Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks licensed comics, and comics that aspire to do more than entertain.

I'm on record as being ambivalent about licensed comics, but I couldn't help but be at least a little professionally pleased by the news that Marvel’s new Star Wars #1 would reportedly sell a million copies in the direct sales market.  Which is nice and all but naturally I have the usual suspect coterie of quibbles and questions, for instance, while the ordered number (supply) is certainly impressive I'm more interested in the number that will be actually purchased (demand).  Will there be an edition available in Disney venues?  Will all of those copies go to direct sales shops or will Diamond be making some available to high rollers who want to corner the market in high-end comic book collectibles (I'm not sure why but I always imagine this sort of thing conducted by secret cabals of Floridian dentists who meet at golf courses).

And, heaven help me, the Jem and the Holograms comic from IDW Publishing sure looks like fun (see "'Jem and the Holograms' Comic"), something that could appeal to the property's hardcore fans as well as actual little girls with no knowledge of the 80's cartoon series.








But the licensed comic I personally want to see is Mystery Science Theater 3000.  You might think it's too obscure, but the last five years has proven that even if true that should prove no obstacle, and I don't believe it is true.  In fact we seem to be in the middle of a MST3K renaissance.*  There almost was a MST3K comic once back in the 90's from Acclaim, the premise being Mike and the bots riffing on old Gold Key and Dell comics.  And while that's the obvious go-to format for the franchise I'd much  prefer to see the wacky adventures of Tom Servo and Crow drawn by Steve Vance, the artist who created those wonderful MST3K DVD covers.  IDW, please to make it so.

It has also occurred to me that it's more than a little foolish to complain about all the comics out there based on movies and TV shows when there are plenty of people who I am sure are complaining about all the movies and TV shows based on comics.  And they kind of have a point; supposedly over the next six years there will be 30 movies based on comics, and TV is only slightly behind.  We've already got Supergirl in the pipeline for next year and supposedly Syfy is developing Krypton (see "'Gotham'-Style Superman Prequel"), which seems kind of ambitious for the network, given the budget constraints of, well, everything they've ever done.  I'll never let them forget that they gave us a Flash Gordon series sans spaceships where a supposedly ecologically devastated planet Mongo looked remarkably like the pine barrens outside of Toronto.

Heaven knows I don't want to be a scold but I don't think we should ever forget that comics are a powerful medium that can and should be about more than just moving merchandise.  For instance, I recently came across a widely syndicated piece by Danny Hakim that first appeared in The New York Times: "A Jordanian Spins Comic Book Tales to Counter Terrorist Ideologies."  It's about Suleiman Bakhit and his company Arnim Media Factory, which sounded familiar to me because I'd written about both before (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--This N' That").  Believing that "The biggest threat in the Middle East is terrorism disguised as heroism," Bakhit creates comics which provide an alternative to terrorist ideologies.  And he did his research by doing "surveys of children in poor neighborhoods in and around the Jordanian capital of Amman and in Syrian refugee camps" to help him create heroes for kids who don't have any.

And, finally there's a story from India's DNA website "India's newest superhero 'Priya's Shakti' is a rape survivor."  She's the creation of Indian-American filmmaker Ram Devineni who hopes to change Indian attitudes about sexual assault with the story of Priya, a young woman who survives rape and is aided by the Goddess Parvati as she strives to stop gender crimes.  Digital copies of it are available for free download, you can do just that at the comiXology website, and the comic will have its official premiere at the Mumbai Film and Comics Convention being held from December 19th to 21st.  I've downloaded my copy and you should do so as well because it’s not only an important issue it’s also a beautiful and powerful reminder of just what can be done with words and pictures.

* Episodes of MST3K are now available on Vimeo, there's talk of syndicating episodes via PBS, of all places, and this year's online Turkey Day marathon of movies with original human host Joel Hodgson was the #1 live event on YouTube with over 100,000 people watching.  Though upon reflection I have to wonder if its resurgence is somehow also connected to the renaissance of space stuff that we're also currently experiencing.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.