Sitting on the sidelines in the Indy vs. Mainstream softball game, eating hot dogs and drinking beer with J'Onn J'Onnz.

Over at Comics Should Be Good, Brad Curran has some thoughts on the "team mentality" that sometimes comes up in the discussions about the comics industry, which he concludes with:

And now that I've come out in favor of a side in this argument, or at least the indie v. mainstream kerfuffle, I'll call bullshit on the whole affair. Who cares which "faction" of comics has more crap to its name? Why in the hell do we have to split comics effectively in half between "this side" and "that side," or "my side" and "your side." Who cares if indie comics can beat up mainstream comics, or vice versa? It's no different than arguing about superhero fights, politics, or any other "my team is better than your team" situation. Do you really want to be in the same category as the staff of Wizard Magazine and the Fox News Channel? The only side a comic falls on that really matter is good comics vs. bad comics. It doesn't matter who publishes them.

Like Curran, I agree that it's a false dichotomy--wrong on many levels. That Gail Simone can make a joke like "I was napping. Are we the team that hates popular things, or the team that hates people who hate popular things?" in a Fanboy Rampage comments thread highlights the problem of choosing sides better than anything I'm going to say.

Even as much as I come "rah rah go indy!" sometimes, it's not due to a wanting to be a part of either team (at least, I don't think this way, but how I come across could be a different matter entirely). For me, it comes down to the fact that I really just don't like the superhero genre as much as I used to, regardless of the quality.

Here's an admission: I haven't bought a single Seven Soldiers-related comic. In fact, I think the only superhero comics I've got in my pull list are Young Avengers (and I'm two issues behind on that, because I'm waiting for another copy of issue #3 before I read issue #4), Astonishing X-Men, Plastic Man, MK:4, and Punisher, which I think I'll be dropping soon. I think there might be one or two more, but that they're not jumping out at me immediately is probably saying something.

It's nothing against the genre--I still read and reread some superhero comics I already own, and there are some things I'll eventually buy in trade paperbacks once we get our finances in better shape. Come Christmas, I'm sure my wife will be buying me another Ultimate Spider-Man hardcover. They're fun comics, and I enjoy reading them (and knowing that she's thinking of my geek chic when it comes to present time), but I don't have any intention of buying them on my own. Today, I think I figured out why--I'm not the audience for which they're writing these books. I can enjoy them at times (even in a non-hipster, non-ironic way), but not enough to seek them out. Similarly, I'll watch a movie or television show with my wife will sometimes enjoy it, even when the thing isn't my cup of tea. She's just discovered The X-Files in syndication, a show I never really had any interest in, and she has the ReplayTV set up to record every episode in syndication. We watch it together, and it's nice (nice beyond even just spending time with one another, which our schedules don't really allow anymore), but when she's not there I don't make a point to watch any of the ones she's viewed without me.

In the post that prompted this, Curran mentions he has "never quite figured out what the difference between pandering and writing for an audience is..."

Over there, I repsonded that, in my opinion, the difference is:

1. When you're pandering, you're giving an audience exactly what it wants or, more directly, what it thinks it wants.

2. When you're writing for an audience, you're giving them something they want or need, even though they might not realize it until they see it on the page.

To me, the superhero comics that I think are bad are doing the first, and the ones that are good are doing the second.

Except I'm still not the audience.

There are a few reasons for this. In my head, despite the visual aspects of the medium, I still think of comics as books. I'm much more willing to forgive television or movies for just being fun diversions and nothing more than I am of something I'm sitting down to read, because I look at the whole process of reading as kind of sacred, as corny as it sounds. Reading requires more of an investment from me--it's probably my favorite thing to do, ever. And when it comes to "book books," my tastes have almost always run fairly academic. Reading something that lets me explore different themes and ideas is more important than a book designed for "kicking back," as is the quality of the writing itself. "Fun" just isn't enough for me, usually, and the same becomes true in comics. Also, I'm not generally attracted to continuing serial narratives--I prefer things with an actual beginning, middle and end (which is why, at the very least, I prefer trades and miniseries of superhero material with clearly defined arcs). That goes back to the exploration of theme--with a finite, concrete narrative, it's easier to have express a statement with a consistent thematic unity. It's probably part of the reason why I find the action/adventure "new mainstream" comics from publishers like AiT/Planet-Lar and Oni more palateable than superhero comics, and why I tend to prefer watching movies to sticking with television shows--I know there's an ending in sight.

