How the Secret and Illicit Joy of Reading Comic Books is Ruined by Well-Meaning Parents.

The comic book has come a long way in its near-century long existence and the last 15 blockbuster stuffed years have done more to make comics acceptable than perhaps any other time in history. Certainly, in my lifetime comic creators didn’t have to lie about their jobs at dinner parties so they wouldn’t be seen as perverting the youth, and there weren’t mass burning of comics fuelled by conservatism (this really happened in the 40s). But in the mid-90s, in the North of England, as I started to explore the Marvel and DC universes, comic books were still a widely unaccepted pop-culture currency.

What made comics so exciting is I was a lone explorer in that world. My mum knew of comics but had no idea what was in them. Occasionally, distant elders (and by that, I mean “older teens”) who had made their way into this weird realm would hand down discarded issues, incomplete parts of an ongoing story like fragments of a treasure map. If you were lucky, you might find yourself in a temple of this forbidden art, the comic shop, in my case a long, dark store in Rhyl, North Wales where I bought my first US issue (Venom on Trial #1, a story arc I have yet to complete to this day).

A treasured for an 8-year-old me. Cover by Joshua Hood

Little did I know the Venom character from the all-ages Spider-Man Adventures I bought at my local corner shop was a brutal murderer who ate people’s brains. At the same time, the collected reprints of Amazing Spider-Man featured Peter Parker questioning his identity in The Clone Saga, resulting in him accidentally striking his wife, a pregnant Mary-Jane Watson Parker. It’s also around this time, I was introduced to 2000AD and read a Slaine strip which, although I’m happy to be proven wrong, casually featured the titular characters, erm, battle axe let’s say, in a panel. Not to mention Dredd was happily shooting creeps in his personal brand totalitarian fascism.

Skip 20 years into the future and as well as trying to write comics, I’m working in a local comic shop (LCS) and I’m faced with a challenge. You want to be able to pass on the love of the medium — superheroes are just the flashy mascots getting you into the theme park, there are plenty of non -cape rides to try out — without being a gatekeeper. I know full well not to recommend The Clone Saga to new readers, or old readers for that matter, so you try and listen to what kids like and gently nudge them in the right direction. At the same time, you’re aware all you can do is show them part of a map they need to explore on their own.

Enter Parents. Of course, no sound thinking parent wants to expose their child to the material they think is too adult for them and I’d be insane to claim they should. But, my experience, collecting forbidden tomes (well, forbidden pamphlets) without some parent or school establishment understanding or caring to check what I was added to the joy of the experience of reading.

It is not wonderful. It is a mess. A beautiful mess. Art by Mark Bagley (?)

The Clone Saga is bad now, and in all likelihood, bad when I read it as a child, but the experience of reading it and it being part of a larger canon I was beginning to familiarise myself with was part of the joy of comics for me. I knew what I was reading in comics was different from what I was being told to read. I knew it was probably “too old” for me and I knew if an adult entirely understood what I was getting myself into, they would have taken it away. On top of that, it wasn’t just the exciting feeling of “I shouldn’t be reading this” or perhaps, more accurately “others wouldn’t like me reading this”, it was the discovery of a whole world of stories. Without the internet or guidance from the older generations, finding these stories and piecing together these worlds was a personal, immediate experience rather than an inherited one. It’s the same as building a model space ship and being shown one.

You can fund more navel-gazing like this by buying me a cuppa.

Painting with a broad brush, when I was recommending comics to kids I encountered three types of parents. Of course, some parents fall in between these reductive definitions, too.

1. “They know what they like, I’m just paying.” The hero. Usually in with a teenager who is already collecting. Clueless, in a helpful way for recommendations. But the chances are the kid doesn’t need your help either.
2. “He likes Star Wars, don’t you? Because it’s daddies favourite too. Tell the man how much you like IG-88.” The well-meaning parent who is forcing what they love onto their kids but who is familiar with comics content and enjoys it with them.
3. “She eight, what’s good for an eight-year-old? No, that’s too violent. No, that looks a bit childish. She’s smart and is a good reader. Hmm, no that’s too challenging.” This guy. This bloody guy. Doesn’t know what they want, but isn’t open to recommendations. This is the parent for whom comics must be monitored and their child is a delicate flower who will only grow with the most observant of monitoring.

“I’m not saying you need to shove a copy of Watchmen into children’s hands, but maybe you can trust them to find it when they’re ready.”

Reading comics is a solitary act. If you read them, and you like them, your interaction with them is personal, like any other art form you principally enjoy alone. Your mind fills in that empty space between the panels. You express your concept of time, space, movement and sound onto the static, silent images (with perhaps a little coercion from the creators). Once a parent starts to curate that, or layout a reading list, a hidden third participant is looming in the background stopping them from exploring for themselves; from challenging themselves, learning and finding out about what they love. It’s well-meaning of course, but the filled-in map is less exciting than one reading “here be dragons”, and showing someone the way lessens their chance of finding an adventure.

Caught between images and words, comics can present new, difficult and challenging concepts in a visually clear but less visceral and extreme form than film. At the same time they more accessible than textbooks or novels. This makes them perfect for transitioning from children’s content to adult’s (and doesn’t stop them from being either). I’m not saying you need to shove a copy of Watchmen into children’s hands, but maybe you can trust them to find it when they’re ready.

At some point, kids start to want to understand the world outside of the curriculum reading list. They want to find ideas that speak just to them instead of entire classrooms. They want to expand their cultural knowledge and language and collect more stories to build their view of the world. They don’t just want it in fact, they need it.

“…comics were a secret place for the inquisitive, away from the guiding hand and prying eyes of adults.”

It’ll always be hard trying to weigh on the great scales of parenthood looking after your child and letting them encounter new, exciting and scary concepts. And with the clear educational benefits of comics, they are increasingly a useful tool for parents. I’m not entirely sure I would stick to my own philosophy if I was thinking about my kids.

But for a brief time, before Seth Cohen, before endless Marvel films and before nerds had kids and took over the planet, comics were a secret place for the inquisitive, away from the guiding hand and prying eyes of adults. The form seemed childish, coating the content of adult-ness, and that provided a mean of personal transition, intimacy and excitement. Before you know it, you’re old enough and cynical enough that that kind shock and excitement at reading something you shouldn’t start to fade, and the lightning of falling in love with something just for you, secret and forbidden strikes less and less. And it’s a shame to see it go away.