Comic-book heroes flock to TV, but why are they so popular?
NEW YORK When “Marvel’s The Punisher” debuted on Netflix last month, it was greeted with great interest and high anticipation.
But it arrived as just one of many comic-book adaptations. “The Punisher” is only the latest in a flood now comprising some 28 shows across nine broadcast, cable and streaming platforms, with no end in sight.
Granted, all comic-book shows aren’t created equal.
AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” beset by zombies, differs markedly from the teen adventures of Archie Andrews on the CW’s “Riverdale” and from Amazon’s superhero spoof “The Tick.”
But the majority exists within either of two expansive brands, not dissimilar to Pepsi and Coke.
One is DC, which (with the midseason arrival of “Black Lightning” on the CW) will be represented by nine shows on three networks. The other is Marvel with 13 shows arrayed on six outlets, chiefly Netflix, which currently hosts a halfdozen of its own.
That all adds up to more spandex get-ups than you’d find in an aerobics class. But before concluding that superheroes have taken over the small screen, it’s worth noting a few things.
First, TV has always chased trends. Think: Cop shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows. Way back in Fall 1959, more than two dozen Westerns were airing on just three broadcast networks. That would dwarf the current slate of comic book shows as a percentage of the 500-odd scripted original prime-time series airing in 2017.
The launch of more and more channels, especially streaming platforms with their limitless capacity, signalled an ever-escalating need to create content.
“With this extraordinary appetite for source material, decades of comic books offered material just waiting to be plucked,” says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture.
Even better, they’re perfectly formatted for turning into TV.
“A comic book is like a TV storyboard: visual dialogue in frames,” Thompson says. “It’s so perfectly transferable! Comic books make the life of a network development executive really, really easy.”
But none of this accounts for the apparently insatiable hunger for these shows with which the audience receives them.
“All of it, one some level, is escapism,” explains Brett Rogers, classics professor at the University of Puget Sound. “If I’m watching ‘Jessica Jones’ for an hour, I’m not dealing with some real thing in my life. But the flip side is that comic-book-inspired shows can be spaces for thinking through some serious questions: ‘Jessica Jones’ is an opportunity to explore sexual violence and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The comic book industry famously has had to fight the stigma of being for just for children and idiots,” he says. But as gifted “kids and idiots” like Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith came of age and made waves by nurturing a comics ethos across multiple media including TV, comics gained new gravitas, respect and urgency.
“It’s now being normalized as shared myth of mainstream culture,” Rogers said. “It’s a common myth shared between readers and viewers, adolescents and adults, comics and film buffs alike — NOT just kids’ culture.”