I believe I have mentioned before that our local library has quite a good shelf of graphic novels (as discussed in this morning’s NY Times Magazine article “Not Funnies”by Charles McGrath. I went over and browsed it, eventually discarding both the aggressively serious and the truly goofy in favor of Green Arrow: The Archer’s Quest, written by Brad Meltzer. It was pretty entertaining.
The main plot is that (from previous issues) Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, has come back from the dead, and now he’s dealing with some leftover stuff. Actual stuff: he had contracted with a villain to destroy all his stuff when he died (inspired, Mr. Meltzer says, by the idea of the ‘porn buddy’ from BBC’s Coupling), but the villain turns out to have cocked it up, and so on and so forth. It works pretty darned well as a plot device for keeping things moving, as he can interact with his old friends and enemies, bringing out the awkwardness of his revival, while gathering up the things he wants to get back.
Anyway, it was entertaining and all. I had a good time. It does seem to me that the self-referentiality of comix may have diminishing utility. My reading is the field is very limited, and perhaps that small sample size is allowing the library’s acquisitions guy to skew things, but it does seem as if every graphic novel I’ve read recently is about comix. It’s not, you know, actively annoying me, but I do think that if my next read is that self-referential it will have a hard time entertaining me.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.