.

Why don't the writers of comics start writing like they actually enjoy their frigging jobs? Like the sense that comics are fun to produce even when dealing with something dark, that every comic doesn't have to be a journey through the dark night of the soul? Kids don't get tortured, women don't get raped, and heroes punch villains through buildings and never kill anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I love adult comics. But let's have a middle ground of solid, well-constructed superhero stuff free of whatever angsty depression infects the writers. And get some real artists too! I'm personally sick of this slick, manga-ish ill-conceived work that has all the dynamism of a cigarette ad. I'm thinking of FF currently, for one.

Steve Jones: Amazing, Jeff, though Michael couldn't know if Marvel is making more money now than in the 80s because they were a private company then, you do. How do you do it?

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I was not the one who offered to back up his opinions by "checking the facts and adjust for inflation". I was just pointing out that none of us could really do that. We are all going off of second hand info.

That being said, I feel comfortable going out on a limb -- way out I'm sure -- in "guessing" that during the days when 100,000 in sales was borderline cancellation and titles routinely sold 200,000+ that publishing was more profitable than today when some titles are sustaining at 1/10 those numbers.