Crazy For Comics
With a gray, one-handed sword perched over his big red shoulder, a menacing, crudely drawn Hellboy stares down would-be customers and guards the local comic book store in DeKalb, Ill.
"Read comic books!" commands his just-obvious-enough word bubble.
Graham Cracker Comics manager and former art student Rick Berg painted the dark homage himself; he sits hunched inside, behind the store's counter listening to a boisterous heavy metal jam.
Berg has read comic books his entire life he said; he knows the intricacies and subplots of most comic books better than Superman knows his tights. And, he said, comics sell faster now than in recent years. Due in part, perhaps, because of blockbusting Hollywood epics.
"I know for the Hellboy movie, sales for Hellboy in trade paperbacks almost tripled at our store," said Berg. "We couldn't keep it in stock and still can't."
While the store manager claims that comics have become more popular, he also believes that they still haven't eclipsed the comic book explosion of the 1930s and 1940s.
"A lot of people who stopped reading have come back because of the movies," said Berg. "The overall quality of the comics coming out is extremely high, too."
Movies Draw New Comic Fans
Steve Roman, founder of the DeKalb Public Library's graphic novel library program, echoed a similar sentiment regarding the popularity of films based on comic book characters.
"The movies make the larger mass of pop culture aware of this particular aspect of pop culture," said Roman.
The library clerk has seen the trend boom in recent years. Of the 250 graphic novels he purchased under a $3,000 Illinois state grant, they have circulated 1,600 times.
"In essence, every time a book goes in, it goes right back out," said Roman.
Roman has circulated several graphic novels - Spider-Man, Hellboy, X-Men - that are now major motion-picture films.
And although the films spike interest in the pulp fiction, comic book fan Tim Harvey said the movies might also, for better or worse, determine what you read.
"If that's what intrigues you about the comic books, you're probably going to read junk," said Harvey, an English major at Northern Illinois University.
But cool junk, or at least junk cooler than it used to be.
"Until recently, with the Hollywood push, there wasn't a cool factor for reading comic books," said Derrick Wright, who is studying journalism at Northern Illinois University.
Berg said the stereotype, immortalized in poignant arrogance by the Comic Book Guy character from "The Simpsons" TV show, repels only the weak minded.
"If you're worried about being the Comic Book Guy so you won't read comics, you have a problem for yourself," said Berg.
Why We Like Comics
Comic books and graphic novels continue to intrigue us, from the teenage wistfulness of Spider-Man to the brooding darkness of Batman.
We read comic books for their ability to draw and weave us into the spell of imagination, according to Joe Bonomo, an English literature professor at Northern Illinois University.
"[Students] are attracted to the escapist nature of the medium," he said. "It allows them to enter a fictional place in a different way than both conventional prose and film do."
Bonomo taught Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World," for his film and literature class. The graphic novel, which later became a feature film, captured not only the particularities of female relationships, but also the attention of most women in his class.
Ghost World chronicles the friendship between two young women, Enid and Becky. Their friendship grows during high school; it breaks apart the summer before Becky leaves for college.
Bonomo thinks that graphic novels catch our attention purposefully and reasonably. They persevere in a suit tailor-made for the age of the Internet, a generation hot-wired into quick-hit, instantaneous information.
"The more disposable and visually-literate our youth becomes, the more they'll be attracted to complex, challenging, and entertaining graphic novels."
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