By Unkiedev
Green Lantern #65 is out this week, uniting the four Earth Green Lanterns, a.k.a. Hal Jordan, Jon Stewart, Kyle Raynor and that adorable rage-a-holic Guy Gardner. Guy Gardner, for the record, is a cosmic Moe Howard in appearance and deed. S’Crazy.
They plan on making a decision that will shun their fellow Green Lanterns and effect their lives forever. It’s probably about whether they should root for the Mets or the Yankees.
Green Lantern #65 seems fun. They’ve even redacted features on the cover to protect story elements from prying “journalists” such as myself. I am not an avid Green Lantern buyer, but I may just pick this one up…which got me thinking.
How many of us will see the Green Lantern movie that haven’t ever bought an issue of Green Lantern in our comic book collecting lives? What shall be the number of comic book fans seeing Thor this summer who have never read of his four colored adventures?
Why are we more likely to pay twelve dollars over an hour and a half to see a movie about a character than spend three dollars to read about them for fifteen minutes?
SATISFACTION VS RELEVANCE
Once a comic book leaps to the big screen the subconscious danger to our collected geek mind-think is that NON-comic readers will sit in judgment of our hobby. If the Green Lantern movie is a stinker (And I think I can smell it from here already) then it diminishes our beloved funny-books in the eyes of a jaded nation. If it’s a huge mega-hit like Iron Man and there is to be a sharp change in cultural opinion, i.e. the current mind warp of Tony Stark being unquestionably more popular than Superman, then we’ll want our keysters in those seats to see it all unfold and cough “itoldyouso” ahem.
We have a stake in a new comic book movie because it could mean a shift in what comics get published, more exposed or even cancelled. When a new comic book comes out it is simply business as usual. We are trained to believe in the hierarchy of Film over Comics. A film should be seen on the big screen, but an old comic can always be hunted down in a dollar bin later on if you missed it.
SHERBET
Let’s say it’s a pretty light comics week for me: A few of my favorite titles but no more than two or three books. I take these opportunities to pick up a book I’ve never read, or have read only sporadically. If it was cool then I’ve got something new on my horizon I can follow or check in with as I see fit. If it was not so great then, at least, it cleanses the pallet of my appetite so I can better appreciate the books I do like. I can usually trade these one-offs or give em’ away to friends, so no big loss.
I’m going to buy Power Girl #23 this week because A) There will be no new Hellboy this week, no new Alan Moore, and nothing new from Adam Warren’s Empowered for a short time and B) It promises that Power Girl and Superman are going to punch magical dinosaurs. It could be awesome. It could be awful.
Going to the movies there are usually only six or ten pictures to chose from. Walk into any comic book store on any given Wednesday and there will be over thirty new stories, all at reasonable prices to divert, entertain, and enliven.
If fun is a numbers game, I’m betting on the hot girl punching magical dinosaurs every time. Hollywood may have the muscle, but comics have the hustle. GO DINOSAURS!
I agree with Rassilon, unless you are aclautly issue collecting. If you’re looking for reading copies to read about GL’s past, you can’t go wrong with the SP volumes. We discuss those a lot up in the AMSA Forum. Even better, there are the GL Archives volumes, many of which are available on eBay and at conventions for half-price. Those are a tough deal to beat, unless you want the letter columns and ads (which some collectors do). It occurred to me that, if you weren’t aware of those, they’d be good options, and I didn’t want to assume you did. BTW, Mile High Comics recently had a promotion in which, if you bought a certain amount of comics (I think it was $50 worth), you got a complete set of the recent promotional multi-color GL rings that DC was giving out. That deal was made in the newsletter only, another reason to sign up for it. Craig Shutt