Participants
Realism in the X-Men Comic Books in the Wake of the X-Men Movie
Christopher Hayter
hayter@sonoma.edu
With the release of the first X-Men motion picture there began a shift in the X-Men comic line to match the qualities that made the film successful. The comic book X-Men could not translate to a feature film and attract a mass audience, therefore the X-Men movie presented the superhero group with a larger sense of realism than was present in the X-Men comic books. The success of the film prompted Marvel Comics to attempt to draw in fans of the film to the comics by updating and reinvigorating the characters and stories. This new level of realism in the comics exceeded even that of the film.
The evolution of the comic books was led by Grant Morrison whose
run on New X-Men brought the series to a new level of realism
heretofore never seen in mainstream superhero comics, with story
arcs that both revolutionized and deconstructed the genre.
Marvel’s idea behind the revamp was that they could regain
the sales levels they once had before the market crashed in the
early nineties. What Marvel failed to understand was that though
they could have all the realism they wanted, it was still realism
within the confines of a superhero story, which is ultimately an
archaic concept, as Morrison slyly proved in “Planet X.”
Though the age of realism in comics raised the literary and creative level of the genre, the change does not appear to be permanent, nor did it greatly improve sales. Regardless of realism, the only way to expand readership and improve the comic book as a medium is to move beyond the superhero. Comic book companies should follow the example of The Sandman and Preacher, or Japanese manga, which proved that comics can reach larger audiences outside the tried demographic if they attempt different narrative techniques and genre explorations.
