Things I love about (superhero) comics

As I'm away for the weekend and won't be online tomorrow I'm doing 2 posts today, this is the second.

A while back I thought I’d do a post listing the things that I particularly love about superhero comics. So here goes.

1) Wally West and Linda Park’s relationship
She is his rod and serves to anchor him to this plane of reality, not get dragged into the speed force. They love each other so much that even when he’s trapped in some distant place he can find his way back home by focusing on her. During Infinite Crisis (or thereabouts) he ran home to say goodbye to her as he knew he was getting pulled away somewhere unknown and her reaction was ‘you’re not bloody going without me’ and promptly hung on.

I just love the idea that you can be (mutually) in love with someone that much that they serve as a way to ground you and bring you back home when you’re in danger. I think it’s wonderful and oh so perfect.
Yes, I am a product of a broken home.

2) You don’t need words
There’s an issue of Young Justice, # 31, which has no text in it at all. You’ve got Bart’s thought bubbles which are just images and no words. The art is impeccable and flows so well it tells you all you need to know. I'm someone who didn't pay a lot of attention to stuff around her when younger. Now I'm relearning how to be observant and take everything in and part of that involves really paying attention to the images use in comics, as well as how they're used.

3) The sheer epic scale of it all
Two things about this point really. One is that because it’s epic you quite often get huge universe spanning wars and then there’s lots of lovely tragedy. I enjoy a good bit of tragedy.
The second thing is that because the Universe is so bloody large and it’s got such a lot of published history there is so much to learn. Let’s face it, as a new reader, started reading comic properly about 5 years ago, I’ve got a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Considering I get frustrated when I come to the end of a 6 book fantasy series, because I haven’t learnt enough about each character, or the world’s history, or the culture or whatever, superhero comics are a bloody godsend.

4) Powers
Flight, laser vision, ice breath, telekinesis, supra intelligence, actual wings, shapeshifter, pyschics, Godlike powers, magic, super strength, shrinking people, growing people, time travel, space travel, robots, cyborgs, super speed, talking to fish, sonic screams, magic rings.

5) Fandom
Comics fans are so obsessive about what happens, why it happens, what it means and why it's wrong. Or right, if the individual is in an optimistic mood. I love it, we get so immersed in our fandoms it all becomes so important. I love having a community I can talk to about this stuff.

6) What Avalon's Willow said

Now, fancy throwing in your favourite things about the genre?