SERIOUSLY, PERILOUSLY

Hardly surprising, then, that I found myself in the sleepless hours of a California morning talking to a man in a Superman costume about his relationship with Lois, his attitude towards Batman, and the existential trauma of his alien heritage. Hardly surprising that this Superman was not only perfectly-dressed for the part but also spoke in character. We discussed his future for maybe an hour and off he went, red and blue, into the night. By 5am, with dawn over the naval yards, I'd finished several pages of notes for a new way of looking at Superman. I slept like a robot and dreamt of stainless steel anvils.

I write superhero comics for a living. Days like this are normal.

Comics, it often seems, are the rats in the basement of the art gallery. Dignified as ''the Ninth Art'' by the French, consumed in their millions by the Japanese, the fatally misnamed ''comic'' books of the English-speaking world have been marginalised out of any greater cultural discourse by, one can only imagine, helplessly image-blind literary critics.

Largely ignored by mainstream pundits, the comics have proliferated rapidly during the last 60 years, registering all the tiniest tremors of the zeitgeist while miraculously evading large-scale academic scrutiny of the type which has plagued pop music and other pulp entertainment forms since the fifties. At a time when ''serious'' works of fiction are selling in the low thousands, ''difficult'', ''literary'' comics enjoy audiences of 20,000 to 40,000 readers every month (the best-selling adventure titles shift 10 times that amount). Royalty structures mean that creators no longer have to starve in garrets on a penny a word but can own their

creations, broker million-dollar movie deals, and buy ice-hockey teams. Comics are relatively cheap, they're portable, disposable, and quicker to reflect social trends than any other creative medium. A pound or two buys instant drama, surrealism, documentary, politics, sadistic horror, satire, philosophy, romance . . . in colour, in your pocket, in the bath, on the train . . .

It seems perfect.

How can it be, then, that an entire medium of expression is virtually overlooked by the arbiters of culture? How can some of the cleverest, funniest, and most thoughtful and outrageous writing of recent years be allowed to vanish into the subcultural cracks, acknowledged by the wider artistic community only when the original ideas of comics creators are stolen or misappropriated by film-makers and ''fine'' artists? In a time of information overload, when books, films, TV shows, and even video games are regularly reviewed by the mainstream media, why should it be that comic books are omitted from the discussion? The answer: who cares?

In this kingdom of the trivial, in this throwaway medium, the best comics creators have found a free haven for experimentation and personal vision. Academic disdain, immense editorial freedom, and the relentless demand for unusual material have all played their part in clearing a space for the comics form to flourish like mind-bending toadstools in the cellar; from young children's cartoon books, through the wonders of the still-popular mainstream superhero adventures for teenagers, via the autobiographies and sex fantasies of the underground, and on to the Pulitzer-winning works of the avant garde, comics continue to provide an outlet for some of the most inventive minds in the world. Indeed, many of the 21st-century equivalents to the theoretical and formal experiments of the literary modernists are currently occurring in the pages of popular superhero comics which sell in the hundreds

of thousands (post-modernism was tried, and died, in the pages of the comics long before its vogue in other branches of the popular arts). The readership is generally intelligent, vocal, and highly partisan. It would, in fact, be possible to read only comics and still have an excellent grasp on political news, cultural trends, and all the latest scientific and philosophical theorising.

In short, the comics industry has enjoyed an incredible self-sufficiency; it has its own shops, its own trade and critical magazines, its own distribution system, its own stars, groupies and awards ceremonies. And this may well be a big part of the problem for the field; like Japan in the eighties, comics have enjoyed all the perks of insularity, without noticing the creeping dangers. A medium which once entertained audiences in the millions and spawned globally recognised characters like Superman and Batman is now largely confined to specialist outlets and regarded with the disdain normally saved for men who live with their mums and have every Partick Thistle programme from 1966 to 1998 carefully wrapped in plastic. At a time when the field is at its most diverse, most literate, most imaginative, comic books stand in danger of vanishing into their own self-absorption.

The comics, as we know them today, developed from the satirical political cartoons of the Enlightenment, mated with emergent children's book illustrations and the designed-for-mass-reproduction drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, and emerged into the twentieth century ready for action. On both sides of the Atlantic, the comic was rapidly debased into service as entertainment for children and illiterates. Some satirical content remained but slapstick was the order of the day and, in the early years of the century, comic strips were mainly used to promote the careers of silent film and music hall stars, such as Charlie Chaplin and Arthur Askey.