Yesterday, I took some time to chat with Kevin Melrose on my lunchbreak. Somehow, we got on the subject of superheroes, and the conversation steered to the untapped potential of Martian Manhunter, among others. I'm not sure how many Martian Manhunter stories Kevin has read--that didn't really come up in the discussion--but I know I haven't read many. I think the only comics featuring that character that I've read in twenty-some years of reading comics are JLA: Year One, that one issue of Sandman, the "Funeral for a Friend" storyline after Superman's death (and I don't remember if he was actually in it, but I think he was), New Frontier, Mark Waid's first arc on JLA and Morrison's first two arcs on the same. I've also seen a few episodes here and there of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. That's probably a very small fraction of comics he's appeared in (and it also means that I haven't read Giffen's Justice League stuff everyone's so fond of, but I've been meaning to, and I also haven't read his solo series).

What I do know about the character is kind of limited by that frame of reference, so much of where I see potential in the character may be suspect. I've got the basics of his origin. I know people have mentioned that the nature and scope of his powers make it difficult to effectively use him as a central character for a sustained series--he's got super-strength, heat vision (although I don't quite understand how someone with fire-related weakness can project heat vision), intangibility, shape-shifting and telepathic abilities.

If the high adventure, power-driven parts of the genre were the only way to tell a story with J'Onn J'onnz in it, I'd be inclined to agree--constantly using fire as a source of danger would be as repetitive and questionable as using the color yellow in the early Hal Jordan Green Lantern stories ("Oh, no! A pterodactyl! And he's yellow! Just like the yellow spaceship I fought last month!").

In our conversation, though, Kevin mentioned the sheer possibilities of story types one could tell with the character. There's the possibility for the detective noir route, straight zany science fiction, gritty urban horror, romance... the list is practically endless. J'Onn's got that "stranger in a strange land" thing going for him, moreso than Superman--while he can effectively blend in anywhere he goes, he's far less an easy fit in society as the Kent-reared Kryptonian orphan. The story of loss is greater with J'Onn as well--while Superman never really knew his birth parents, J'Onn lost his wife and child before coming to Earth.

To me, any of the methods Kevin mentioned could work--even the one about J'Onn changing into a cat and living that way for a while. That's what interests me about the character--who is he? Is he John Jones, detective? Is he one of the other personas he adopted? Is he still fully Martian after all his time on Earth, or is he acclimating? Is he done deciding who he's going to be? Is "he" even settled on being male on this planet? As Dave Lewis pointed out in his column on J'Onn and his sexuality and sexual identity:

J’onn has demonstrated in many of his adventures the ability not only to alter his outer shape, but also his internal body structures. In JLA #11, he even managed to change the shape of his own brain, allowing his non-logical side to grow larger than his rational side in order to better see the world from the Joker’s psychopathic perspective. So, a womb – assuming that Martians even require such an organ to procreate – seems relatively easy, by comparison, to manifest. Even if they find a mate and produce offspring, it would seem that the choice of gender for a Martian is relatively arbitrary.

To me, that's the character--not the high-powered JLA member who fills the gaps when the writer needs a specific effect in a story, but the alien trying to figure out his identity and his place in his new world. It could take part of its cue from Darwyn Cooke's take on the character in New Frontier, as he adjusts and makes decisions regarding who he's going to be. It could fall under the Vertigo line, free from the continuity to which the main line adheres, and could comfortably be paired with Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen's It's A Bird... in terms of tone and feel, if not in content.

That's a story I could get excited about, a story for which I'd gladly be the audience.