NOTE: I’m deleting and repurposing the earlier entry, here.
(I don’t feel like I got it quite right at the time, so here’s this:)
Now, there’s sort of a hidden backstory here, in that after I got to the States, and after reading American comics, I was pretty much a long-time, loyal DC/Marvel fan until I noticed that they just… I dunno… kept recycling their content, and kept using their characters as resurrectionist puppets?
For example-- they’d make a huge song & dance about killing off a character, only to later bring them back perfectly intact via whatever bullshit excuse, some issues later? (sometimes even needing to create alternate worlds for them to exist in!)
Point is-- it pretty much hammered home the idea that all these characters were just licensed properties ™, and not representative of remotely approaching real characters.
Dense as I was, it did become clear as a comics reader that my needs just weren’t being met anymore, suggestible teenager as I was. That’s roughly around the time that I started exploring American-indie/alt comix, such as Cerebus the Aardvark, Love & Rockets, and several others.
What can I say? I just lost total interest in bullshit fantasy, and got WAY more interested in Euro and Alt / Indie stuff, and in truth, I’ve rarely looked back.
Now here’s the great Dave Cooper:
-----> https://imgur.com/a/dave-coopers-bizzaro-world-super-dumped-xi144QU <-----
EPILOGUE? Uh… I guess just that Euro-comics… at bare minimum, they suggest to me how your day went, and what little (but crazy) challenges you went through that day. That’s some real stuff, to me.
I mean… stock characters go back to… the age of Greek Tragedy, right? And that’s cool!
But I mean, either way… there has to be a compelling story, or way of relating, or something that rises us up and connects us, right?
EDIT: I’ve lightly edited in a clarification, above, hopefully that makes sense.