Meanwhile in the US, William Randolph Hearst was busy creating the tabloid style for his successful newspapers, and he pioneered comic strip supplements in his papers as another means of flogging easy reading to a burgeoning, idealistic immigrant population. The next advance was for the ''funnies'' to cross-pollinate with the ''pulps''; action-adventure stories about outlandish crimebusters were popular and easy to translate into what was now well on the way to being regarded as the lowest form of low culture.

Then in 1938, the various strands came together in the form of first Superman, followed by Batman and Wonder Woman, and then an unstoppable tide of supermen and superwomen, who emerged to define the stereotype of the ''American Comic'' and to battle crime in circus outfits for six decades. The superhero had arrived, just in time to face the greatest enemy of all. Sales of comics went through the roof as America entered the Second World War.

Seeming redundant after Hitler's defeat, the crimefighters drifted, one by one, into nostalgia, leaving only a few big names to limp on through the rest of the decade. The hole the costumed characters left was filled by other genres: crime, horror, and war stories fed the fantasies of the early fifties and plumbed such grotesquely uncensored depths that a ''Comics Code Authority'' was hastily established to police this unruly, anarchic medium. Restriction forced invention; the second wave of utopian, idealistic, Kennedy-era superheroes arrived in all their atom-age glory in 1954 and set the tone for the next 30 years.

During that time, the flames of the first comics ''underground'' were being fanned by sixties liberalism; hundreds of small-press, independently produced magazines emerged to defy the Comics Code by telling stories about drugs, sex, violence, music, bohemia. By the eighties, enough of that underground style had infiltrated the mainstream that superhero comics could now be described as ''gritty'', ''realistic'' or ''adult''. A few Zap! Pow! Comics aren't just for kids anymore! headlines later, a brief flirtation with the style mags and the supplements accompanied the publication of The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Arkham Asylum; three seminal ''serious'' works from the boom period of the Thatcher/Reagan years. Computer software advances made it easier to self-publish and suddenly there were countless comics, dealing with every possible subject from tyrannosaurs to tampons - sometimes

both in the same story.

The first comics millionaires appeared several years later, when a number of young, immensely popular artists working for Marvel Comics mutinied to form Image - a comics company to be run by the creators, with the lion's share of the unprecedented profits to be shared among the artists. The Image books, written badly and drawn well by young loud-mouthed hotshots, turned their creators into media stars. The new type of mainstream comic most resembled the hardcore techno records of the early nineties - stripped-down, brutal, repetitive, adrenaline-inducing noise. The realism and social awareness of the eighties quickly turned into endlessly reiterated scenes of urban violence, rape, and horror. Image disintegrated as the decade progressed, leaving some very rich young men and a comics industry cape-deep in recession.

All through the great 15-year generation cycles of ''realism/irony'' and ''surrealism/wonder'', which inform the development of the medium, comics have functioned as incredibly sensitive barometers of the cultural climate; the heroes created to fight Nazism in 1940 became, in various responses to their times, fifties ubercops or Red-bashing patriots, sixties ''Right Stuff'' science fiction pioneers, campy kitsch signifiers for Baby Boomers, tormented eco-warriors, brutal urban vigilantes, and New Age aspirational icons, recording every contour of the changing landscape. Batman, the maverick, loner vigilante tends to be most popular during times of economic high energy and confidence, Superman enjoys his vogue periods during uncertain times, when people look to imaginary fathers for answers (the release of the best and most successful Superman movie narrowly preceded Ronald Reagan's election

in 1980). In fact, it's possible to predict trends simply by divining the popularity of those two characters alone (we're currently re-entering Superman time, so expect signs of authoritarianism - hair to get shorter, clothes tighter, militaristic themes to dominate, etc, etc).

History indicates that comics are currently gearing up for another boom period, which may involve the people who love the medium standing up, waving flags, and shouting a little more loudly about its achievements and future potential. The contemporary comics scene is more diverse, more sophisticated, more literate, more imaginative and more fun than it has been for a very long time.

