I've been busted by friends and workmates on the way back from the library with an armful of comic books lately, and they've asked me what I'm reading - and I really, really don't want to show them.
Because while I get my own kicks from these things, some of them are ugly as fuck, if only on a purely design level.
I have no shame about reading modern comics as an adult, I got over that kind of adolescent embarrassment decades ago. But so many of them are just ugly to look at, and I don't want to encourage anybody else to subject themselves to that.
Sometimes I might be lucky and have a Chris Ware book or something when I'm stopped, and it's an objectively impressive piece of art, but most of the time I'm taking back some new Superman or X-Men comic, and they are just awful.
The current designs for the X-books are genuinely off-putting. They look empty and vapid. I look at the things that used to get rejected by Carmine Infantino in the 70s, and am actually appalled that today's editors think some of the things they slap on the cover are worth the efforts. They're figures hanging in space, grimacing at some off-screen menace, with no backgrounds so it's a timeless void, and washed-out colour that mutes any excitement in the line.
So I'm getting better at laughing it away when somebody asks me what I'm into. I never thought I'd be so shamed to be seen reading comic books again, but ugly art and lazy design will do that.
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