Comics, by Kevin

Comics are ace. Some people think that comics are not ace, but they are wrong. The reason why they think comics are not ace, I think, is because they confuse stand-up comics with lie-down comics and lie-down comics with sit-down comics. Stand-up comics are men (and, increasingly, two women) who stand up in front of an audience of people and tell jokes. Examples would be Jimmy Carr, Jimmy Tarbuck, Jimmy Cricket, and Jimmy Riddle, although you do not legally have to be called Jimmy to be rubbish. Lie-down comics are comics who are dead, such as Harpo Marx, Bill Hicks, Lenny the Bruce, and Jimmy Tarbuck (again). I agree with people when they say that stand-up and lie-down comics are not ace, but not when they say that sit-down comics are not ace. Unless they mean Ronnie Corbett.

Sit-down comics are pieces of paper folded several times, or cut and stapled together to form a collection of "pages," which are then printed with drawings and text that tell a story. One of these is called The Incredible Hulk. It is very good. Another one is called The Spider-Man. NOT Spider Man. It is also very good. Another one is called Catwoman. It is rubbish. It is for girls.

Sit-down comics are called sit-down comics because you read them sitting down. Usually in a chair or a settee, but also sometimes on the toilet. Sometimes if my latest copy of Iron Man is missing, it will be because my father is reading it on the toilet while he is having a dump. Then he will deny it completely and say it was my sister who had been reading it. But that is a lie and he knows it. My sister hates Iron Man. When she has a dump she takes her mobile phone in and sits there texting her friends things like "Im hvng a dmp. Wht r u dng?" Comics are beyond her.

Comics are becoming so popular now that Hollywood has decided to make them into films, which are really just real-life motion versions of comics. I think this is a terrible development because it means that viewers (which is what readers of films are called) do not have to use their imaginations any more. Needless to say, those of us who read and collect comics look down on people who think they know all about Spidey and Bruce Banner just because they've seen films about them. Movies are clearly an inferior form of medium to comics, appealing to the great unwashed and the lowest common denominator, thick people who are not intelligent and need to have everything depicted for them explicitly rather than saying the words on the page to themselves in their own heads, like normal people do. People who go to the cinema are people who move their lips when they read. You will also notice that all the comics that have been made into films are really good ones, which is to say, superhero comics, not crappy football ones like Roy of the Rovers or useless girls' ones like Bunty. This is because superhero comics are ace. Which is what I meant at the beginning.

Collecting comics can be a really rewarding pastime, and because most comics are thin, they can be stacked in piles in your attic or under your bed or in the shed by the hundred. Unlike books, which take up much more space. If you want, you can have decades of years of comics in your attic, and you don't even have to look at them, just read them once and put them up there safe in the knowledge that nobody else can mess with them or that Michael Sutch will have to get his own copy the tight-fisted shitter. Personally, however, I think that collecting comics and hiding them like this is a bit childish and a sign of immaturity. What is the point? When you have read your comic, you might as well get rid of it. I make a point of only ever having 31 comics in my collection at any one time. Thirty-one is a prime number. That way, you always have enough space for your collection, and you can be sure that your collection is made up only of the most recent, brand-new, shiny glossy comics, not faded crappy badly drawn comics from the 1960s. My uncle Tony left me his collection of D.C. and Marvel comics from the 1950s and 1960s. There were thousands of comics, all in cellophane wrappers. I think he must have been a bit of a mentaler. I burned the whole lot of them. Who wants to be a mentaler?

Anyway, I hope that you will collect comics now that I have shown you how good it is.

And that is the end.



(Kevin Macpherson is the incumbent of the Jack Kirby Chair of Sit-Down Comics at Warrington School of Art and Design.)