In closing, I'd like you to imagine if all recorded music were dismissed by the critical mainstream because some music enthusiasts enjoy going to record fairs and collecting old singles. Imagine if all motion pictures were derided and disregarded because critics happened to dislike the films of Bruce Willis. Consider this syllogism: Janet and John is a book. Janet and John is for children. Therefore all books are for children. Now you have some idea what it's like to write for comics.

Having said that, now try imagining what it would be like to stumble upon Citizen Kane, The Singing Detective, Trainspotting, Revolver . . . all at once, for the first time; that's what it's like uncovering the wealth of comic book material which already exists, particularly now that much of the best work is being reprinted in trade paperback form and has become fairly easy to track down. From heavyweight classics like Maus, Eightball, or the works of Robert Crumb, through pop blockbusters like The Dark Knight Returns or Kingdom Come, to the cream of the latest monthly editions and the output of the alternative publishers, collections are available which range across the whole spectrum of genres and non-genres.

''Can comics be art?'' is a question I'm often asked and it seems to imply that somehow the medium will be taken ''seriously'' only when it can display some certificate of its highbrow credentials. If only all other popular media were subjected to such rigorous high standards, we might have much better telly to watch and books to read! That some comics are ''high art'' is undeniable; the remainder wish only to be accorded the same respect as other areas of popular culture.

In spite of all these difficulties, I still believe that the combination of words and pictures on paper can be as powerful, as profound, as moving as any of the other scratchings people have made, whether on canvas or celluloid or on compact disc. I believe it's time for comic books to get out of the bedsit, put on their gladrags, and start dancing in the streets again. I believe that this maligned, but energetic and ambitious, form has only begun to show what it's capable of, and that the biggest audiences and the most innovative artists yet lie just around the corner.

Then again, I also believe a man can fly.

Comics, it often seems,

are the rats in the basement of the art gallery.

Dignified as ''the

Ninth Art'' by the French, consumed in their

millions by the Japanese, the fatally misnamed

''comic'' books of the

English-speaking world have been marginalised

out of any greater

cultural discourse by,

one can only imagine,

helplessly image-blind

literary critics

CLASSICS

Dark Night Returns

by Frank Miller

(DC Comics)

V for Vendetta

by Alan Moore (Titan)

Violent Cases

by Neil Gaiman & DAve McKean

(Titan)

Batman: Killing Joke

by Brian Bolland & Alan Moore

(Titan)

PRESENT

Invisibles: Bloody Hell in America

by Grant Morrison,

Phil Jimenez & John Stokes

(Titan)

Any Preacher series

[titles include Gone to Texas,

Proud Americans,

Until the End of the World,

Ancient History.

by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon

(Vertigo Books)

Spawn

by Todd McFarlane

(Vertigo Books)

FUTURE RELEASES

Sin City: Booze Broads and Bullets

by Frank Miller

(Dark Horse)

The R Crumb Coffee Table Art Book

by Robert Crumb

(Little Brown)

Superman: Peace on Earth

by Charles Kochman

(DC Comics)

You Are Here

by Kyle Baker

(Vertigo Books)

Batman: Crimson Mist

ed., Dennis O'Neil

(DC Comics)

Uncle Sam

by Alex Ross & Steve Darnall

(Vertigo Books)

Batman: Hellboy, Starman (series)

by Mike Mignola & james Robinson

(DC Comics)

Spawn: Deadman's Touch

by Todd mcFarlane & G Capullo

(Image Comics)

Earlier this year Glasgow-based graphic novelist Grant Morrison took over editorial control of DC comics. He was to plot a 48-part story of all the superheroes as if they had miraculously dropped into the present from the year AD 85,271 - the hypothetical date of the millionth

issue of the series. Morrison's job was to create hyper-futuristic versions of all the DC favourites -

Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, Flash, Greenlantern, Aquaman - coming out under the title Justice League of America. Other of his most celebrated, or notorious, graphic titles include The New Adventures of Hitler, The Invisibles, and St Swithins Day (which once caused an outraged Sir Teddy Taylor to ask questions in the House of Commons). While he argues that comics and graphic novels are one of this century's radical artforms, he has also recently produced his own more conventional (by comics'

standards) novel. Lovely Biscuits is published by Oneiros Books, #7.95. In the meantime, here

are some of the classic graphic titles, those presently available and some to look forward to: